Rab C NesbittPrized possession is a great phrase. You can get obsessed with padding out stats and it’s dangerous. Russell Martin one who overplays at the back I feel at the expense of braver attacking football. I’ve already said I hope we don’t go down that route. There’s a balance to be had between playing good attacking football and bossing possession. That’s what maximises your chances of fans returning imo
“For me it’s a high energy, high intensity style of football. We want to be very proactive in the way we play, not passive in any way. I want the team to be attacking and to try to be dominant.
“Playing with an energy and a relentlessness is very difficult for the opposition and that’s the team we’re going to try to work to create here. The number one rule for all the best teams is to be the most hard-working team. We want to play with intensity, energy and physicality.
“It’s about effective football. It’s not about football for any aesthetic purpose.
“The football I believe in and I’ll coach at this club is the best football to play, to coach, to watch in my opinion and I’m pretty sure that’s universally accepted. The pragmatism side is making sure we’re very clear on what we’re doing and how we hurt the opposition and how we can manage their threats."
Chris Davies when he joined.
And that quote there (backed up by his post match against Walsall) is why I have so much faith in us succeeding under him.
But you are applying stats to singular event. Or applying them a particular team which goes against the norm. I am purely pointing out that possession based teams do statistically well in all three divisions and if Blues maintain high levels of possession we are more likely to go up than if we revert back to a style where we sit somewhere in the middle. Also it was more to say that Wrexham at 30% will struggle unless they improve ball retention.
I am also agreeing that having better players compared to the rest of the division naturally means a by-product is more of the football even if that is not by design and that is possible to create a way of playing i.e Swansea where you simply have the ball because of style desire but you don't have the players to make a difference either end.
For what it is worth on a single game like Walsall I think you can have too much of the ball and at times we can be braver in losing it if it means we try to create more goal scoring opportunities.
I think we largely agree. Suppose what I'm trying to say is possession on its own doesn't lead to goals, whereas shots, chance creation etc do, and that's why I put more faith in those stats as an indicator of where you'll be in the table. Agree on your last point though 100%.
SnoopAnd the more we see of that the better. We all winRab C NesbittPrized possession is a great phrase. You can get obsessed with padding out stats and it’s dangerous. Russell Martin one who overplays at the back I feel at the expense of braver attacking football. I’ve already said I hope we don’t go down that route. There’s a balance to be had between playing good attacking football and bossing possession. That’s what maximises your chances of fans returning imo
“For me it’s a high energy, high intensity style of football. We want to be very proactive in the way we play, not passive in any way. I want the team to be attacking and to try to be dominant.
“Playing with an energy and a relentlessness is very difficult for the opposition and that’s the team we’re going to try to work to create here. The number one rule for all the best teams is to be the most hard-working team. We want to play with intensity, energy and physicality.
“It’s about effective football. It’s not about football for any aesthetic purpose.
“The football I believe in and I’ll coach at this club is the best football to play, to coach, to watch in my opinion and I’m pretty sure that’s universally accepted. The pragmatism side is making sure we’re very clear on what we’re doing and how we hurt the opposition and how we can manage their threats."
Chris Davies when he joined.
The patterns of play were there against Walsall we just didn't make some of the right passes due to the team still understanding who should be doing what. The amount of times itawa or paik kept making runs into the box to overload the center backs, and the runs weren't picked out, were a good few times.
Also the fact Alfie may and Gardner-hickman kept being outbakk to put the final ball in didn't help as their final balls in were atrocious, but that's a different matter.
I thought Walsall were well organised and knew what they wanted to do while we had a team that had not played together before and wasn't well balanced.
They let us play around ineffectually for long periods.
It was pretty much the ideal performance from a weaker side from their point of view. Stay disciplined and don't chase too much, but also don't give away space on the edge of the area.
We are much better than that game.
What we do need to do is tighten up at the back. We've given away 3 very soft goals in 3 league games. While we've won each game we need to make them easier.
