2023/24 team preview: Bohemians Praha 1905
Sometimes it just so happens that on the day you plan to celebrate the 40th anniversary of your last and only league title, you also clinch your return to European cups after a long 36 years. It’s, you know, one of those lucky coincidences. And it’s highly symbolic this has happened to Bohemians in particular; a club that neutrals — Czech or foreign — naturally gravitate towards thanks to the Panenka phenomenon and the iconic Ďolíček. Goosebumps don’t come much easier, I’m telling you.
Bohemians of the 1980s were, of course, a different juggernaut. Two 1976 Euro-winning poster boys of the legendary Tomáš Pospíchal era, Karol Dobiaš (1980) and Antonín Panenka (1981), may have been gone by the time ‘Klokani’ finally got to lift the trophy, but the notoriously demanding yet highly respected coach was still working with some top-notch material.
In fact, whenever the Czech national team took field in the spring 1984 Euro qualifiers, three quarters of its defence hailed from Vršovice (Zdeněk Prokeš, František Jakubec and newcomer Stanislav Levý). Zdeněk Hruška was always sure to guard the goal, Přemysl Bičovský was a mainstay, too, and so were two of his more attacking-minded colleagues Milan Čermák and Pavel Chaloupka — the latter’s unrivalled 21 points powering the best offence of the title-winning season by far (margin of 19 goals to be precise).
Now, Bohemians made waves having been infamously predicted to finish dead last by Deník Sport, with our model doing only marginally better (11th) and my “bold prediction” hiding inherent disrespect to the club, too. It’s not like UEFA cups were a completely unfathomable prospect for ‘Klokani’ — remember they were two games away from them in Covid times, too, as this new ‘bogey team’ of Slovácko — but it was certainly a shock.
Financially, Bohemians were playing a different sport back then, as well. Supported by the famed engineering giant ČKD (along with Sparta Praha, otherwise the hegemon of the 1980s) that gave us the most widespread tramcar model in the world, Bohemians are rumoured to once have been close to signing Anton Ondruš and Marián Masný, two Bratislava-based heroes of 1976, only for the regime to decide it was a step too far after all.
Now, they are entering UEFA competitions with their main sponsor Malina Group, introduced to big fanfare last year, stuck in insolvency proceedings. After beginning the pre-season with the sponsor’s logo at the top centre of their jerseys, it has disappeared overnight with no formal announcement.
Awkward.
One more major difference, of course, was that in October 1987, Bohemka bowed out from the European stage in front of a half-empty Ďolíček. That won’t happen this year for two reasons: the stadium would now get easily filled within minutes (just ask Bodø/Glimt how their away sector is doing), but it was also never passing UEFA’s much stricter regulations. Change might be on the horizon, with Prague reportedly showing (hardly seen) interest in the ground’s reconstruction, but the lease is up in 4 years — and that might already be too tight a schedule to navigate anything substantial.
For now, at least the few rows opposite the main stand are once again open for access after the city hall belatedly took care of one of the more pressing maintenance issues. Small steps off the pitch to accompany big ones on it…
Looking back on 2022/23
What went (particularly) right
I mean, the whole package. Both halves of the season were, in its own way, special. The first one due to the Roman Květ-Petr Hronek duo firing at all cylinders, eventually securing Top 3 transfers, the second half due to the team finding a way to stay its course without the duo firing at all cylinders. Simple as that — much like Jaroslav Veselý winning the Coach of the Year award for it, which I’m told definitely happened. That Bohemians remained a high-octane side driving its opponents to the very edge without their two foremost hasslers, instead pushing the (defensive-minded) likes of Josef Jindřišek, Lukáš Hůlka and Daniel Köstl to recover more balls in final third than ever, is nothing short of spectacular. Over the course of 2022/23, Klokani forced 15 high turnovers leading to chances and 4 more leading to goals without surrendering much the other way, standing as the most balanced — and annoying — outfit around. That Bohemians remained a ridiculously potent team when it comes to attacking throw-ins, generating a total of 32 shots and 3 goals thanks to them, without their foremost thrower (Hronek) is just another testament to Veselý’s elite coaching.
