2024/25 mid-season review: FK Pardubice

Tomas Danicek
7 min readJan 17, 2025

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source: fkpardubice.cz

Sporting directors — or managers, in this particular case — do not tend to be relieved of their duties three months after the start of a season. It’s even rarer in the case of a seasoned official who had just appointed his longtime favourite as a head coach — headhunted at two separate points in 2022 — only to leave with him hand-in-hand just 12 rounds into the campaign. Yet, that’s the story of Martin Shejbal — and of 2024/25 FK Pardubice. As the club waved a heartfelt goodbye to the man who took care of the grass, small kids as well as senior goalkeepers over the two decades in Pardubice, the transition to a data-driven, progressive club was finally complete. And the early returns of the Jakub Dobiáš-David Střihavka partnership steering the wheel have certainly been promising…

The outlook

The forecast was much more indecisive before the season. Now, after knocking a combined 26,4 projected points off their forecasts, the model is basically set on its bottom three. Only three more teams are given at least some likelihood of going down — and it’s a negligible 2% chance in all of those cases. Even just moving up to 13th, ie. avoiding the relegation play-off, is a dwindling prospect at this point (15%) and you can forget about the middle group altogether (1%). In July, Pardubice, Dukla and Budějovice put together a 44% chance of landing in the safe mid-table waters. Now it’s 1%. That one percent is entirely down to Pardubice who are six points behind Teplice in real life, as well as six points behind their original forecast.

Shouldn’t the change of guards matter more? On the face of it, yes. Any team going from a 0.58 point-per-game pace (good for 17.5 regular-season points) to a 1.14 point-per-game pace (good for 34 regular-season points) arguably deserves far more respect. But it’s also worth pointing out that the switch occurred over just 7 games, and it’s always advisable not to put too many eggs in a basket where 4/6s of the remaining home schedule are made up of visits by 24/25 UEFA competition participants. It will get tough.

The big question

Was the immediate defensive turnaround a sign of better days, or just a blip?

The point above about the strength of schedule, which has indeed been the softest of all per Kuba’s model, isn’t any knock on what Střihavka has done in the little space, mind. There are no easy points to bank courtesy of České Budějovice left on the table, but apart from the one Dynamo matchup, Střihavka’s line-up of opponents hardly meant any sort of a free pass. None of Liberec, Olomouc, Karviná, Bohemians, Slovácko and Jablonec constitute a particularly easy test; even when some are underperforming point-wise, they mostly remain to be stingy, hard-to-play-against teams.

Yet, here we have Pardubice, coming out of the last 5 autumn rounds with a remarkably Top 4 defence per xGA average, and a top-half defence over the last 10. At the point Saňák left the helm, Pardubice’s rolling 5-game xGA was at the season-worst 1.74; within the first 5 games, Střihavka took it to the season-best 0.65. No, this is not a by-product of fortune or schedule composition. Just as swiftly, Pardubice have also gone from one of the most passive outfits in the league (on average allowing their opponents to exchange 11.22 passes before trying to intercept) to one of the more intense ones (7.86 passes; which would rank a close 4th if sustained).

Střihavka didn’t really fix the offence, and that must be next up on the agenda, but he has managed to struck a delicate balance instantly, which is a fantastic departure point for a team in transition. Within a mere month, Pardubice posted four straight positive xG performances, by which they not only doubled the amount of xG triumph Saňák registered in 12 tries, but also let everyone forget Radek Kováč who topped out at 3 straight inside the regular season (the post season was his big show, but that has its specifics).

raw data source: wyscout.com

The wild card

The slightly altered flanks to continue their slow awakening

Over the first 10 rounds, Pardubice generated 0.36 xGF from positional attacks led down the left-hand side. That is a sum, not average. They got utterly shut down on six occasions. In the 9 games since, with Eldar Šehić now accustomed to new surroundings, the zero has never popped up and they’ve totalled 1.32 xGF. Still not great, but at least not pathetic either.

The right-hand side, meanwhile? Offensively illuminated by the recovered Vojtěch Sychra, but a complete black hole defensively for a change. There was a six-game stretch in the middle of the autumn where Pardubice allowed a total of 3.7 xG solely from positional attacks through that channel. Dominik Mareš, whose role grew with time but turned into a contract elsewhere, then looked like a potential part of the solution, but the end result is still horrendous. Dynamo were forced to play Emil Tischler or Michal bloody Hubínek at right back, and even their average right-sided xGA read 0.23; a staggering 0.12 xGA — or one decent chance a game — lower.

All put together, the wide channels suffocated Pardubice big time. No other 2024/25 team controlled less than 30% of the xG flow down one of the three channels; like Pardubice did this autumn on the left (28%), as well as last autumn on both sides (28% and 29% respectively). It’s a longstanding issue.

Have Pardubice done enough to fix this issue? Neither I nor you can be sure, with all of Jan Trédl, Lukáš Fila and Ryan Mahuta potentially coming to fix it and combining for 51 Czech top flight minutes to date (courtesy of Fila). But it’s good to see Pardubice realizing the problem and addressing it.

source: youtube.com

MVP race

Pole position: Louis Lurvink — 416,7 pts — ranked 64th league-wide
Prominent chaser: Eldar Šehić — 333,7 pts — ranked 95th

I must admit, Jason Noslin and Louis Lurvink were initially rather indistinguishable to me. But as the season grew older, it became clear the latter is the guy actually stirring the drink at the back. Noslin reads the game marginally better for my money, but Lurvink is more sound positionally and in 1v1 situations. Moreover, his MVP case has largely been — and will likely continue to be — built under the tutelage of Střihavka. In those 7 games, Lurvink prevented danger 12 times, including putting in his two best show-stopping performances in the first two matches under the new coach. While Noslin — still 4th most valuable Pardubice player per model — soon torpedoed his case by a disastrous effort vs Olomouc, his frequent partner was the biggest reason Střihavka promptly cut the losing streak at 4 games, and then proceeded to celebrate in his home debut.

While the leader is pretty safe for now, the “prominent chaser” tag is up for grabs following the departure of Tomáš Zlatohlávek. Bizarrely branded “not even a clear-cut starter at Pardubice” by former journalist Jan Vacek, Zlatohlávek — appearing in 77,6% of all minutes he was available for — absolutely was that. And a proper star, too. With 5 points and four of them vital, he was on pace for setting a new career high (9), delivering a team-leading 4,03 expected points added per CSfotbal’s unique model.

Take those off the board, and Pardubice are suddenly below Dukla.

In total, Zlatohlávek chipped in to 7 goals scored, and only Sychra and Šehić were more prolific (wasted) chance creators on a per-game basis. Considering how low he was sometimes deployed, and how much improved his work rate seemed, this is by all means a tremendous loss for Střihavka to stomach. It will be interesting to learn who steps into his shoes, since there are now roughly five options, and if it’s Vojtěch Patrák moving back to the centre as a result, could he finally get his 2024/25 on track there, after averaging an underwhelming 4.8 mark from Deník Sport?

Bold prediction temperature check

Prediction: Ladislav Krobot will bag all his 24/25 goals before the break
Status:
Dead in the water

Yeah, this was far too bold for me to score on. Krobot’s first-half : second-half ratio read 10:1 before the season… now it reads 13:1 after three more goals scored, all after the break. Only one was bagged off the bench, so I can claim a partial victory on this detail, but it’s really only a small part.

Anyway, did you remember to bow to Pardubice’s top flight record scorer?!

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Tomas Danicek
Tomas Danicek

Written by Tomas Danicek

One independent Czech writer’s views on Czech football. Simple as that really. Also to be found on X @czechfooty.

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