You don’t need me to tell you that Saracens are incredibly formidable.

They’ve been the premier team in England for the last six or seven seasons and one of the top teams in Europe over the same time period. They have eight Lions in their squad – Billy Vunipola isn’t a Lion technically, but he was named in the squad pre-injury – and they have internationals everywhere. Sure, they have dodgier finances than Del Boy on meth and no one could ever accuse them of being likeable, but they are a fantastic example of how to build a club if you don’t have to worry about financial sustainability. That sounds like a dig at Saracens – and it is – but there are plenty of clubs that pour big money into their squads and don’t get anywhere near Saracens success.

It might sound a bit strange to think about it but Saracens first major bit of silverware – a Premiership title – came in 2011. Just eight years ago.

While they were there or thereabouts in the 90s and 2000s – and certainly spent a lot of money on big-name players during that time – it took the guts of 15 years to go from what was essentially a feeder club to the likes of Bath, Leicester, Wasps and Gloucester to a powerhouse of the game at home and abroad.

It was the arrival of Brendan Venter and his influx of South African talent that got them over the line, in my opinion. Forget about the “Saffacens” tag that came with it, Saracens spent money the right way. They are a model of good recruitment since 2009/2010. Every player they’ve bought in, bar a few, became a long term part of the club. Clubs like Wasps make big money signings like Wille Le Roux, Charles Piutau and guys like that but can’t retain them longer than one contract cycle. Saracens main strength, in my opinion, was signing guys for the long term and adding quality around them. When you look at that 2011 Premiership final, you can see the core of the squad that pushed them on over the last few years; Owen Farrell, Jamie George, Alex Goode, Richard Wigglesworth and David Strettle. They have been the backbone of Saracens success since – with Strettle popping out for 3 years to Clermont before returning – but they alone wouldn’t cut it.

Saracens signed players like Jacques Burger, Steve Borthwick, Kelly Brown, Schalk Brits, Neil De Kock, Ernst Joubert, Petrus Du Plessis, Jim Hamilton, Mouritz Botha, Brad Barritt and Marcelo Bosch right before (and right after) they became successful who all went on to be club legends.

Throw in smart domestic signings like the Vunipolas, Ashton, Hodgson, Lozowski, Lewington and others alongside quality investments like Michael Rhodes, Vincent Koch, Will Skelton, Shalk Burger, Sean Maitland and Liam Williams, and you have a chain of good recruitment decisions stretching over a few years. Those good recruitment decisions allowed new homegrown talents like Itoje, Kruis and Isiekwe the time and space they needed to slot in alongside the likes of Wigglesworth, Farrell, Goode and George, who themselves were eased into their roles by Saracens excellent recruitment.

That kind of recruitment and retention (almost more importantly) doesn’t come cheap and it’s a large factor in Saracens ongoing trouble with the salary cap and their own finances. Despite getting £48m worth of debt/loans converted into equity, they still managed to lose £4m last season. Paying the likes of Itoje, Farrell, the Vunipolas, Skelton, Koch, Kruis and Williams their full market value isn’t cheap but that’s the cost of their ongoing success.

Just looking at those names will give you an idea of the scale of the challenge awaiting Munster on Saturday. We are facing a team with an inexhaustible overdraft, a knack for good recruitment and with coaching and core player continuity stretching back for eight or nine years. To say that it won’t be easy is a comic understatement but I’m going to say it anyway – this won’t be easy.

Red Eye Report :: Saracens (N)

I’ve decided to change this up slightly. I’ll be assessing specific facets of the opposition’s set piece, defensive structure and other stuff in the Blood & Thunder Podcast – and here – so here I thought it would be cool to show where I rate the opposition (and Munster) as a whole in a European context as first choice units and then, depending on the how far away both Munster and the opposition are from what I would consider “full strength”, how the teams actually taking the field rate against each other.

S – Elite level
A – Top European Level
B – Good Domestic League Level
C – Average Domestic League Level
D – Poor Domestic League Level
E – Minor League Minnow 

European Champions Cup Semi-Final: Saracens vs Munster

Full Strength Red Eye Rating: Saracens (S) – Munster (A+)
Teamsheet Adjusted Red Eye Rating: Saracens (S) – Munster (A+)
Current European Cup Form Over Last 5 Games: Saracens (WWWWW) – Munster (WWWLW)

The Past

The semi-final of 2016/2017 has very little relevance to this game but I don’t think it’s off the wall to suggest that we’re in a better place this time around, despite the absence of Carbery and Earls.

