The team is still awful in possession

Idxomer

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Aug 3, 2014
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After adding two midfielders and a ball-playing defender, we still can't control games consistently.

2 of our midfielders today had 67% passing accuracy. We're 8th in the PL for passes completed per 90 and 10th for passing accuracy percentage.

What's the solution?
 
Idxomer said:
After adding two midfielders and a ball-playing defender, we still can't control games consistently.

2 of our midfielders today had 67% passing accuracy. We're 8th in the PL for passes completed per 90 and 10th for passing accuracy percentage.

What's the solution?
Click to expand...

Get everyone fully fit for a start
 
Idxomer said:
After adding two midfielders and a ball-playing defender, we still can't control games consistently.

2 of our midfielders today had 67% passing accuracy. We're 8th in the PL for passes completed per 90 and 10th for passing accuracy percentage.

What's the solution?
Click to expand...

Keep Varane fit
 
We constantly make brain dead decisions on the ball. It's ingrained and will take ages to weed out.
 
It is unrealistic to expect them to out-possess every team they play in year one.
 
EtH has had one single transfer window.

Things aren’t going to fall into place immediately. Performances will fluctuate from Spurs to this.

Just be patient and happy that we are still getting results and developing monsters like Garnacho.

Let’s see how we are after the World Cup.
 
Varane and Antony are huge losses on this front.

We’ll get there, but Ten Hag needs another four players at the very least.
 
Idxomer said:
What's the solution?
Click to expand...
Time, training, integration, more than one transfer window. The manager has been at the club less than 6 months following 4 years of managers that didn’t give a toss about the ball. Bit of patience.
 
It's weird, there are some lovely moments of incisive passing at times but i haven't seen any real spells of controlled possession
 
Kag said:
Varane and Antony are huge losses on this front.

We’ll get there, but Ten Hag needs another four players at the very least.
Click to expand...

Antony is proving to be too important, we don't have any consistent outlet who could keep the ball under pressure except him.
 
Today was more just sloppiness. Was our worst game in and out of possession in quite some time. But also our best game in the final third in quite some time with shot selection and decision making IMO (not a coincidence that part having Martial in). But Casemiro, Eriksen, Bruno all kept giving it away all day and the right flank was a big 0.
 
I don't want to get jumped on, but Rashford and Elanga are really terrible on the ball way too often.

Ideally I'd want Antony right and Garnacho /Sancho left with Rashford off the bench.
 
Idxomer said:
After adding two midfielders and a ball-playing defender, we still can't control games consistently.

2 of our midfielders today had 67% passing accuracy. We're 8th in the PL for passes completed per 90 and 10th for passing accuracy percentage.

What's the solution?
Click to expand...
We’ve controlled more than enough games. There’s no issue with controlling the game.
 
Idxomer said:
Antony is proving to be too important, we don't have any consistent outlet who could keep the ball under pressure except him.
Click to expand...

Yes that’s why we bought him! Would be silly to spend that money if he wasn’t going to be important?
 
Genuine question OP. Did you genuinely think when ETH came in, we’ll be good in possession by Nov? Or is this a bit of a knee jerk thread?
 
Our forwards are kinda built for counter attacks so can hold onto possession much.
 
It's a bit funny that people think we are trying to keep possession and are just bad at it. I think we are way more of a counter pressing direct passing team than a possession orientated one, and that is by design. If that is the right way forward I don't know, but I don't think this is unintentional.
 
I think that had more to do with the game plan than the midfielders not taking care of the ball. Fulham like to press and their defensive line is high. Seemed as though our game plan today was to concede possession and hit them on the break with long balls behind their defensive line. When that's the way you play, your passing % is going to naturally go down...
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Genuine question OP. Did you genuinely think when ETH came in, we’ll be good in possession by Nov? Or is this a bit of a knee jerk thread?
Click to expand...

I thought we would be better at it by now, yes.

Our sloppiness on the ball has been a problem almost all season, so it's not based on just this game.
 
As a former manager used to say, it's a process. A process that only began a few months ago.

Personally I think our back five has noticably improved in possession, so that's something for a start.
 
I didn't mind the possession stats for today. We were trying long balls as Fulham left space in behind and we had pacey wingers. That created chances but also led to possession loss.

The big problem is we have too many one footed players who need the ball at their correct foot. That weakness can only be overcome with time. We're improving already. I saw some of our players do some nice one touch triangles, particularly on the left side today. It will happen eventually.
 
