Possession

When we had tonnes of possession (and did nothing with it!) were whining about how we didn't use it well. Now we have less possession people are complaining! I think the answer is usually the best teams have the most possession but not always. Like tonight, for all their possession I'm not sure it really impacted the result. I am generally a fan of having more possession but im not certain it actually tells you much about the game or at least the actual levels of dominance.

 

Because the penalties are high if caught in possession.

 

I agree that having possession for the sake of it is pointless. It's also one of my biggest frustrations with modern day football. Keeping possession, going from side to side, one pass forward out of defence followed by another backwards again etc in order to create some space and an overload may be efficient but it's nowhere near as interesting as football of 20+ years ago. Even Manchester City, probably the best proponent of it in recent years are finding out this season that lacking a goal threat makes it meaningless. Anyone else find them boring to watch generally? The best example of that was v Leicester a few weeks ago when City dominated possession but got hammered 2-5. I'd much rather watch Leicester because they attack with real purpose.
Regarding us and Brentford last night, in the first half I was completely comfortable with Brentford's possession because the majority of it was in their own half and Pinnock and Jansson were never going to hurt us. Aside from the first few minutes I thought we coped with them comfortably.* But when you surrender the majority of possession you must use it well and not give what you do have away easily and we weren't good in possession yesterday. Attacking at pace (which I think is what VI wants) becomes much less effective if 80% of the time players are trying to pass the ball before they have it under control or force the first pass rather than seeking the right one - both of which I think we're doing atm. Chaplin in particular had me shouting at the TV screen last night because of that, albeit he wasn't the only one. Last night illustrated it well because of the quality of the opposition but we've been guilty of it in several other games too.
That's not to say I'm rubbishing the tactics or the team, I think we've improved recently and we look more secure and more threatening than we did in the early part of the season. I'm sure that the focus will be on improvement and if we can do that then we'll secure more possession because we won't give it away as regularly. Our good results since VI arrived (excluding Cardiff which was shocking imo) shouldn't disguise the fact that we're a work in progress and there's still a lot of progress to be made.

* Imo we should've got a point last night albeit it wouldn't have been deserved, leaving aside the obvious penalty. We went to sleep for their goal and forgot to do the basics - attack the ball.

 

I thought Brittain's cross to Frieser at the far post was an example of getting too giddy and releasing the cross too early. Frieser never had a chance to get on the end of it.

 

Completely agree, that was a good example. Great position and opportunity wasted through too much haste.

 

I get that but all I would say is without the ball you can't score and if you don't score you won't win!

 

To adapt an idiom, in football possession is nine tenths of f*ck all. It's about how you use the ball in the periods when you have it. We were very poor on that front last night and misplaced a ridiculous amount of passes.

 

Not too sure. It wasn't too a bad cross. Made to look a lot worse worse by the fact Frieser thought he could kung fu kick it in with his right foot.

 

I thought it was a great cross. It was the timing of the cross. I spotted something else about Mowatt's shot too. There were no Barnsley players other than Styles in the vicinity of the goal keeper. You'd think that players would anticipate rebounds or blocks.

 

I like to see my team have a 50% share of possession. Others are right that using the possession statistic alone can be a blunt instrument. Much depends upon the type and quality of possession that you have. Yesterday, Brentford forced us to react to the type of possession they had. It changed our shape from 3-4-3 to 5-2-3, and even the front 3 was a very deep front 3. When the opposition force your team to change its shape. it means that they are using possession to dominate the way that the game is being played, and in particular, the way that the opposition is playing the game. It is imposing your game style over the way that the opposition want to play. It meant that we often had no-one ahead of the ball when we won it back. No-one to pass to in order to retain possession. It meant that the ball was kicked long, into space. Much of our possession was simply kicked away. Even when the ball was in the goalkeepers hands, it was kicked long, to forwards who do not have the height to win that sort of ball. It was kicked away. Our 3-4-3 system is a blunt instrument. It is a return to the football of our past using players brought up to play a modern game.