What went (especially) wrong
Look, Bohemians weren’t pegged as a relegation candidate by complete accident, and this obviously wasn’t a drastically different team to the 2021/22 one that needed to navigate the relegation play-off to survive.
Rather fittingly, ‘Klokani’ racked up the 5th lowest xGF, relying on some top notch finishing. Granted, the first 4 matchups of the championship group (totalling a frankly pathetic 1,58 xGF) did most of the damage, but even outside of it, Bohemka didn’t create enough chances to “deserve” one goal on seven other occasions, turning in a total of 20 below-average shifts xGF-wise. This warranted a Top 4 placement merely because both Slovácko and Olomouc were somehow even worse at this (21), surely an anomaly.
Generally, you could say “show me a cinderella run and I’ll show you an outlier” — like the 2nd worst xGA rate away from home (2,11 expected goals per) mysteriously coinciding with the 3rd best point-per-game rate (1,61).
Most valuable player (still on board)
per my MVP model reflecting traditional stats: David Puškáč (69th in F:LIGA)
per my positional models reflecting advanced stats: Jan Matoušek (CF)
per Statsbomb’s On-Ball Value (OBV) metric: Martin Dostál
I had already given up on Jan Matoušek, but that assessment always came with an asterisk: as long as he’s seen primarily as a winger operating fairly low by his earlier career standards, he’s going to be a frustrating miscast.
That was the case at Liberec throughout nearly the entire 2020-22 period when he lost almost all his glamour and fans alike. The narrative has changed at 2023 Bohemians, his permanent home now, where Matoušek duly reminded everyone of his previous strengths (nifty footwork while maintaining fantastic pace), generally recovering his light-footedness and cheekiness where he would previously lack explosiveness and confidence.
While I did consider his June national team call-up to be quite a reach, I’ve been especially impressed by Matoušek’s much improved work rate off the ball and teamwork — frequently cited as one main reason why he didn’t cut it at Eden — which is most likely why Šilhavý got drawn to him in the first place, too. Matoušek was often aggressive and engaged, with his rate of deep completions (passes/crosses in/to penalty area) falling in the same neighbourhood of those of Černý or Chytil, two noted link-up specialists.
Considering his Bohemians stint only, Matoušek was on pace for 19 goals over the course of the whole regular season (0,65 goals per game), which is hardly a realistic goal. But I believe it’s more likely than not that he returns as a 10+ goalscorer for the first time since his Příbram breakout (2018/19).
Chip on the shoulder
who’s got something to particularly prove — either to himself, fans or the coach
I’ve been known to have a bit of a beef with Daniel Köstl, with my CB model — absolutely rigged at that! — nodding along in three of the four years of Köstl qualifying as a FORTUNA:LIGA regular. With the sole exception of 2020/21 when he inexplicably crushed it on just about all fronts (ultimately landing in 81,8 percentile), he’s never climbed over 27,6 pct bar, getting particularly tanked by his limited mobility, awareness and duel behaviour.
This past season, Köstl acted as a centre back for 1610 top flight minutes, and just to be clear, he did fuck all to disperse the poor reputation in that substantial space. Winning a measly 14/27 defensive duels in danger areas (51,9% success rate compared to 69,1% posted by his teammate Antonín Křapka), Köstl was particularly prone to falling asleep while defending (on average nearly once every game) and didn’t even carry the ball up high as much as he used to. He was a huge drag in his own back end once more.
Enter Daniel Köstl the Wingback™.
Swiftly earning (only a slightly ironic) “Vršovický Cafu” nickname, Köstl looked like he was on coke for most of the spring — and I mean that as a compliment. He suddenly appeared to be less vulnerable in all kinds of duels, actually scoring high across all defensive metrics, and flashing some of his decent passing range on top of that. You may recall Köstl absolutely owning Doski in his big R25 Slovácko showcase — the game he also decided with possibly the single most important goal of the Europe-bound campaign — soon after he sunk Plzeň and bullied Chlumecký of Pardubice.