Without Murray or Kleyn and with Stander barely recovered from an ankle injury, we looked short on quality and firepower on the day. The 26-10 loss against Saracens highlighted a few issues that we’ve spent the last two years trying to remedy.

Power and Passing

The biggest issue in that 2017 semi-final was a lack of big ball carriers. Stander wasn’t close to his best in that game – despite scoring our only try – and without him, we just seemed to run short of options time and again.

In the absence of heavy ball carrying in the narrow channels, you can often find a workaround by widening your attack and spreading the power around, so to speak except we didn’t have the passing ability to do that effectively either. Taute’s power and the pace of Zebo, Earls and Conway didn’t get into the game because the quality of our passing just wasn’t up to it. As a result, we got choked up by Saracens’ line speed and exposed our weaknesses to them.

This time around, it’s different.

Well – in theory, anyway.

Our passing is better, we have more power operators on the field than we had back then and we’ve got a team that knows how to play off transition ball – something we’re incredibly good at generating in the tackle, on the floor and off the lineout.

Those things will not be easy to generate against Saracens – and they say they have a remedy for it – but if we can get some of the turnover ball we’ve got this season, I think we’ll have a real chance here.

First, we have to look at how Saracens like to attack.

Most of their best work is done off the setpiece – lineout in particular – and we’ll be looking to run serious interference on most of their key targets.

Their favourite ball to work with is Itoje off the tail as lifted by Mako Vunipola.

Vunipola isn’t lifting in this instance – he didn’t play against Glasgow – but this is a perfect example of the type of ball that Saracens like to work with. Itoje takes it clean at the tail, #10 can hinge the ball onto Barritt and then use Billy Vunipola coming around the corner on second phase to narrow the defence and play around the outside to their back three operating in the trams.

The threat of Billy Vunipola is the key thing here. He’s as dangerous when he doesn’t get the ball as he is when he does. Last year against Leinster, Saracens looked slow and underpowered because, in my opinion, they lacked the presence that Billy Vunipola gives them with and without the ball, especially as that second phase hitter.

Here’s another good example of Saracens work off the lineout.

The jump target was Itoje at the tail, with a drop down to Spencer, who hit Barritt on the crash;

Vunipola hammered home the narrow pinch in midfield to create a dominant centre field ruck position and Saracens got the ball into the wide channel with Skelton and Wray running a double decoy to create the isolation on the edge for Barritt to hit.

It’s lightning quick ball mixed with accurate screening and decoy “choppers” to block Glasgow’s scramble. It’s very hard to defend and it’s classic Saracens off the lineout.

The key here is to prevent them from getting that throw straight to the tail and this is something that Munster have been very good at preventing so far this season. I think the lineout will be the key battle in this game.

That isn’t to say that Saracens can’t play ball on phase play. They can – especially off of any kind of kick return.

The key physical release options on this play were George and Wray on the flanks – Saracens two most mobile forwards – and they are often used on these kinds of plays, especially with Barritt and Lozowski in midfield. Barritt is a big hitter at inside centre and a vital defensive organiser, but he isn’t the quickest, especially after his recent ankle issues. Lozowski is a much quicker player – selected slightly out of position outside centre over the last few weeks and here – but he’s not a dynamic power runner so that means we’ll see George and, to a lesser extent, Wray operating on the outside edges of Saracens attack when their back three have been engaged under the high ball. That’s a vulnerability we might look to attack on kick transition, should we begin to get on top in the aerial battle.

In the aftermath of this carry, Saracens went back to their go-to phase structure;

Heavy pressure off the fringe through Itoje and Kruis, with Vunipola waiting on the next phase.

Vunipola’s carry on the above GIF is where Saracens will most fear the turnover threat of Beirne and O’Mahony and where they say they’ve got “a plan” to deal with them. I think it’ll be similar to Leinster’s plan for Beirne last season against Scarlets where they narrowed their attacking structure to give heavy support ruckers a chance to double team Beirne as the second man on the scene of the tackle or carried directly into him. I think Munster can align Beirne and O’Mahony slightly wider out in the defensive line to try and draw a looser structure from Saracens in these situations.

