Other club football

Stat?

You don't have to plan to surrender possession. In the big boys league, big boys will come and take your ball off you. The only really pertinent question is 'what are you going to do, when they do?'.

The likes of moaninho have based not inconsiderable long term success at multiple clubs on a solid low block defence, and not treating possession as king. In fact there are relatively few who do. Although it's very much a sliding scale. No teams have all of the ball. At the high end you go from the likes of spurs, who win fuck all with it, and manshitty who have the best coach and squad in the world. A team with players capable of dominating the ball have a choice to make - do you put it under risk trying to score a lot, or do you protect it and probe for your opportunities. If you can't dominate the ball, you are almost certainly going to try to quickly score before the superior opposition are set, and can use a turnover to expose you.

It's all very well saying a team needs to have more possession of the ball..but the other side also have their own ideas, and may have better players. You can't just send a memo that you want more of the ball and football aligns to your wishes. Things have to be done to stop other teams taking the ball off you, or keeping it themselves....but none of these decisions/strategies come without risk.

I personally prefer to defend high, and thus keep threat away from the goal...but that leaves a lot of space behind to exploit...it needs constant pressure on the ball - and thus better players who can constantly press the opposition all over the park. Leave a good player too much time on the ball and they can hurt you over forty or fifty yards. It's easier to defend deep. You are reducing the space to get at you behind, and with the right structure and organisation you can keep the distances tight, and just shuffle your positions to hand off a lot of the running. So you no longer have to have players who can outrun the opposition for 100 minutes.

Now this is transparently obvious stuff, but I do feel like sometimes these things need to be pointed out just to make sure that we understand where we are. Where we are is that we largely have a squad that hasn't trained up to the level yet. Even if some of them have a lot of ability...but as I've said before. If you really want to build a successful side at the level you have to look at that off the ball stuff (probably 99% more than the on the ball stuff). Football is not just what a player can do with the ball.

I was just saying to someone before kickoff. The only result I could really get behind would be a mass brawl, and points deductions all round.