Now, why chip on the shoulder? Because he’s got to do it again as the designated starting RWB from the get go, which is a bit of a different thing; not to mention the currently available sample of 15,6 starts is darn small.
Inside the club’s off-season
with much thanks to @ogy_16, @MartMartinec, @Klokanzdolicku and @hlavinson for guiding me through the motions of Bohemians’ pre-season
Squad turnover
The ultimate goal was always to keep the band together for the UEFA adventure and Bohemians have mostly achieved that. Václav Drchal is the only member of the most used XI not to return for 2023/24, while there’s still a chance Martin Jedlička (13th) and Hronek (15th) do return in time for the trip to Norway. That’d be huge since Drchal, Hronek, Květ and Aleš Čermák have actually taken a substantial 34,5% of team goals with them.
Biggest upgrade
Judging by their deep pool of two legit no. 1s and one very respectable no. 2, Hradec Králové always represented the perfect pond to fish out a new custodian from. Pavol Bajza was, once again, the best shot stopper in the league (and my model’s best goalkeeper fullstop), so it’d be understandable he was off limits, but it’s worth remembering Michal Reichl kicked the season off very strongly and — as opposed to just about any other ousted starter — never really gave his coach a good reason to second-guess him.
Through October, he’d prevented 3,85 non-penalty goals and pulled off 7 high-danger saves, appearing to be a Top 6 custodian all told, before an unfortunate series of minor injuries gradually undermined his authority. Even then, he landed just behind the universally-desired Martin Jedlička in the overall percentile (65,2 vs 69,6), while offering a steady presence behind his defensive line. Jedlička doesn’t like to come off his line to do some damage control and always looks like conceding from afar, which is pretty close to the polar opposite of Reichl (whose passing range is inferior, for a change). Reichl vs Jedlička is therefore a wash. As for Valeš, well…
Biggest downgrade
Easily one of the most presently underrated forwards around, Václav Drchal leaves with a unique profile combining essential poacher and counter-attacking qualities, very much doubling down on his 2020/21 output in a much smaller sample. Back then already, the Mladá Boleslav loanee proved very adept at getting in the right positions and placing his shots on target; this season, he was once again above average in related metrics, but acting as a particular beast when it came to forcing dangerous turnovers — thus initiating attacks — and taking the ball upfield. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Drchal is now at Jablonec; the very team he helped to destroy via arguably his most complete performance of 2022/23 (a trio of goal contributions and two finished off counters, one through his work).
New kid on the block
Nope. None. Nada.
In 2021, I prematurely highlighted Adam Kadlec (b. 2003)… who then didn’t take the field even once. In 2022, I mentioned Vojtěch Novák (b. 2002) as one candidate to really stamp his foot after the ill-advised and ill-fated loan to Viktoria Žižkov… so the stamping took the form of a grand total of 25 mins. Along with Novák, I tipped Denis Vala (b. 2000) to take advantage of the departure of a fellow left centre back Jan Vondra… no action for him whatsoever. It was supposed to be the safe pick — and it still backfired.
This year’s U-23 candidates who are fundamentally Bohemians players (ie. not borrowed): Kadlec and Vala. Novák has, meanwhile, spent the whole summer in the treatment room. It’s all the freaking same, only worse…?!
With classes of players born in 2001-04 representing a virtual black hole at Bohemians, I went searching for answers and my consultants had a simple answer: the U-19s have been absent from the top flight since 2017-18, and even the younger boys get to face Sparta B rather than their A-level peers. Of course, those U-18/17 reserves of the big Prague clubs might actually be flush with Bohemians talent, as kids get routinely poached at a tender age.
That was the case of Jakub Hausman and František Herák who both left at 14 and climbed all the way up to Slavia U-19 ranks two years later. David Boháč (b. 2005) signed his first professional contract last year, shaking his hand with Tomáš Rosický. How could ‘Klokani’ possibly match this?
So yeah, for the first — and hopefully last — time I have literally no one to turn to in this section, since I can’t repeat any picks from previous years.