Idxomer said:
I thought we would be better at it by now, yes.

Our sloppiness on the ball has been a problem almost all season, so it's not based on just this game.
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I’d say we are definitely better than we were but it’s more we have periods (decent period mind you not like 5mins) and there is still carelessness which I don’t like.

I think revisit this question in May and we’ll see a lot more consistency but there’ll still be bad games.
 
It will take time for some of our players to learn to be less brain dead with the ball. I think ETH has done an unbelievable job but we also need a better squad because beyond the first 11 we are lacking players that suit ETH and even in the first 11 there’s a couple who need to grow a brain.

We have played 8 away games out of 14 and all the top half teams. It’s not bad.
 
Better than we were last season. But still a long way off the benchmark which is City.

Our chance creation is getting better though. If we had Haaland or Kane today we would have been out of sight.

The team is wrecked though. We need them all to go out at the group stages of the WC so they can have a rest.
 
Patience. We're not going to go from one of the worst coached teams to the one of the best at any rate quicker than we currently are. We are miles better than we used to be in possession as evidenced by the Chelsea and Spurs games. Since then we have had 3/4 first teamers out every match.
 
We’re massively missing Antony though, he’s the 100% guarantee of ball retention, the out ball. Since he went out of the side we’ve started to really struggle to keep possession, passing to a RW Bruno or Elanga usually just brings pressure back on us.
 
On today, I'm sorry but you're not starting a game with Malacia, Lindelof and Elanga on the right hand side of the pitch and looking like a good team.

When Willian is looking like that much of a threat in 2022 it's going to be a tough one.
 
The only way a manager can improve the passing ability of a team is to buy players who are better with the ball.

The only exception is if the previous manager went out of his way to make his team a long ball type. Dyche for instance.

But I don't think that was the case with us. We struggled with the ball under Ole and Mourinho for the same reason we to a lesser extent struggle now. Too many players who aren't comfortable enough with the ball.

It is getting better though because we have added a few who are better. We just need more.
 
Biggest problem today was not enough movement from the front 4. Every time we tried to play it out of defense, once the ball got to Casemiro or Eriksen they had no one infront of them available for the pass.
 
How we played Vs Spurs is this team at its best, Vs Chelsea 1st half is what I’d call the usual when the on form. Today was this team missing 2 essential players.
 
Idxomer said:
I thought we would be better at it by now, yes.

Our sloppiness on the ball has been a problem almost all season, so it's not based on just this game.
Click to expand...
Thats a pretty unrealistic expectation to expect it to be completely fixed by now
 
The last few games without Antony show how important he has already been to us.
 
NoLogo said:
It's a bit funny that people think we are trying to keep possession and are just bad at it. I think we are way more of a counter pressing direct passing team than a possession orientated one, and that is by design. If that is the right way forward I don't know, but I don't think this is unintentional.
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But isn’t that because our players aren’t good at possession football?

In terms of just straight up ability on the ball, I’d rank the side something like this:

De Gea - poor on the ball;
Dalot - good ball progressor, but average on the ball when pressed and just generally;
Varane - average on the ball
Martinez - top tier
Shaw - very good. Press resistant, good ball progressor. Weakness is that he’s very one footed;
Casemiro - average/poor under the press, good long range pass when in space (suits counter attacking)
Eriksen - average/poor under press, good passer when given time, very two footed (suits counter attacking)
Fernandes - creative juggernaut but treats the ball like lava. Can’t dribble
Rashford - poor/average; very much a counter attacker;
Antony - very good at ball retention, can also dribble;
Sancho - quite good at ball retention, but a lot of timid passes
Martial - very good at holding the ball and playing under pressure;
McFred - both better off the ball than on it. Very much counter attacking players who are poor with the ball.
 
We’ve lost key players and we’ve played a lot of games in the last 6 weeks. Fulham have been playing 1 a week. Villa the same.

Despite this, we have a clear attacking plan now and we defend far better as a team than we have in years. Antony was making a big difference because one of our huge failings in recent years was our threat only came down the left, so teams could double up on that side. With Dalot and Antony we were causing threat on both sides and it was opening up the middle too.
 
Where TH wants to be and where we are now are two different things. We will be a lot better after another summer transfer window I reckon. We still have no decent depth in the squad.
 
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