Percentage Football

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

Tikataka

The School of Science mate, The Holy Trinity had more triangles than pythagoras.

What we see now is The Appliance of Science.

 

[Shaun4658]

Under Moyes we played possession football, to an extent.

Under Martinez we play possession football, to a beautiful extent.

 

[Alec clelands forehead]

It's Xmas u know haven't u got any shopping to do

 

[Gwladys St. Glory]

Under Moyes we played possession football, to an extent.

No, no no and no...we played whatever the opp decided to let us play. Completely different than possession football.

 

[nigelcoyb]

The FA used to preach a sort of long ball game based on statistics with a whole generation buying in, I definitely remember Allardyce quoting it and before him Jimmy Hill on motd. I've just googled it and this was the guy:

"The Winning Formula: The Football Association Soccer Skills and Tactics, by Charles Hughes, which demonstrates with statistics that a majority of goals are scored within 5 passes of the ball."

I haven't read it but the "get it forward ..." mentality was gaining hold in the 70s with Liverpool being the example - long ball yard dogs they were killing off wingers and fellas who could dribble.

 

[Seamus Colemole]

No, no no and no...we played whatever the opp decided to let us play. Completely different than possession football.

I'd have thought kicking the ball up the pitch to a striker like we did unde Moyes fitted posessesion football in 2 ways :

first the further away from our goal the ball was the less chance of conceding, and second the closer to the oppositions goal the more chance of one of our players winning the ball and creating a scoring chance.

Its bollocks but you could easy say thats how we played a lot of the time.

 

[Gwladys St. Glory]

I'd have thought kicking the ball up the pitch to a striker like we did unde Moyes fitted posessesion football in 2 ways :

first the further away from our goal the ball was the less chance of conceding, and second the closer to the oppositions goal the more chance of one of our players winning the ball and creating a scoring chance.

Its bollocks but you could easy say thats how we played a lot of the time.

It's just like the percentage thing...depends on your take of the word. For me, what you've just described is percentage. It's all semantics but I do feel the focus was not to keep hold of the ball, otherwise we'd have never sat back all those countless times and just taken it in the sphincter like we did. When the ball's in the air, you're not in possession...IMO.

Nirvana lies somewhere in between and we'd be fairly close to it if Rom could judge his headers better and improve on holding it up. The latter is farther away unless we want to only hold it up for 2 seconds at the most, which I wouldn't mind. Trap, release and run...beam me up, Berty.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The opposition can't score if they don't have the ball.

 

[Lien]

The opposition can't score if they don't have the ball.

Precisely.

It's only pointless possession if it doesn't have a purpose. Passing the ball with a bit of pace means the opposition need to move about, and they need to move as a team. If just one player falls asleep for a second, then space can be created and providing our players are on the same page, you can create an opening.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Plus it's perhaps no coincidence that many of our goals are scored late on in games. Having the opposition chase the ball tires them out and creates space later.

 

[steken1]

It's getting it in the mixer.

Lash it in the box often enough and it'll eventually break to you for a chance where it matters.

Awful, Awful way to play the game. Also the least effective.

 

[Fensta]

I vaguely remember hearing about some professor type that did a study on football and discovered that more goals are scored from hoofing the ball into the box and seeing what happens, compared to passing it around. Hopeful crosses into the box had the highest percentage or something, hence percentage football.

 

[Ozdec]

It's getting it in the mixer.

Lash it in the box often enough and it'll eventually break to you for a chance where it matters.

Awful, Awful way to play the game. Also the least effective.

That is basically what Swansea's goal was. Ball put into the box - most of the times nothing will happen - defenders clears it or it goes out for goal kick - sometimes a corner or the keeper grabs it.

Sometimes though an attacking player will get a piece of it - sometimes it will be a great shot and other times like at Swansea it will be a scuffed hit which takes a deflection wrong-footing the keeper and in.

Keep lumping it into the box and hope that happens a couple of times a game. It is what Stoke did with Rory Delap and his long throws - more balls into the box more chance that something like that happens especially if you set up your team for that

 

[Jamo Martinez]

It's basically working things out from a mathematical point of view. If you haven't got the players to play good football you usually play percentage football whether you realise it or not.

It's basically saying 'if we get the ball here x amount of times there's a good chance this will happen'. For example, if you get the ball to your wingers they might beat the full back 50% of the time, and get a good cross in 50% of the time they do that. So if you move the ball wide there's a 25% chance there'll be a good ball into the box. 50% of the time your forward will get his head on it, and he'll score 50% of those headers. This is all very simplified, but basically some people would figure out from all this that if your wingers get the ball with a one on one run against a full back you'll score 6.25% of the time. Do this 20 times over the course of 90 minutes and you'll score at least once.

And if you play a long ball to a forward who has another man with him up there, there might be a 50% chance he'll win a flick on. Taking into account that one defender has been dragged out to win a header, the other forward has a 50% chance of winning the loose ball. Therefore a 25% chance you'll have the ball in their half.

There's also something called the POMO (Position of Maximal Opportunity), which is basically the opposition box. Stats say if you get the ball into the POMO enough times you're going to create chances from a certain percentage of them, whether that's by winning headers, defenders making mistakes etc.

In short it's what Sam Allardyce does, but it's different to just a long ball game, which is what most people think of when they hear 'percentage football'. All coaches use it in a way, just not as strictly.

I was actually enjoying that till midway through the second paragraph. Then it got to be too many numbers for my sore head.

 

[degsy]

We often here this term bandied around, but what exactly is it? What defines it?

Isn't all football, especially when trying to make something happen in the final 3rd a question of working out which choice, and which string of choices, is most likely to end up in getting you a goal?

Please discuss..

What it means today, to me, is the safe option, the moyes option, not the martinez sin miedo option.
and for that reason; i'm out.