Proof is in the pudding. We are 2nd, Reading are 17th. And we played some lovely stuff around the pen area. We could have had 4 on another day.
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Earlier on Sky showed we have the lowest amount of passes in the league and are 22nd for possession, basically trying to make us look shite
Total passes and possession are meaningless statistics that show very little and is a lazy way of trying to look clever by using stats, QUALITY of possession (ie, where you pass the ball, touches in the opposition box) is a far more valuable metric than the amount of times the ball is passed around the back four
Rant over.
Proof is in the pudding. We are 2nd, Reading are 17th. And we played some lovely stuff around the pen area. We could have had 4 on another day.
Possesion stats are clearly bollox. wolves had over 70% “possession” v Sunderland on Saturday. Lot of good it did them. Also the stat that shows how much distance the players have run. You can run around like a lunatic for 90 mins, what does that prove?
A team in second place should never be the worst passers of the ball in the division though and it's a part of the game that we need to be better at - ironically, I though we passed it better than normal last night.
Football countered pass n move teams like the old Liverpool n later Bsrcrlona with athletism n drive. Loads of Norwegian types flooded the premier league. Erik Bakke ' Flo, fjortovdt, Risse, they went to the foreign leagues ,, they got done eventually by pep n ticki . tacka n variations there of. Football is cycles. Don't reckon the ball means as much these days as compared to an old team who would say the ball is everything and should be cherished.
I can see why people would argue that but I think Pep won over the Bayern fans with his style of play and the sacking of Ancellotti has highlighted that it's not a given that you would be successful at Bayern.
Pep is evolving in my opinion while Mourinho is standing still.
On Sunday it was an absolute masterclass of coaching in my opinion. He started with his usual 4-3-3 then observed that Matic and Herrera were doing man to man jobs on Silva and De Bruyne so he moved Sterling central to confuse Matic.
Second half Mourinho got to grips with that so what does Pep do, he takes off Jesus amd puts Silva as a false 9!
Nobody genuinely looking at stats uses such basic measures these days.
Things like pass maps, xgchain, passing quality models etc are much better
All about the XG now init!
What nonsense the media come up with. If you keep the ball and pass it around in your defensive-third you'll have 95% of the possession and never score. Last night we had 50% possession with EIGHT SHOTS ON TARGET to Reading's two. A couple of weeks ago it was said we get into the opponents' third and had more shots than virtually any other Championship team. The, 'footballstats,' w/site shows we are the most fouled team in our division.
StT.
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Why take 20 passes to reach the half way line..or something like that.
Don't see the point in getting offended what people have to say about our style.
It's direct. It's not hoof ball.. It's effective.
If we were low in the league we could argue that the stats were relevant, as it is we look to be staying top half of the table so **** the stats.
A decent possession side will punish you, tire you out as you chase shadows.
Some of the teams at our level attempt it and don't go nowhere.
What's the point of doing something and only being a little bit effective? We do what we do and it is effective. I'll take that.
The only stats that are meaningful are the number of goals you score.
The obsession with stats has crossed the Atlantic from wanky yanky sports
which are so dull that the stats became a talking point.
Barcelona were scarily good at it!
Don't think a well drilled team at this lower level will have too many nightmares against it....bar the odd game.
Wasn't readings passing that caused our problems last night it was the gap from attack to defence as we "pressed" higher up...They found a way through..
I prefer us the way we usually play.
Very relevant point.
Reading tried over playing from the back a number of times last night.
Between the goalkeeper and the two full backs they got into a mess on a number of occasions.
On another night we would have bagged a couple of goals from their mistakes.
They don't have the quality to play that way.
We aren't the worst passers though.
You could have 40 passes go to feet under no challenge and keep the ball and create nothing.
Or 9 passed, create 2 chances and lose the ball once.
The stat is, as the op says, meaningless unless it's contextualised, which it mostly isn't.
We create loads of chances, score goals and get shots in. You don't do that if you don't pass the ball EFFECTIVELY
Sport is funny these days, we seem to use stats for a benchmark on how good the team is
My daughter gets her stats from netball e.mailed to her the day after a game, she will often say " who cares about my pass stats being XX% and my shooting stats being XX when i have scored 27 out of the 40 goals scored " she has a point, but at training the coach goes through all the stats and as she plays GA or GS her goals scored must be the most important, but the coach will often say she needs to improve on this stat of that stat
have we lost sight of the real numbers in games
Pep is the best manager around.
I wasn't sure before. I thought he inherited one of the best Barcelona teams with the likes of Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. Then when to Bayern and had similar players, and these squads made his tactics look good.
But now he's at Man City he's achieving the same success with players that aren't quite as good as his previous squads, in my opinion. They obviously have world class like De Bruyne and Silva. But his full backs on Sunday were Walker and Delph. He clearly improves players and when they play the way he instructs them to, look how dominant they are. He's making Sterling the finished article. He's won me over basically.