Looking ahead to 2023/24
Below is the team’s current(ish) depth chart with a maximum of 4 alternatives for one position. The depth chart is up to date as of July 13 and obviously subject to change since the transfer window is far from closed at the moment. Players highlighted in red are longterm absentees rather far from making a comeback, while players in italics are all-but-confirmed arrivals. Those likely to depart will be highlighted in the text below, as will some other depth options or changes occurring since the deadline. To add a little flavour, I’ve intuitively rated various positions/areas of the pitch — goal, right flank, left flank, central defence, central midfield, forward positions (incl. attacking midfielders) — on a simple scale consisting of 5 tiers, which is what the different shading (blue to red) represents.
Need left to be addressed
Bohemians have focused on adding to depth and experience at wide centre back (Matěj Hybš) and central midfield (Robert Hrubý), with Hybš also bringing some potential of acting as a deputizing wingback, but I’m still sorely missing a dynamic, versatile option for either wingback role, especially on the left. It’s one thing to go into a season with an ageing tandem when you simply just expect to fight off relegation, but it’s another world altogether when your ambition gets kicked up a notch or two by virtue of qualifying for Europe. I understand Bohemians can’t expect to stick around (they are heavy underdogs for their first playoff, let alone anything beyond that) and the cash is still hard to come by, but I firmly believe that, with some creativity and actual scouting, anything is possible.
What shouldn’t be possible is to conclude that Jan Kovařík and Martin Dostál are your likely first two choices for LWB (and Dostál the go-to solution once Köstl is needed in the back three again), especially after a season where Kovařík’s attacking game fell off the cliff (it was coming at 35) — his chance creation owed much to set pieces in 2021/22, as well, but the big change now occurred in the department of open play penalty area entries (from 1,78 to 1,15 per game) — and Dostál (soon turning 34) showed worrying signs of steep decline pretty much all across the board.
I think we shouldn’t be forgetting about Jan Shejbal, who does carry a potentially intriguing skillset to fix some of my issues with this tandem, but bank on a 29-year-old who’s proved healthy enough to take part in just 26 games across the past three seasons at your own peril. I rather wouldn’t.
Some random notes on the depth chart:
- Let’s get to the fun part first: Tomáš Necid is healthy and not looking too bad as a David Puškáč alternative, but there’s possibly a very different role for him in stock should the pre-season be any indication of what’s coming down the line. Due to the relative lack of centre back options (Jan Vondra and Ondřej Petrák did travel for the preparation camp in Slovenia but didn’t actually feature in any of the games while recovering from long injury lay-offs), Necid was curiously tried out in the middle of the back three — performing the “reverse Milan Škoda” — and didn’t fare poorly, with coach Veselý citing his strength in duels as one big reason.
- I don’t expect (m)any changes to the depth chart, as Bohemians cleverly took care of the business nice and early to be ready for Europe. Vala seems poised to stick around this time around, although his position in the team remains kinda awkward. On loan at Vlašim, he was deployed exclusively as a traditional right back, yet in Ďolíček he’s back to being something between left CB and left WB judging by the summer action.
- Josef Jindřišek is back for one more ride, and while my model had seen the unwavering legend as an above average CDM option well past his 40th birthday, the age-42 year could already be a step too far. He’s as positionally sound as ever but growing increasingly one-dimensional, left with almost no value in the attacking half (spare for ball recoveries).
- Here’s an interesting fact: despite wearing the Slavia, Jablonec or Ostrava colours and even suiting up for the senior national team twice, Robert Hrubý is up for his very first taste of club international football with Bohemians of all clubs. It is a well-deserved reward for the 29-year-old. I’m worried, however, it may only be that at this point — a reward. I’m saying this as someone who’d pumped Hrubý’s tires for years on end, but who you’re currently getting for your (largely isolated) double pivot is a midfielder who’s never had legs and may no longer have the needle-moving ability to make plays either. He suddenly looked ordinary in taking the ball upfield (his 2021/22 selling point) and only 7 attacking midfielders were generally contributing to chances/goals at a lower rate. It’s tricky to compare due to the huge discrepancy in sample size, but Michal Beran lands in 89,7 / 92,3 percentile in terms of deep completed passes / crosses respectively. Hrubý is at 48,7 / 20,5. Yikes.
