Every week watching the week's highlights you see horrendous centre half errors leading to soft goals. Did you see Villa vs Stevenage? There's a reason players are defenders; if they had more skills they would be playing further up the pitch. This is not just an Inness problem.
However much we all want to buy into Pep's glory play, has anyone actually worked out how bad defending is now at all levels of the game and whether or not playing out from the back at all costs is paying off? There was a lot to be said for 1-0 to the Arsenal. Is this the Emperor's new clothes of the modern game?
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I find it infuriating that so many goals are gifted away every week.
If you KNOW there is no one marking/pressing a player then fair enough, but these ridiculous passes across the face of the goal and to players facing the goal who don't know there is someone behind them are utterly ridiculous.
McG in our goal Saturday tried his best to help Lincoln.
Not as much as not leaving someone on the halfway line for a corner though.
It probably shows that it actually creates more opportunities at the other end in terms of possession turnover etc.
There are very few clubs in the professional game that won’t have access to every data point available to make these decisions.
It was a tight game with our team winning 2-1 and thankfully no mistakes playing this way but I am sure it will happen
I guess for individual teams, it probably only leads directly to a goal one to three times a season and the argument would be more goals are scored because of retaining possession and building out from the back, but I'm not convinced. Teams certainly look really stupid when they get it wrong.
I view playing out from the back the same way I did Zonal Marking for a decade+. You notice it when it goes wrong, but not when it's successful. And commentators point it out when it goes wrong because "that's not how we did it in my day." Stevie Brown still does this, for both zonal marking and playing out from the back. And you know where Brownie is every Saturday? Sat in the studio. I suspect there are numerous reasons for that, but one glaringly is that the way he wants to play football is antiquated up through the football league at this point.
Yes, playing out sometimes results in goals. But given we have far more scrutiny and statistical analysis in the game than ever before, we must deduce that all of the best teams in the world play this way because the control over the game it results in far outweighs the 1-2 goals per season that it concedes.
I think it feels more pronounced now because 1) It has tricked down and bubbled up to the English lower leagues, and 2) Because of a resurgence/revolution of the pressing game, you are seeing pressing team creates and capitalize on more mistakes. Sorry, and 3) you can see a lot more football a lot more easily now than you could 10, maybe five years ago.
Just think of recent Charlton teams: Pearcey, bless him, was atrocious on the ball, and by the end he was limited to passing it to his CB partner or the keeper. Inniss and Lavelle really stand out because they aren't comfortable with the ball at their feet. And the ones who make the more frequent mistakes aren't O'Connell or Ness or Clare or Sess, they're Inniss passing to the opposition or being caught with the ball at his feet.
There's a lot of good writing on this. I recommend Jonathan Wilson's "Inverting the Pyramid" and Michael Cox's writing over the last 15 years.
He also successfully converted Mascherano from a defensive midfielder to a centre half because he was comfortable on the ball and could pass well (an injury crisis in the Champions League prompted the move, but then he played there for 4 different managers).
It's a thing that's here to stay, same as 4-3-3 for all you 4-4-BLEEDIN-2! lot...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/01/04/do-teams-play-back-mistakes-often-lead-directly-goals/
Why do teams play out from the back when mistakes so often lead directly to goals?
Retaining possession, creating space and keeping distances tight are some of principles underpinning short passing in deep areas
By JJ Bull
4 January 2021 • 1:53pm
When teams play out from the back and make errors which lead to the opposition scoring, for some, a crime against football has been committed. Clear your lines!
Why would a goalkeeper pass sideways when he could rid his defence of danger with a swing of the boot? Why was the centre-back messing about with it near the corner flag? With hindsight this all seems so obvious: kick the ball far away and your team doesn't concede.
So, why is it that so many managers don't instruct their players to do that? Why do teams persist with playing out from the back? And why do they bother with it in the first place?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/01/04/do-teams-play-back-mistakes-often-lead-directly-goals/
They're all just fashions. 3rd division cloggers pissing around with it at the back, little lightweight non-tacklers getting in defenders' way at corners and zonal marking are all classic "it's good on paper" bollocks. Horses for courses and we're pit ponies not thoroughbreds.
Another problem at our level compared with Pepworld is that his defenders are comfortable on the ball and pass in front of the receiver to create some momentum, whereas ours are not comfortable and to avoid errors either pass directly to or even behind the receiver thus slowing the game right down and making it very tedious to watch.
At youth level, mistakes happen and that is the best time for them to happen, so they learn and think about what they might do next time.
I don't believe defenders should be hoofers who when in doubt kick it out. Next time you see a defender with the ball at their feet, don't just watch them being closed down, watch the movement of those infront of them. That is where most the issues are born from, lack of options or movement. Not defending every mistake of course.
