Manchester City are passing into new territory, Villas-Boas has helped revive Ramires and a crossing concern for Fulham
City pass into new territory
It is obvious that Manchester City's game has changed this season ? in general terms, they're simply more attacking. But what are the specifics of their new style?
At roughly this time last season, we looked at how Manchester City hardly ever passed the ball into the box ? the chalkboard of their successful passes from their game with Wigan shows that barely any passes took place around the edge of the D.
Introduce some creative players that play in tight spaces like Samir Nasri and Sergio Ag�ero, and suddenly City love to play in that zone. This time around against Wigan, not only did their completed passes extend much higher up the pitch, all three assists came when the ball was played into a position just inside the box ? passes that wouldn't have been attempted last year.
Ramires retention signals Villas-Boas's intentions
In Chelsea's season-changing 3-0 defeat to Sunderland at Stamford Bridge last season, Ramires was one of their poorest players ? clearly struggling to adapt to the pace of the English game, and constantly giving the ball away. The lower chalkboard shows how often he misplaced passes in deep midfield positions.
His improvement since then has been extraordinary, as shown by his performance against the same team on Saturday. He only failed to complete two of his 37 passes, and they were when he tried incisive balls in the penalty area. He finished with a pass completion rate of 95%, up from 74% in the fixture last year.
Indeed, Andr� Villas-Boas's side seem very much based around ball retention. Newcomers Juan Mata and Raul Meireles recorded completion rates of 86% and 88% respectively, whilst Oriol Romeu showed the qualities you expect from a Barcelona youth product ? not giving the ball away once during his 15-minute cameo.
Few ticks for Fulham's crosses
It was easy to see what Fulham lacked in their 1-1 draw with Blackburn Rovers ? good service from the flanks, as their pathetic cross completion ratio of 6% shows.
The use of 'inverted' wingers ? left-footed Damien Duff on the right and right-footed Clint Dempsey on the left ? has worked well for Fulham in recent years, but in this game it caused problems as Blackburn's defence sat deep and narrow. Duff was the main offender ? rather than drifting inside or cutting back onto his stronger foot, he constantly motored towards the byline, then tamely floated a right-footed cross up into the arms of Paul Robinson.
He finished with 0 completed crosses from 12 attempts, and none of his seven corners found a Fulham player.
Jagielka should learn left is right and long is wrong
The Everton centre-back Phil Jagielka recorded a pass completion rate of just over 50% in Everton's draw with Aston Villa on Saturday. That figure is surprisingly low for a decent passer like Jagielka, but more interesting than the raw figure is the chalkboard of where his successful and unsuccessful passes were played.
He essentially only does two things when he has the ball ? he either plays a long ball forward into the right-hand channel for one of the strikers to try and win, or switches the ball across to Leighton Baines on the left. He rarely plays the ball into midfield, for example, and only once passed to his centre-back colleague Sylvain Distin.
It's plain to see which approach was more successful ? with Everton lacking a true target man, long balls were always won by the opposition, whilst all the passes out to Baines were completed, and attacks could develop down the left. A look at this chalkboard might encourage Jagielka to keep it simple with square passes, rather than forward ones.
Adam still wants to be a long-ranger
Ian Holloway warned Charlie Adam to "forget all his World Cup Willie shots from the halfway line" during Blackpool's relegation run-in last season, but at Liverpool he seems intent on replicating Xabi Alonso's talent for goals from his own half. In Adam's four games so far for Liverpool, he's attempted three shots from the halfway line.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/sep/12/premier-league-chalkboards
No comments:
Post a Comment