- Last year, I was pretty vocal about not seeing much top flight upside on Ladislav Mužík and that was mostly confirmed by the (vastly limited) 2022/23 action. This year, I’m going to do the same with Matyáš Kozák who is, for me, another second-tier calibre addition to the CF crop. That’s the level he had one fantastic goalscoring run at, after all (with Sparta B in 2021/22), whereas in FORTUNA:LIGA, all he’s shown to date is an incredibly heavy first touch and consistent lack of ease in front of the goal. Let’s see if his inspired pre-season turns into anything of note.
- Finally, Bohemka is said to have some stern competition, but how great would it be to see Petr Hronek return on loan and reap the (UEFA) benefits of his 2022 autumn work? He’s very Lingr-esque in being a noted passenger in build-up and focusing on arriving to the box just in time to finish. There’s no need to stress ‘Klokani’ could really use this:
Roster battle to follow
With Jan Matoušek re-discovering his mojo, there’s little doubt he fills one of the spots just below/next to the centre forward. The question is: who’s the other guy? It effectively boils down to two names: Erik Prekop is this era’s incarnation of ex-Bohemians Lukáš Hartig — a decent point-getter who’s perhaps more famous for offering annoying presence that gets stuck in, dives, kicks your legs, draws an insane amount of set pieces close to the penalty area, pummels through no matter what — whereas Martin Hála offers a bit of the same (better ball carrier than anything else) in a considerably softer shell and with a pinch of vision that Prekop lacks.
I think the Slovak is more of a “Bohemians type” at this point — with the hard-nosed stuff carrying particular value if you’re as focused on sweeping up loose balls as Veselý is (top top winger at that) — but his 0,74 open play penalty area entries per game (second worst rate behind only Emil Tischler) are shocking even for a part-time wingback Prekop was.
Season forecast
The projection is based on team quality assessed by Elo rating system. The system optimally weighs past results, taking strength of schedule and home field advantage into consideration. Just like last year, the model is additionally fed by my personal assessment of off season changes, for better or worse, to account for what the model can’t capture. MOL Cup is also simulated. The probability of qualifying for UEFA competitions takes both the league and the cup into account. For a more technical explanation of how the model works, kindly head here.
Some overdue respect dished out above, though the model isn’t going overboard. Bohemians are projected to earn roughly 7 extra points compared to last summer’s forecast; sizeable increase that takes them up two spots. That still makes ‘Klokani’ a middle-of-the-road team and only an outside bet to return to Europe (last year’s chances, by the way: 2%), but I’m pretty sure the fans won’t mind one calm, mediocre season after the past four years that together made for a wild wild rollercoaster ride.
By the way, I asked Jakub to run a few thousand simulations in an alternate universe where Bohemians do indeed bring Hronek back on board, and ‘Klokani’ would suddenly land in Top 6 with an average haul of 44 points. Is that too much of a swing in Bohemka’s favour? I’ll let you be the judge.
Bold prediction
The track record: 0/2. Earned exactly double the points I predicted (48)
The prediction: David Puškáč will crawl over the 2000-minute mark for once
The rationale: When healthy, Puškáč is generally a safe bet to make at least some sort of an appearance (starting or off the bench), so simply counting the gaps between his individual performances should make for a decent indicator of how many major injuries, minor knocks, illnesses and whatnot he’s laboured through. Last term, he dropped out of the matchday squad on five separate occasions (four of them max. 2-game long!); a sad new career record. The year before it was three (one longer), in 2020/21 it was two (one longer) and his first full season at Bohemians was virtually a lost one.
That’s incredibly frustrating, resulting in last year’s sum of 1485 minutes somehow standing tall as his biggest portion earned within one campaign to date.
It’s bound to change.
With his competition up top getting less capable over the summer and a fired-up Matoušek ready to run off of him at any time, Bohemians arguably need Puškáč’s top notch hold-up play more than ever. So slot him in for at least 2000 minutes this time around. That still leaves some room for the obligatory injury, covering roughly 2/3s of the season, but it’s nevertheless more than 5 extra (vital) starts Bohemians would be getting out of him.
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