Teams are pretty well drilled and disciplined a long way down the league now - but playing defensive football is a lot easier. I don’t think anyone wants to
see the back five passing it around as infinitum and if ‘gerritforward’ translates as moving the ball quickly and playing through the opposition and up the pitch fine - same as having people who can carry the ball into space and get past the opposition.
We haven’t seen enough creative play opening up the opposition yet and we’ve been rather wasteful when we’ve had opportunities to create in the final third, particularly out wide. I don’t think our passing was anywhere near accurate enough let alone progressive/with pace the other night but it was a team unfamiliar with each other as plenty have said. I would hope the manager can improve things pretty quickly because he has been backed and this is exactly the job he has been brought into do.
I belive the completed passes was in the 80% rannge, trouble is if the 20% is your final ball then that's not so good.
Final balls haven't been great but I think a lot of that goes with a side till trying to gel. As the empathy developes player instinctively know how and where others will be. We are a bit telegraphed still.
Bottom line is I'd have took 10 points from 4 at the start.
Rab C NesbittSnoopAnd the more we see of that the better. We all winRab C NesbittPrized possession is a great phrase. You can get obsessed with padding out stats and it’s dangerous. Russell Martin one who overplays at the back I feel at the expense of braver attacking football. I’ve already said I hope we don’t go down that route. There’s a balance to be had between playing good attacking football and bossing possession. That’s what maximises your chances of fans returning imo
“For me it’s a high energy, high intensity style of football. We want to be very proactive in the way we play, not passive in any way. I want the team to be attacking and to try to be dominant.
“Playing with an energy and a relentlessness is very difficult for the opposition and that’s the team we’re going to try to work to create here. The number one rule for all the best teams is to be the most hard-working team. We want to play with intensity, energy and physicality.
“It’s about effective football. It’s not about football for any aesthetic purpose.
“The football I believe in and I’ll coach at this club is the best football to play, to coach, to watch in my opinion and I’m pretty sure that’s universally accepted. The pragmatism side is making sure we’re very clear on what we’re doing and how we hurt the opposition and how we can manage their threats."
Chris Davies when he joined.
Definitely, just need to keep getting better at it and it is going to be a great season.
This.
The one time we did something different, Klarer through to Thor who fed in May, we scored.
More of that and we'll be great this season
mjd2505Possession doesn't win you football matches, it's just a stylistic indicator at best.
The match against Wrexham will be tough. They're likely to be top of the league when we play them (they play this weekend vs Shrewsbury), they've got a very settled side and style and they're effective with it. It's honestly the one I'm most worried about in this next run in. We'll have to be better than we have been previously (in league and cup!) to beat them.
Thankfully we've got 2 weeks to prepare for it, a lot of the squad together in that time, and seemingly one of the most meticulous and hard working managers out there. I'm confident we will look better on that day.
It's also fair to say we've only played teams so far that we would expect to beat bar Fulham. Wrexham will be a bit different, and maybe we naturally play at a higher level in response to that. The next 5 games will be very telling of where we are right now, the first 5 we've probably come out looking rosier on paper than we are in reality.
I think there's a lot of truth in that we naturally play better with a full house.
Sam_Bam_BluenoseWith Wrexham round the corner, watched a podcast where they discussed how “efficient” Wrexham are.
24th in the league with the amount of possession they have in matches, 23rd for amount of touches in the opposition’s box and apparently one of the top scorers in the league and only conceding an average of 0.5 goals.
It’s definitely going to be interesting watching two different methodologies going at it in a few weeks time!
Albeit I don’t believe their low possession is sustainable for an entirety of a season, surely by odds you’re more likely to concede if you don’t have the ball!
We managed it for long enough under Rowett!
lets hope we dont get rowetted on the 16th
We managed a mid-table finish... They're not going to finish near the top with 30% possession all season.
Probably goes for every team in the world, it's more motivating for the players when there's more of an atmosphere