Playing Out From The Back

Apart from maybe a handful of teams right at the very top, fans seem to universally detest the current football trend of playing out from the back. And with some reason.

If you sit through the whole EFL highlights show, you'll invariably see at least a couple of goals conceded as a result of catastrophic fannying around at the back.

I get the supposed advantage - retaining possession. Passing through midfield and "going through the thirds" etc (rolling eyes smiley). Scoring after 38 touches by half a dozen players passing it around. But how often does it work out? I recall a statistic from GT time that the highest proportion of goals came after only 2 or 3 touches from a restart. It would be very interesting to see what those statistics are today. Any info @reids?

I was watching especially in Saturday's game, where Hamer was belting it long quite regularly, how often it worked out favourably for us and the answer was, most of the time. Even where we didn't immediately win possession, we won the second ball or a throw in a good position etc. As others have noted, for some reason VI rushed out and berated him for such abuse of the niceties of footballing convention.

When we came up through the divisions, we shocked football with our flouting of sacred conventions. We were accused of hoofing and being unsophisticated. Kick and rush they said. That wasn't fair. But we know how exciting it was to watch and we know the results it produced.

Just as other footballing fashions have come and gone, such as the wingless wonders etc, I think the time is past ripe for some team to come along with a philosophy of whack it towards either corner flag and have a fast winger each side to chase it down, put over a cross and a big centre forward running down the middle to bundle it in.

 

For me it is about mixing things up so you are not predictable .
Playing out from the back is all well and good if you have the cream of the crop player wise
attempting this . Teams outside the top 6 in the Premiership don't have this luxury .
Watching Southampton yesterday I can only fear for them next season if they go up and continue
with their high risk policy of playing out especially if they can't hit a barn door when they do beat the press !

 

Yup, agree entirely. I said as much on the post-match thread I think.

We've got to a point where every head coach wants to emulate Man City or Arsenal or prime Barcelona but without players with the technical levels to pull it off. And as a fan watching I think it's a fooking dire watch. I don't mind a bit of watchful possession every now and again, especially after scoring a goal where you just want to make the opposition run themselves into the ground for a bit. But the tippy tappy keeping the ball at all costs, even if it means turning a set piece deep in the opposition half into a ball at your own keeper's feet three passes later, is awful. And it doesn't help Val's particular brand of it (and probably some of his immediate predecessors too) has been too slow both on the ball and then in transition trying to turn safe defensive possession into attacking threat. It just creates tedious spells in games where nothing happens. Frankly at the Vic we've had enough crap passing out from the back jammed into 2-3 seasons to last a lifetime. It's no wonder the fans get vocally angry about it.

For me it's just another thing to add to the pile of 'examples of where football forgot it's supposed to be entertainment' along with VAR, stewards searching like the old bill, silly kick off times, stoppages for everything followed by massive injury time added on etc etc.

 

I’m with you on this, but it’ll need a name in a foreign language to make it sound sophisticated. I don’t speak Spanish, but Google translate tells me Pezuña Larga is Spanish for “long hoof.”

 

Hahaha well Spanish for an animal leg, like a donkey or a horse is una pata. So a good name would be the 'pataso' style. Give it a PATASO muchacho!

 

Great! Give something an interesting foreign name most people don’t understand and it instantly sounds more sophisticated. A bit like cafetière.

Pataso rules!

 

I watched that game off and on and I actually enjoyed Southamptons style (maybe I wouldn’t as a fan). I found it refreshing that one of the less heralded teams was beating one of the big boys at their own game, keeping possession. How dare they! The commentators even admired it when they could stop idolising Liverpools kids for a minute.
I think I’d enjoy watching that week in week out, and maybe accept it would cost the odd goal. Of course if Salah and co had been playing they’d probably have been torn apart, but would like to think Martin would adapt accordingly.

 

Good points

 

Yes that's fair to say as I seem to recall fans of teams Martin have been at have expressed frustration at his inflexibility in his tactics, and with Southampton dropping back a bit from the race for promotion just when Leicester even are wobbling, that must be annoying. Ultimately I just felt they had a goal in them last night, and went toe to toe with Liverpool (youth) which you wouldn't often see at Anfield especially from a lower league team, and I found that refreshing. I really doubt we'd try that and if we did, it would be a disaster anyway with the current group.

 

You can see why coaches adopt it. The accepted orthodoxy of modern football is that hoofing it just means losing possession leading to dangerous possession for the other team.

