Football Punditry (Part II)

So it's taken a while again after my last post where I meant to complete a sort of rant about the standard of punditry. I guess I'll just have to carry on where I left off. So, we were on the opening day of the season and I spoke about a few comments on a couple of games, particularly what was said by Alan Hansen. Watching the following day's action on Match of the Day 2, Hansen was at it again! It seems like a witch hunt against the poor sod thus far so I’d like to state that I’m sure many other pundits will be picked up on later and I don’t think Hansen is anywhere near the worst of the bunch (step forward Mr Shearer to claim that accolade). In the analysis of the Chelsea vs Hull game, attention turned to Hull’s performance and their pretty passing having displayed the match statistics (503 passes and 48% possession compared to Chelsea’s 552 and 52%) and despite being impressed, he was quick to dismiss its lack of effectiveness on the game. His exact words were “with Hull, their passing we’re gonna show here – it’s all in their own half. I mean, it’s actually very, very good…they keep the ball very, very well but you know, he's up on his own [referring to the Hull striker] no problem there. [next phase is shown] This is actually even better. The passing here, it’s like, I think it’s absolutely superb, but: they’re going back to where they started! You know, they’ve kept the ball exceptionally well but they’re not over the halfway line. [he then summarises] Well it’s all about goals. I mean it’s all very well passing, but you’ve gotta be a threat at the same time.” All this analysis shows is that Chelsea are a much better team than Hull and Hull understandably find it more difficult to pass through a quality side up the pitch. There’s no evidence that going long ball or direct would have yielded a better result, nor does this suggest that the pass-and-move football they showed wouldn’t reap greater rewards against a lesser quality side. In his defence, he did add at the end “they weren’t enough of a threat today, but the easier games will come.” However, the comments in general were a bit wide of the mark, and again missed the point. The aim of the game is to score goals; that is true, but keeping possession goes a long way to help with that. And the “it’s all about goals” stuff is where a lot of people go wrong. As I said before, things like this filter through to grassroots level and players get told the same thing – should it all be about goals there? Or should we be working out the best ways to work towards scoring goals rather than just trying to score them in any way we can? 

Since then there have been too many similar instances to keep track of. The main one that struck me was the post-match analysis after Liverpool's home defeat by Southampton. Several occasions were shown in the highlights where Liverpool lost possession well into their own half after being pressed high up the pitch by Southampton, including the game's only goal where Southampton forced Liverpool into conceding a corner after passing in near their own box. The comments from the punditry team (I believe Shearer and Hansen) were along the lines that they "shouldn't be messing about with it there" and should "just go long if they might lose it." Southampton got their tactics spot on in this game from what I saw in the highlights but there seemed to be little mention of this compared to supposedly 'sloppy' passing from the home side. Really this is a teething problem that sides attempting to play a patient passing game encounter. It's not so much that the players are not good enough on the ball as the opposition team reading and anticipating the future positions and movement of the ball quicker. If one player has the ball and should have two options, the pressing side will close off the best angles to make passes to which mean that the team-mates of the man in possession will receive it under pressure or be forced to retreat to receive it in an uncomfortable position which in turn compromises the positions of other team-mates and the progression of play. Ultimately the end result is usually the opposition intercepting or the team in possession inadvertently playing into touch. This is NOT sloppy passing where a player forgets to think or it fails to fully register in his mind where his team-mate is before making the pass, or worse 'messing around with the ball'. There is nothing to suggest going long when under pressure would be a better option other than that the ball wouldn't immediately be lost in a dangerous area, and the players further up the pitch are more likely to have taken up positions which would help their effectiveness when the ball does move into midfield and then into the final third and having to react to a long ball would sort of be reverting to some sort of emergency status. It's hard to say either way how a team would have fared in one game if they didn't pass the ball around in their own half so much, such are the complications of football and tactics. 

