Long ball stats?

[kopdan]

i'm yanking your chain

[tomasjj]

i'm yanking your chain

as always....

[nbryan1764]

I actually think when we go long ball we are crap. Too many passes go astray, too many bad touches, and its too easy to knock our strikers off the ball. We don;t have people far enough up the pitch to be long ball half the time as well.

We are possession based. Long ball teams aren;t they are percentage based. However we dont play flowing football often enough. We don;t have the movement nor the pace to play that way. So we are a sort of halfway house. Not long ball, not fast , flowing. We are more European, slow build up, possession football. Thats why we do well in Europe against European teams. Its why we sometimes struggle in England

[Shaggy]

Rafa's style with Valencia was dubbed the 'anti-football' in Spain and he was widely regarded as being an incredibly defensive manager, he has carried that on over here.

This is also a gigantic myth.

Rafa and his 'defensive team' scored 71 goals in their 38 league games during their title campaign of 2003/04 - only 4th placed Real Madrid scored more (72 goals).

His 'anti-football team' also passed us to death, twice. Anyone who was at Anfield that night (as I was) or at the Mestalla for the other game (as I wasn't) would tell you we were beaten by a fantastic football team. We couldn't get the ball off them. How very boring that must've been for those long-suffering Valencia fans.

[Shaggy]

I actually think when we go long ball we are crap. Too many passes go astray, too many bad touches, and its too easy to knock our strikers off the ball. We don;t have people far enough up the pitch to be long ball half the time as well.

We are possession based. Long ball teams aren;t they are percentage based. However we dont play flowing football often enough. We don;t have the movement nor the pace to play that way. So we are a sort of halfway house. Not long ball, not fast , flowing. We are more European, slow build up, possession football. Thats why we do well in Europe against European teams. Its why we sometimes struggle in England

Is the correct answer.

[Bob]

Strongly disagree.

I'll be interested to see what the less negative posters have to say. You and Bob are two of the most negative chaps on here so I'll be interested to see if anyone shares this viewpoint - which, in my opinion is ludicrous.

Same level as Blackburn and Bolton??

Rubbish - i'm just err... realistic.

Where i live i get the perspective of the 'neutral' football fan as they all/mostly support scottish teams. They're forever coming up to me and saying they've just seen us play at the weekend and berate how tedious we are. Sure, there are games like Arsenal where i get to see them grovelling, but they are few and far between.

We have better players than Bolton, Spurs and Blackburn and our team is far, far better, but our football style is very similar. Unfortunate, but true.

[Shaggy]

Rubbish - i'm just err... realistic.

Where i live i get the perspective of the 'neutral' football fan as they all/mostly support scottish teams. They're forever coming up to me and saying they've just seen us play at the weekend and berating how tedious we are. Sure, there are games like Arsenal where i get to see them grovelling, but they are few and far between.

We have better players than Bolton, Spurs and Blackburn and our team is far, far better, but our football style is very similar. Unfortunate, but true.

In your opinion. It mine it isn't true.

Reckoning our football is as ugly as Bolton's isn't at all realistic.

[Bob]

In your opinion. It mine it isn't true.

Reckoning our football is as ugly as Bolton's isn't at all realistic.

As is thinking our football team plays the third-best attractive football in the league over the course of this season.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle our our two suggestions on this thread.

[Morph]

When we use the long ball it tends to be for territory gain before we set up an attack, as opposed to the long ball being part of the final attacking move itself.

Is the right answer, we don't score goals from long balls, we use it to get more players up the pitch, which is why rafa likes players who can hold the ball up, so we can more players coming from the back

[Shaggy]

Do they play more attractive football than us?

Man Utd - Yes
Chelsea - Debatable
Liverpool
Arsenal - Yes
Bolton - FLMAO
Everton - Clearly not
Portsmouth - No
Tottenham - No but it's debatable
Reading - No
Blackburn - No
Aston Villa - Haha, obviously not
Newcastle - No
Man City - Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz no
Boro - No
Sheff United - Obviously not
Fulham - Hoof it to McBride, Helguson, John or Montella. No.
Wigan - Not at all
West Ham - No
Charlton - No
Watford - No

[kopdan]

I think you're wrong on a few

but its all about opinions

[lfcruleus]

West ham can be good to watch, played some great stuff yesterday. Spurs also good to watch, outside them the Mancs and Arsenal the rest are all about the same, **** all special to watch. We can be special at times but do not have the pace in the team to do it all the time.

[tomasjj]

West ham can be good to watch, played some great stuff yesterday. Spurs also good to watch, outside them the Mancs and Arsenal the rest are all about the same, **** all special to watch. We can be special at times but do not have the pace in the team to do it all the time.

yes, those two teams also stood out to me as ones who possibly play better footy than us, along with the mancs and arsenal.

Its quite a balance though, win or win pretty...

[Shaggy]

yes, those two teams also stood out to me as ones who possibly play better footy than us, along with the mancs and arsenal.

Its quite a balance though, win or win pretty...

I think it's probably fair to say Spurs are 'more fun' to watch than us. However, they concede **** loads of goals - so if that's the kind of "entertainment" people want then they can keep it. We've been there and done that under Evans.

Same goes for West Ham. It's all well and good doing it against Wigan (the worst side in the league at the moment) but they're in the bottom three. So they may be entertaining to watch, but again that's not the sort of entertainment I want.

Bad defending is ugly. It might be fun to watch as a neutral, but instances of top class defending can be almost as good to watch as expressive attacking football, so I'd say only the Mancs and Arsenal have genuine claims of playing better football than us. Those two sides play an attractive brand of football and, for the most part, don't defend abysmally.

[TheStig]

West Ham have been awful in alot of games this season though.