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.