In the same show Crystal Palace were criticised for their passing game which led to some cheap concessions of possession in their 2-0 defeat to Swansea. The reductive verdict from Hansen was something like: "if you can't pass the ball, don't do it, simple." - maybe true in terms of the main thrust of the argument, but how do you then get better at passing the ball? If a struggling side in a division attempts to play neat football, it is true that they will find it difficult to keep possession against better sides when playing a short-passing game, but the deeply ingrained attitude that we shouldn't try what we're not good at is the worrying thing. In a sense those who say this are correct - for a team that gets promoted, it's success in a higher division will invariably take priority over their style. If teething problems in playing a particular style will cost them a considerable number of valuable points, then in the interests of the club the manager and players are right to play to their strengths. At the same time, I feel those trying to play this way should be commended - in simple terms, in anything you start out at when competing against others, you tend not to be so good at first but you keep working on it and improve. Sometimes short-term results will take a hit before you arrive at some later consistency (not in the case of this Palace side, they'll go down comfortably, but I mean in general teams who are implementing this style of football). At a basic level of football, players will be more ready to play this style of football if they keep trying it despite struggling with it at first. Last weekend I read an excellent article in the Guardian with Dennis Berkgamp, one of my favourite ever players. He touches upon this point when talking about his time at Ajax, as a youth player and now as a coach: "sometimes you put your strongest player on the bench to let others shine. Or a right-footed player on the left side and force him to use his left foot. Of course in that game you will probably lose because you don't use your strongest players in their strongest position, but in the end you have a player who used his left foot when he was 12 and 13 and 14, and he can use both feet when he comes into the first team." By the time a player is already long in senior football, it can be too late to work on these weaknesses as it comes at the expense of results for the first team, which can have consequences. And I think these problems that come with attempted passing games and the reactions to it are yet more side-effects of us having got things wrong from the bottom up for so long. 

Change of settings and football punditry (Part I)

So that pre-season friendly took place at the very start of August and since then, much has changed. While on holiday, I was successful in a job interview for a company based abroad about which I had first been unexpectedly notified by email around the end of July. I accepted the offer, so that pre-season friendly turned out to be my final involvement with this team. I thanked them for a tough pre-season programme and wished them the best of luck for 2013-14. I'm not going to be any more specific as to where I now am based other than say that it's in Europe and I don't know the language at all - it's completely different to anything I've learned. Since moving I didn't manage to play any football for the first few weeks as my new job required a training period, the hours of which did not permit me to attend training sessions for the side I plan on joining. Nonetheless I'd been keeping something resembling fit and the temptation to sample the local beer every night was mostly quelled by the need to be up at 7am during the week. It was still annoying that I had spent a good month or so of pre-season getting myself in very good shape by being put through some gruelling practices only to have much of that undone by a sudden change in milieu where I no longer had such easy access to that kind of routine. But that's what relocating away from home does to you, I suppose. 