The problem for me is it seems to nullify the players’ footballing instincts. It’s a common enough situation to be chasing the game in the last ten minutes. We simply don’t have a clue how to put a team under simple pressure of bombardment, of making things happen with an overload.

It should be pretty obvious that teams need to be capable of doing it all, playing a possession game, a press or playing football in its most simplistic form, a ruck over what was once a pig’s bladder encased in leather.

 

Was intrigued so crunched the stats from the PL/Champ/League 1/League 2 comparing the average amount of possession compared to the goal difference of each team, whilst not a perfect methodology it's good for a quick look and there does seem to be some correlation between possession and goal difference (aka success) with 0 GD being very close to 50% possession, so I can see why teams at all levels are trying to play out from the back (Watford are the dot next to the N in Wigan!)

Taylors quote came from one of the very first football analysts called Charles Reep, who watched thousands of games and notated various aspects of each game by hand (way back in the 1950s!). Reep and his team would later provide a small summary of the "ideal" footballing philosophy in how to create goals which included that quote by GT. Whilst Reep was very far ahead of his time in terms of stats and analysis (he even came up with a very early version of xG) there's always been a heavy debate as to whether he made some fundamental flaws in interpreting his data - but that being said a few teams and managers (namely Taylor + Bassett) had a lot of success in using his methods.

However the game has moved on so significantly since then it's hard to imagine a team managing to replicate that success in the modern game. With football now being a booming business the outlook has changed significantly. Teams lower down the pyramid want the best players and those best players/real difference makers can often be loans from the best PL clubs. But the game has evolved to the point that the likes of City/Arsenal/Liverpool don't want to send their youngsters to some league 2 cloggers - after all, how's that going to help them develop on the pitch to fit in with how City/Arsenal/Liverpool play?

So now teams lower down the pyramid are attempting to play more attractive football to get those good loanees. Look at Swansea for instance - they currently have players on loan from Arsenal (x2), Chelsea, Brighton, Newcastle - purely down to their playstyle being one that somewhat resembles theirs.

 

Fascinating. The graph gets me wondering. What are the likes of Arsenal, Leeds, Mansfield and Stevenage doing to achieve a goal difference much higher than their possession would predict? Conversely, what are Notts County, Exeter and Burnley doing that their goal difference is significantly lower than their possession would predict?

 

Why would there necessarily be any link between possession and goals ?

 

I've been wondering that, but it's a football question. Best ask someone who knows about football.

From a stats point of view, to put a figure on the correlation of the two variables would take some number crunching. By eye, I'd say the very large spread either side of the diagonal suggests there is only a weak link between the variables and that other factors are relevant - like the ability to finish off the chances you get, as suggested by @wfc4ever.

 

Who the phuck is the Mansfield manager and when can we poach him?

 

I put the question a few weeks ago to a former professional footballer "If you put a modern day tap it out from the back team against a Warnock 2010 4-4-2 direct and powerful team, who would win?". He reckoned it would all come down to if you had a ref from the modern era or one from 10 years ago.

Entertainment levels in modern football is definitely on the decline. Not every 0-0 is a bad game of course, but most games now are a snooze fest. Football used to be more fun when you had a clash of styles but everything is becoming copycat football now. It makes it a pretty dull spectacle.

 

Absolutely. And it's really in the past few seasons it's become rife. I remember that game where we drew 2-2 with Arsenal in the second coming of QSF and we really got at them as they tried to play it out from the back. They were doing the silly thing with goal kicks where you have two defenders either side of the 6yd box and I remember thinking it was ridiculous. I'm sure it was the first time we'd seen it and it put them under so much pressure and led to quite a few mistakes and chances for us, especially doing it right in front of the Rookery with the loud home crowd on at them.

Yet here we are within 5 years and every team's at it.

 

Well, you’ve killed my buzz really quickly.

 

Not sure about the good ones in all honesty. I think Notts County have possibly been unlucky, despite having a GD of just +3 and being 14th in the league they rank 3rd in the xG Difference table (with +11.33 xG). No such luck in the other numbers for Exeter + Burnley though, although you could obviously make a case for Burnley, despite their playstyle being regularly outclassed

 

Modern football sucks. I watched some of the end of season review videos from the 90s a while back and it was crappy pitches, hilarious goalkeeping and dodgy defending. But there was loads of goalmouth action and I remember the thrill of us needing a goal late on and repeatedly chucking it in the mixer with a couple of big lumps causing havoc whilst the opposition engaged in harem scarem defending.