In my opinion the great Johan Cruyff said it best 'In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker is the first defender'.
I think you're identifying a disconnect between the way we want to play and the players we have, and not a fault in a universal way football is played. Our problem is not, we want to play possession-based football. That suit O'Connell, probably Ness, Thomas, Fraser, Payne, Morgan, the wingers Miles, and Dobbo--who has made great strides in possession in tight spaces this season. Our problem is Lavelle and Inniss do not provide a good enough springboard to play out from the back, something the rest of the team, bar Stockley, is built to do.
I've said this elsewhere, but I think this is why we were prioritizing another CB going into the last few days of the Summer window. It's not because we don't have enough CBs, we do. It's because we don't have enough CBs who can play the way the rest of the team wants to play. The same is obviously true of CF, and even though I don't think Bonne was the best solution, we know that was something the club was looking to add in the window as well before it fell through.
Again, these are problems of our current squad, not of our approach.
And to talk about England for a moment, one thing England did very well was control that game and limit France's ability to take the game to them. France are a team that don't high press very much, and as such, they let England have the ball, and England were happy to keep it because when they had the ball, Mbappe and Dembele weren't running at them with it. England's moves didn't break down in the first or even middle third as much as they did the final third, where for a variety of reasons, including France crowding them in possession, they weren't able to create and capitalize on clear cut chances.
Problem with your take on the England first half is that we were not able to utilise our forward attacking strengths because we were content to try to contain the French despite being a goal down. We wasted 30m of the game pissing about at the back instead of going for the French in their weakest area, their defence.
In Football
News Reporter
IN football, possession is supposedly nine-tenths of the law – but nobody told high-flying Walsall boss Mat Sadler.
In a reassuring antidote to Pepball – pretentious playing out from the back with defenders who can’t pass the salt – Sadler’s Saddlers are top of League Two despite having the second-worst possession stats in the division.
Pep Guardiola orders Manchester City to play out from the back because he’s got the most expensive defence in the Premier League.
And Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca threatens to drop his goalkeepers if they launch clearances long-distance, but after their £1billion spree he can afford to preach patience.
So let’s hear it for Walsall – only 43 percent possession over the whole season, but who wants to nip out for a hot dog and come back to find your team still haven’t even made it over the halfway line?
Tippy-tappy tiki-taka is fine for players who would look comfortable in Judy Garland’s red shoes, but for lower division players in hobnail boots, pussyfooting around in your own box is asking for trouble.
Walsall’s home date with Grimsby today may not be as decorative as figure skating, but if you want pretty patterns, try that Laura Ashley catalogue on the coffee table.
And that 43 percent figure is nothing to be ashamed of when you are top of the league.
“It’s probably not an impressive stat if you are Pep,” laughed Sadler. “And it’s not something that I go looking for, or that we set out to do as a club.
“But we have a style and a way that we want to play, a system that suits our players.
“In certain games we have more of the ball, but in our division the pitches are not always conducive to playing out from the back. You can literally come unstuck.
“It’s about identity – we have been very settled in the way we want to play and I don’t care what the stats say. I want us to be a high-energy team that plays in the opposition half.
“Now we are a side with a clear identity.”
Sadler, 40, clocked up 574 appearances across all four divisions as an honest defender and he has just passed his century of games in his first managerial post.
Everyone who drives from London to Manchester goes past the Bescot Stadium, but these days the Saddlers are worth a pit-stop.
They have the oldest strike force in English football – 35-year-old centre-forward Jamille Matt and ‘Uncle’ Albert Adomah, still giving full-backs a guided tour of the final third at 37 after 730 games for eight clubs, leading the line in Sadler’s 3-5-2 formation.
“They say you can’t buy experience and they are incredible professionals,” said Sadler.
“But most importantly, they are fantastic people who set the bar high for standards that everyone aspires to follow. Our captain, Donervon Daniels, does exactly the same.
“And yet we started the season with the youngest team in the division. Our game is based on athleticism and running hard – age doesn’t matter.”
Sadler oversaw a club-record nine consecutive wins either side of Christmas and, after a decade of drift since Walsall’s first-ever trip to Wembley in 2015 and missing out on automatic promotion to the Championship by a point the following year, they are on the move again.
“We’re not looking down, we’re looking up,” added Sadler. “The club is in a much better place than it was and we’re in a fantastic position with 12 games to go, but this division is brutal and it’s relentless.
“For a generation of our fans, it’s not been a fantastic period with much to shout about, so I’m proud that we have given them hope.”