Thanks to my university's VPN network, watching the football back home is still a welcome possibility, and this is what I'd like to talk about for the moment. I have managed to get playing myself again but first I'd like to use the break in my own play as an opportunity to discuss something I've been meaning to for a while. . The standard of punditry on Match of the Day has always been a bugbear of mine – attempting to analyse at least half a dozen matches in succession for a couple of minutes each is both impractical and a thankless task to begin with, but I never cease to be amazed by how often ex-professional pundits who have played at the highest level miss the point in their analyses. What they say is very general, and they tend to offer no insight at all into why things happen and how they develop, rather opting for empty, general statements like something a player could or should have done (in a broad area of the game – by this I mean “he should defend this ball better” – obviously defending encompasses many different things) at a particular moment. What irritates me the most is their lack of understanding of players attempting to keep possession and appreciating its value. If they lose the ball, it’s just dismissed as poor play for one reason or another. The weekend of 17/18 August marked the start of another Premier League season and let's take an example from the opening day where the first game in the highlights was the evening kick-off between Swansea and Manchester United. Swansea pulled a goal back late on having been 0-3 down after United player Danny Welbeck lost possession in his own half having collected a cleared Swansea corner and trying to hold onto the ball. In the post-match analysis with this goal being looked at, Alan Hansen somewhat predictably commented that the striker was “trying to be too clever.” Hearing this irritates me because the people who use it don’t really know what ‘clever’ or ‘too clever’ means. If, when a corner is cleared, the ball falls to a player of the defending team just outside the box, he is probably positioned there because the manager wants him to attempt to set up a counter-attack in this situation rather than complete the clearance by hacking it forward to nobody. Clearly the former is more difficult to execute but also more likely to end up as a goal scored, so the player is being sensible first by looking to hold onto it and secondly by not just attempting the first pass he sees (if there is one at all). If he loses possession in this situation, it isn’t as simple as him holding onto the ball too long. If I remember right, in this instance Welbeck was closed down very quickly by about 3 Swansea players having briefly looked for a pass only to find nothing on, where he probably would have expected to have team-mates showing for it. So here there's nothing 'too clever' about him trying to keep the ball - he only tries to outsmart the opposition from the point where he's immediately surrounded, a point at which he has to try. At this point even an aimless clearance probably would have cannoned off one of their players such was the intensity of their pressure and their proximity to him. What's more, his attempt to keep the ball through close control and working some space despite seeming almost impossible is successfully managed by players every week – for me it’s having confidence in your own ability and applying your mind to the game rather than trying to be too clever. And how clever is too clever anyway? As I mentioned earlier, discouraging players from doing certain things will cause them not to do it, revert to a safer option and they won’t improve at it. OK, obviously in this case Welbeck isn’t going to be taking MOTD analysis as advice for his game, but we need to think about a wider scope here. As a younger player I was far more impressionable and receptive to this kind of commentary and I doubt I was alone. There must be plenty who take the "advice" and repeat it (I know as a teenager I used to take bullshit clichés I saw on TV into playing in the school playground or indeed in a proper competitive match and repeat them there), running the risk of not developing as broad an understanding of the game as they should. I hate to generalise, but I know a number of managers and coaches at grassroots level who are ardent listeners to football phone-ins and such stuff. Trying my best to sound as unpatronising as possible, they relay this limited idea of the game to their players. From playing at junior level and watching either friends or younger relatives of mine, the number of times I've heard "don't fuck about with it there!" or "that's too casual!" or "if you can't pass it properly there just clear your lines!" and a myriad of similar phrases, could fill a viewing of Modern Times Forever (Google it to get the reference). The reality is that trying to keep the ball all the time immensely helps you as a footballer. The rule of practice makes perfect applies here – you’ll lose the ball quite a bit at first, sometimes even in dangerous areas which occasionally leads to a goal, but as you take more opportunities to try it you become more adept at it. That’s better than taking the safest option most of the time, not really trying to cope with more difficult aspects and then being in a spot of bother when finding yourself in a tricky situation on the pitch. The sad truth is that losing the ball makes you look bad as a youngster and you get picked on – nobody wants either of those things in football. It makes the problem a difficult one to get round.

Elevating this to a top professional level, I remember watching Match of the Day on the first day of the 2012/13 season too and seeing analysis of West Brom vs Liverpool, which finished 3-0 to the home side. It was Liverpool’s first match under new manager Brendan Rodgers and he clearly planned to implement the same passing philosophy which had served him so well at Swansea. Clearly such systems don’t happen overnight and take some getting used to – inevitable teething problems arise when a new manager comes in and overhauls tactics and systems, meaning early results and performances often aren’t great and some mistakes are made which seem basic – as the cliché goes: “a professional footballer shouldn’t be making that sort of error!” – but it’s really players trying and learning to adapt to a new system, a new methodology of playing for their football team. In this very game, one West Brom goal indeed came from Liverpool trying to play out short from the back and losing possession very close to their own penalty box. Depressingly, in the post-match analysis (and I think it was Hansen again), the comment on this goal was something like “basic errors again – he’s just got to get rid of it there but he gives it away and they go and score.” I was so wound up by this I wanted to cry myself to sleep, and I was on holiday at the time. I’m sure as ex-professionals these people have been present when a new manager has come into the club and changed the team’s approach, with the players struggling with it early on before getting to grips with it and improving (which is pretty much what happened with Liverpool last season), and you hardly need to be a professional to even work that out, hence it irritates me when pundits consistently come at things like this from the wrong angle.