I note that you have used the Leicester performance against Manchester City in support of your argument. I just wanted to point out a fundamental difference in the way that Leicester City organise their team. Leicester have pace. They have pace down the middle, and they have pace out wide. They keep that pace high, and the opposition must respect that pace because it is linked to a deadly ability to finish. They pass the ball into space, because they know that they have the pace to get there. They do not use the press because they do not want to waste their pace on chasing lost causes. We are not Leicester. We do not have pace. We do not have a player who can run half the length of the field and finish with deadly accuracy. We play the game in a different way, and in the way that we play the game, using the players at our disposal, possession is more important. I contrasted the way that we played at Brentford at the end of last season. We had only 38% of possession in that game, but much more of the game was played in their half, because we defended from the front with a press. Contrast that to the home game. We defended deep, and we defended in our half. We were poor because our tactic were wrong.

 

Should have had a go on the front foot and tried to force them into errors. People say look at last season. We have better players than last season.

 

I must’ve been watching a different game. The minute we started pressing more they started picking us off at the will.

If you put the best Barnsley side up against the best Brentford side & asked a pundit how it would end up I think most would say there 2 or 3 goals better than us.

Sometimes you have to accept that if a team better than you show up anything near their best then they beat you. This idea that just because we lose our tactics are wrong is nonsense. You might think your alternative gives us a better chance but from what I saw if we pressed higher up the pitch the odds are we’d have conceded a lot more than one goal.

We obviously bet Brentford on the last day of last season by pressing them but that was a nervous Brentford side that seemed to be in competition with West Brom to blow promotion. Also you aren’t going to press teams anywhere near as well with Woodrow leading the line instead of Brown.

 

There are some things that I agree with in your post, and some things I do not agree with. We never pressed Brentford throughout the game. You are correct that that is partly because we do not press as well when Woodrow is in the team. That is a big problem for us if we want to be the pressing team that the owners want us to be, and that is partly the reason that I chose to diagnose the problems, but am more reluctant to propose a solution. Jacob Brown used to work his socks off for us. He suited our system far better than he suits the system at Stoke, and that is why he mostly does not play.

The fact is that our players are currently a mish-mash. Currently, there is not a system that they do suit perfectly. January will soon be here. The question is this, do we trust VI and his 3-4-3 well enough to allow him to change the players to ones more suited to 3-4-3. I have made no secret of the fact that I do not like 3-4-3, and I do not think that I could ever like it. To me, is is very much against the ethos of the "Beautiful Game". But that is a decision for others. I do not make the decisions. I just comment on those decisions.

 

I think perhaps the reason we're losing possession so much is that they've been told to attack quickly and look for a killer pass early, rather than taking time and allowing the opposition to regroup. Trouble is the killer pass is rarely on.

 

It's far from kick and rush though.

 

You are right. We only do the kick bit.

 

That's a bit unfair with the effort the players have been putting in these last few weeks

 

Sorry, it was a joke, or it would have been had it been funny.

 

I didn't see the Brentford game, so I can't comment on the details of how the team set up and the merits of 3-4-3 in that instance,

What I do want to offer is that our owners/management have supposedly settled on a tactic of high press. From what I've seen of Ismaels set up prior to the Brentford game, the press is much more in the middle of the pitch with the front 3 being asked to put more energy into chasing balls over the top than pressurising defenders. Struber played a very high press that rarely led to us scoring from turnover possession, and Stendels was more of a Blitzkrieg all out offensive wave trusting defenders to deal with one on one duels.

Within those styles of press, the systems and formations are all massively different. Dating back to Patricks time, the intent was to have a settled system and approach that could be mirrored through the Academy allowing swifter transition to the first team.

We're going to be in a position again where a new coach wants to change personnel because they don't fit, rather than just try and improve the players we've got that suit a defined set system.

 

lol, ok mate