Is possession overrated?
Huw Davies looks at the teams proving you can win at football without having the football, and asks if we even want short passing.
Apparently swearing isn’t cool any more.
I had a dilemma in how to introduce this column. It’s about clubs whose successful starts to the season have been underpinned by rejecting possession-based football; managers who got the memo about short passes but said, “Nah, we’re all right”. As a writer addressing a reader, I first have to sell that as something worth your time.
My dilemma was this: do I patiently set up the concept at the start, asking questions, probing subtly but insistently in the hope of getting through? Or do I take a punt and go direct, attempting to breach a sceptical reader’s defences by hitting them with the headline that I gave this piece on Google Docs, namely:
F**K POSSESSION
Rather than slinging that ambitious effort into your (in)box, I went with the tika-taka approach – less efficacious, perhaps, but also less likely to offend. Did I make the right call? I’m not so sure I did.
I’ve watched football for too many years, and I have long admired and enjoyed watching teams who keep the ball on the floor. Some will see that as a character flaw; others, as just an objectively correct statement. Pass, pass, pass. I love it.
Lately, though, as I’ve seen a seemingly increasing number of teams prioritise possession over penetration, I’ve started to question if this is really what I wanted. Any tactical system is boring when it’s badly implemented, but stale possession has, at times, become even more annoying to me than seeing a side lump the ball vaguely towards its target like our hero in Atari’s Paperboy (ask your… grandad?).
With this context, I’ve reminded myself that direct football isn’t just a viable tactic but a potentially effective one – and, importantly, popular with a lot of fans. In the EFL this season, half a dozen or more managers have shown that keeping the ball isn’t vital to winning matches, even if it can help your own career (more on that later). Is it these guys, rather than the tippy-tappers, who are really giving people what they want?
“Gerrit forward!”
Last month, the downwardly mobile Carlisle United recruited Mike Williamson from MK Dons with his philosophy of ‘pass first, ask questions later’. Williamson had reached the end of his extended honeymoon period in Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire’s leading honeymoon destination) when his side were dismantled by Crawley in last season’s League Two play-offs, before starting this campaign in iffy form, so despite his impressive managerial career to date with Gateshead and MK, the fans weren’t too sorry to see him go.
Yet some Carlisle fans seemed sorry to see him come. Williamson had been in Cumbria for less than a fortnight when his players were booed by some quarters of Brunton Park for passing backwards or sideways during a 2-0 defeat to Notts County. None of that fancy-Don nonsense around here, thank you. No doubt the two-goal deficit played its part in the huge boos at half-time, even though the new boss was only two and a half matches into his reign, because just a few days earlier Carlisle had turned a 2-1 lead into a 3-2 defeat at home to Grimsby – but even so, there was a clear impatience with his tactics.
It’s a bit of an open goal, this, but think how often in the stands you hear, “GET IT FORWARD” and then how often you hear, “SLOW IT DOWN”. The second request isn’t quite so common, is it? We tend to demand more direct play, not less of it. Instinctively, supporters want to see the ball as close as possible to the opposition’s goal – in it, ideally – so even advocates of progressive football will occasionally tap into their amygdala and shout that the mixer is right there and could do with having something put into it.
On the highlights for that Carlisle defeat to Grimsby, I heard a Mariners fan shout, “JUST CROSS IT!” when his team took a short corner at 2-2, even though the next touch was a cross. Exactly 2.6 seconds passed from the corner being taken to the cross being swung in. Grimsby’s players were simply creating a different angle, not wasting a set-piece, and they scored the winner from it. I’d like to think the fan felt a bit silly for his ultra-impatience, but I’m pretty sure he would’ve been crowing that he was right all along.
And, to be fair, he was right. Probing away outside the area has its uses, but getting the ball into the box forces the issue. I wouldn’t call this definitive due to the small sample size, but we can see a general pattern of passes into the box correlating with expected points won in League Two, whereas there’s less of a link between possession and expected points (though, again, we have to consider sample size and game state).
Besides, supporters’ perspectives matter. Imagine a 0-0 draw played on neutral territory between two teams of equal ability, or inability, where one side swings in a lot of centres that are headed clear and the other patiently passes the ball around the opposition area without opening up the defence. Neither team scores. Neither team creates many clear-cut chances. Which set of fans is happier with how the match went? It’s probably the more direct team’s supporters. Now, who felt more excited during the game? Definitely those same supporters.
Still, I couldn’t expect you to just accept my straw-match arguments, so let’s look at who’s doing a lot with a little this season.
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