That will place a lot of pressure on O’Donoghue, Stander and Rory Scannell on these openside phases but it will give Beirne and O’Mahony a chance to hurt Saracens on these “bridging rucks”. Glasgow didn’t manage this for much of the game because they were attacking the rucks from the inside shoulder when they needed to be coming in from outside. You have to absorb Saracens wider attacks to give yourself a chance of hurting them once they come infield.

I’d look to attack their breakdown from the opposite side where the last ruck came from if they hit the channel outside our C/D defenders.

When Glasgow did this, they got a bit of success in the outer channels but couldn’t nail the finish on the turnovers.

Hit from the inside shoulder on short carries, outside shoulder on centre-field position. Both of these tactics attack a slight lack of speed on some of Saracens’ structure when Itoje has carried the ball in a previous phase.

Those actions are essentially attacking the up and down speed of six of Saracens’ eight forwards and looking to challenge the rucking ability of their outside backs and Lozowski in the wider channels.

If we can narrow Saracens up and negate them man for man, we might force them into kicking the ball a little more often than they might like.

The real battle though – 2037 words in – is the lineout.

Munster have selected three counter-jumpers in O’Mahony, O’Donoghue and Beirne in this pack. If you’re looking to take a weapon away from Saracens, it would be their ball to the tail.

As a lineout side, Saracens have one athletic jumper in Itoje, two heavy jumpers in Rhodes and Kruis, and one decent option jumper in Jackson Wray.

Saracens preferred ball is to the tail of the lineout, as it’s where they do their best work off the break and in their mauling strategies.

They have two primary options at the tail – Itoje and Wray, their quickest guys into the air.

Whether they’re mauling or breaking off the top, Saracens go for that tail ball because of the space it affords their primary ball carrier – Billy Vunipola.

For me, a lot of Saracens lineout strategy is informed by how they want to use Billy Vunipola off the lineout itself. Against Glasgow, Saracens kept Billy Vunipola in the lineout quite a bit as a lifter or tail of the maul option for his the powerful second phase option he gives them but they’ve used him as a midfield hit option on multiple occasions this season. I think how often Vunipola appears in midfield comes down to the availability of Mako Vunipola.

When they have Mako in the side, their second best carrier, in my opinion, you tend to see Billy used as a midfield option off the lineout with Mako offering that one-two punch on the second phase. Saracens bookend their lineout with props, as you’d expect, but they use their tighthead at the front of their attacking lineouts with Vunipola at the tail to keep him close to the action on the second phase.

A lot of Saracens lineout work could be described as “cut out”. Basically, that means they use a lot of decoy jumpers hopping out of the defensive line as feints before aligning their real pod to the point of the jump.

On shortened lineouts – their go-to when it comes to getting Billy Vunipola in midfield for that big hit up option – they tend to over focus on the tail with their feints.

On this instance, I really feel that Glasgow could have reacted quicker to this. The minute Itoje started running away from the middle, it signalled the collapse of any option outside the tail. It doesn’t matter that Wray ended up taking the ball because it’s not about the jumper, it’s about the location. Saracens want that tail ball to get both Vunipolas into the game and we have to stop it.

We’ll do that by choking down the front of the lineout. Essentially, this means planting O’Donoghue at the front of some lineouts in the initial part of the game to pressure that bailout option to Kruis. George is a good thrower – top class, in fact – but if we can get him looking towards the middle and tail where Beirne and O’Mahony will be prowling, we’ll be immediately affecting Saracens thinking.

If we choke off the front – with O’Donoghue and O’Mahony rotating here – and contest everything from the middle on back. We’ll get a read with their feints after a while – Kruis and Wray cutting out at the front to create space for their main man Itoje and Rhodes – but they’ll go with a few straight “race into the air” schemes in the initial going to see what our reaction is.

When we see Billy Vunipola/Michael Rhodes lining up in midfield, choking off the tail of the lineout and launching on the hookers trigger seems like a solid plan given how often Sarries use that location as a launch point. Remember, the more space they get at the lineout by hitting the tail position the wider they can position their big hitters to stretch our defence and look to hit us inside Chris Farrell with Williams/Maitland looking to come in against the grain.

If we can choke the lineout and force a few turnovers we’ll be able to limit the scope of Saracens attack and force defensive one on ones and look to attack the ball in the tackle and on the floor.

It won’t be easy like I said, but if we can disrupt the lineout as we have to other sides we can limit the scope of their attack we’ll be halfway to getting what we need from this game.

Don’t forget to breathe. We can do this.