I can accept that Guardiola's City are a technically superb team but I find them unbelievably dull to watch, scoring that same goal where they get into the space between the full backs and centre backs and square it for a tap in 50+ times a season. As people have said, watching crap teams try to do likewise is even worse.

Just to prove I'm not a complete dinosaur, I used to enjoy watching Guardiola's Barcelona as it was like art, watching three generational talents move the ball between them in tight spaces. But his current team is like a very well-oiled but mind numbing machine with all creative freedom stripped from it.

 

I’ve barely watched any PL football this season, but apparently the average goals per game is up to something like 3.2, which is amongst the highest it’s ever been and up from 2.85 last season.

So things like VAR aside, you could probably make an argument that football is more entertaining than ever.

But that’s the very elite level, most of the teams have the players to keep possession and play out from the back accordingly, we definitely don’t.

That then leads to players hiding and not wanting the ball, so it just ends up being possession for possessions sake, with little chance of that possession being at all threatening and more often than not the ball going backwards rather than forwards, the absolute antithesis of entertainment.

This is probably a very unpopular opinion, but I absolutely hated the Tika-take era Barcelona, yes they scored some amazing goals, but to me there was absolutely no fun in watching one team completely suffocate the other with endless possession, that isn’t entertainment to me, and I feel similarly about Man City. Unless you actually support that team I don’t see how you could find that fun to watch.

Entertainment to me is watching two teams taking it in turns to attack each other and not being scared to lose the ball, and it doesn’t really matter how that manifests itself in terms of play style, just move the ball quickly and try and get it in that rectangular thing.

Unfortunately at our level, due to the lower standard of player what we see most of the time is the exact opposite of that, players too scared to lose the ball but not good enough to do anything with it.

 

In my time of supporting the club we’ve gone from ultimate hoof-ball to ultimate back pass. There’s a time and place for both but its the lack of diversion that kills the entertainment and is affecting our performances.
The change in goal kick rule is the worst. What is the point in the defender taking a goal kick to pass to Hamer 2 ft away. Its so pointless. Theres no desire to win the headers or the 2nd balls and that is why we lose the battle.

 

Sheffield United's defence are to thank for that.

 

Agree about Man City, but I’ve overall enjoyed the premier league this season. Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal all attack with speed, 3 way title battle, and enough lower ranked teams who can give a bloody nose like Villa, Wolves, Brighton. Only the relegation zone is dull due to the poor bottom pair.

Conversely the Championship has been dull. Only Ipswich able to threaten the strong relegated trio.

 

Really?

I just checked the Prem table (I only generally pay attention to the league we are in). I had the full expectation of seeing the top 6 spots occupied by the Big 6. And what a shock, with the single exception of Chelsea, there they are. Same as every season. Same old, same old.

I skim the Prem results and occasionally look at MOTD, but my only real interest in it is watching bloody L*ton get humiliated.

 

Hear, hear. I think you’ve clearly articulated why many people are turning to lower division/non-league football for their entertainment and a better experience. I’ve long thought, from the games I’ve watched on TV, that the lower the level the more entertained I am. Once you get past the lower technical level you find the players are more honest and wholehearted, less cynical in trying to con the officials and in general the games are more exciting.

 

While I don’t disagree, this has been the case for years, hasn’t it?

 

A decade or two maybe but 30 years ago at least the smaller clubs had a real chance to survive in the top league and even finish in the top 6. the top 6 wasn't set in stone. Nowadays the gulf in quality between top and bottom is far more noticeable and other than the odd exception (AV this season?) the final league table can be pretty closely predicted at the start of the season. The quality of the football is vastly improved but it's all so much more predictable.

 

No, I was talking about the entertainment levels being greater the lower you go.

 

I'm ñot so sure about this because the amount of unforced errors will be greater .
I would also guess that 30 years ago people were saying the same thing about football not being as
good as it once was.
I can remember the late 70s early 80s being bored of Liverpool's dominance ditto Manure 90s/00s.
It is only now that I appreciate how good they were. The same will apply with Citeh when the football cycle turns once more and another team is dominant.

 

I would “of” thought that it was partly the number of unforced errors that made for greater entertainment!

Agree with the rest of the post though.