Long Ball Football

[JoeMercer'sWay]

we had 66% possession in the 1st half, dont know the 2nd half stat.

Against Arsenal carling cup we had like 38% possession for the entire match, yes we won that game but in general terms there's a marked difference in how we played, we were far less open today compared to last week, yes we were more restrained going forward, but to me it's progress, and Gareth Barry, Zabba, De Jong, Tevez, Kompany, Given all had fantastic games, there was only 1 poor player in our team today, Robinho. If we'd played Bellamy from the start it would have been 4 or 5-0 in my opinion.

 

[foxy]

We played the long ball a lot under MH, the ball would be humphed up to Adebayor or Tevez in many cases.

It would be good to play possession foootball and keep the ball more. I thought we did that pretty well today, this will help us keep hold on to our leads. We are the 2nd smallest team in the prem so there is no point in playing the long ball, leave that to stoke and Bolton.

 

[Freestyler]

Were not a longball team and never have been, but under hughes i said it so many times, we just kept lumping it forward most of the game under hughes far to much, hence why adebayor became such a passenger and easily got fed up in games,

We played posession football under hughes a bit, but when things didn't work or we couldn't string a pass together the twatting up field was our only get out, today i can't recall us lumping it forward more then 3 times all game on the attack, was good to see.

 

[Project]

The stats disagree with you. 448 attempted passes - a record this season. 40% more passes than the Sunderland game. 86% pass completion rate - another record. 10% greater than the Sunderland game.

Looking at the unsuccessful passes over the past two games, it is incredible just how much of a difference there was. Almost no unsuccessful hoofs up the pitch today. Whereas the Sunderland game is littered with them.

Put short - when we get the ball down and play we look an outfit, be it under Hughes or Mancini. Hughes downfall was in not doing it enough and surrendering possession far too cheaply.

 

[bizzbo]

if you look closely, you can see that there isn't a single unsuccesful pass from inside our own third into the opponents third (in central areas, anyway). there are far more sideways passes in the opponents half, far more passes into the box or around the D. almost no long failed forwards passes from our own third until given started clearing it to the left touchline late on in the game. compared to the sunderland match they also show that we played much shorter passes on the left wing, I guess because a favourite tactic was to play it over the top to Bellamy (in the Sunderland game, there are lots of 20-50 yard passes down the left that were unsuccesful).

this is the most telling stat to me:

Today:
446 total passes
385 successful
61 unsuccessful

86% success rate

(Stoke 234 total, 68% successful)
City had 224 more successful passes! (or 70% of all successful passes)

vs Sunderland:
322 total
249 successful
73 unsuccessful

77% success rate

(Sunderland 224, 65% success)

city have 103 more successful passes... or 63% of all succesful passes

 

[Freestyler]

The stats disagree with you. 448 attempted passes - a record this season. 40% more passes than the Sunderland game. 86% pass completion rate - another record. 10% greater than the Sunderland game.

Looking at the unsuccessful passes over the past two games, it is incredible just how much of a difference there was. Almost no unsuccessful hoofs up the pitch today. Whereas the Sunderland game is littered with them.

Put short - when we get the ball down and play we look an outfit, be it under Hughes or Mancini. Hughes downfall was in not doing it enough and surrendering possession far too cheaply.

you can't argue with that, it's there to see.

On the floor is where we hurt teams, end of, we have the quality to take teams apart by keeping it on the deck and being patient.

 

[blumoonrisen]

What are you on about," its there too see..."?! the stats charts show completed passes... nothin bout it bein on the floor..!! ther was plenty of head tennis today, diff was the attacks were built up from midfield... nothin to do with keepin it on the ground....!
Is this the "lets all pretend we know what we talkin about" thread...?

 

[bizzbo]

What are you on about it shows everythin...?! the stats charts show completed passes... nothin bout it bein on the floor..!! ther was plenty of head tennis today, diff was the attacks were built up from midfield... nothin to do with keepin it on the ground....!
Is this the "lets all pretend we know what we talkin about" thread...?

it shows very very clearly, that there are no unsuccesful passes from our own third, into the opposition third, unlike the previous matches. you can play the ball 5, 10, 20, 30 yards in the air and it doesn't count as a 'long ball'.


anyway the chalkboards here show incomplete passes

but hey by you saying we built from midfield today, err, yeah, that's what I was saying as well. direct football is a better description of our style under Hughes. today was possession football.

I think we were just pointing out the differences for people who said they didn't really notice a change in style....

 

[bizzbo]

oh forget it..... I thought you'd misread my posts, but turns out I probably misread yours.

 

[be_unique]

fd