Long Ball United

Feed Me

I'm hungry
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Apr 8, 2004
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After Fat Sam branded us long ball merchants, the media has jumped on the bandwagon, with a number of articles being published containing a table that shows we're second in league when it comes to pumping it forward.

Of course, United have also been averaging amongst the most possession in the league; in fact, I think we may be number one - can anyone confirm this?

Also, does anyone have stats that will help us form a short passing league table?

My gut feeling is that we're probably near the top of all three tables.
 
Possession for the sake of it is worthless, in fact having so much possession is a big problem for us because our forwards don't move and as a result the opposition just sit back and let us knock it around the middle of the park.
 
http://www.whoscored.com/Regions/25...amStatistics/England-Premier-League-2014-2015

We seem to be 2nd in overall pass length, 1st in long ball accuracy.
2nd in possession (59.3) with Man City leading at (60.4).

No wonder. With the lack of movement offered by RvP and Falcao, we have to depend on passes from the deep to get things moving. I think we would have better passing options if we just played Mata behind Rooney upfront and had more midfielders.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
http://www.whoscored.com/Regions/25...amStatistics/England-Premier-League-2014-2015

We seem to be 2nd in overall pass length, 1st in long ball accuracy.
2nd in possession (59.3) with Man City leading at (60.4).

No wonder. With the lack of movement offered by RvP and Falcao, we have to depend on passes from the deep to get things moving. I think we would have better passing options if we just played Mata behind Rooney upfront and had more midfielders.
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If you delve deeper on that page, it seems to show that we're fourth in the short passing league, not all that far behind second placed Chelsea. City play a shed load more short passes than the rest of the league.

So basically, we play more long passes than virtually everyone and we play more short passes than virtually everyone.
 
Feed Me said:
If you delve deeper on that page, it seems to show that we're fourth in the short passing league, not all that far behind second placed Chelsea. City play a shed load more short passes than the rest of the league.

So basically, we play more long passes than virtually everyone and we play more short passes than virtually everyone.
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Not surprising seeing as in one game our defenders had over 100 passes.
 
Snow said:
Not surprising seeing as in one game our defenders had over 100 passes.
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The stats are exactly as I expected.

We're one of the most dominant sides when it comes to overall possession, we play amongst the most long passes and amongst the most short passes.

That doesn't make us a long ball team, it makes us a team that makes a shit load of different types of passes.

The media will run with this for months now though.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
http://www.whoscored.com/Regions/25...amStatistics/England-Premier-League-2014-2015

We seem to be 2nd in overall pass length, 1st in long ball accuracy.
2nd in possession (59.3) with Man City leading at (60.4).

No wonder. With the lack of movement offered by RvP and Falcao, we have to depend on passes from the deep to get things moving. I think we would have better passing options if we just played Mata behind Rooney upfront and had more midfielders.
Click to expand...
Said in another thread but if you look at the key passes stat, we're 14th in the league for long key passes and 7th for short. Both are horribly low but it doesn't say that we rely mostly on long balls to create chances.

Says a lot that the rest of the top 4 challengers have had more short key passes than us.
 
Raw said:
Said in another thread but if you look at the key passes stat, we're 14th in the league for long key passes and 7th for short. Both are horribly low but it doesn't say that we rely mostly on long balls to create chances.

Says a lot that the rest of the top 4 challengers have had more short key passes than us.
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Yikes, that's really poor!

Backs up what a lot of posters have been saying about having loads of harmless possession but being absolutely atrocious when it comes to the final pass. More precision required.
 
Feed Me said:
Yikes, that's really poor!

Backs up what a lot of posters have been saying about having loads of harmless possession but being absolutely atrocious when it comes to the final pass. More precision required.
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Precision isn't the problem tbh its risk appetite. ATM only Di Maria really tries to play penetrative passes into the forwards, Mata does when he plays too. The rest just seem to play it simple and then get it out wide and hope for good delivery. Herrera is another that attempts these penetrative passes but is on the bench. Of course these players tend to take more risk (Di Maria/Herrera)
 
Feed Me said:
The stats are exactly as I expected.

We're one of the most dominant sides when it comes to overall possession, we play amongst the most long passes and amongst the most short passes.

That doesn't make us a long ball team, it makes us a team that makes a shit load of different types of passes.

The media will run with this for months now though.
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It does make us a long ball team if you only compare to other teams. On it's own it doesn't say that. It is a testament to how difficult the team has it. They aren't creating chances and are thus they go route 1. This is especially the case away from home where there are more long passes and fewer shorter passes. It probably also coincides with Fellaini (a reason that I don't like him).
 
The stats reflect what we actually see: our defenders - and midfielders coming back for the ball - spend a lot of time passing the ball to each other, followed by an aimless hoof after a while when it's apparent we're going nowhere.

We're not a long-ball team, we're not a short passing team, we're just a team without ideas or creativity.
 
Of our 404 passes against West Ham, 6 were long balls into the area.
 
Siorac said:
The stats reflect what we actually see: our defenders - and midfielders coming back for the ball - spend a lot of time passing the ball to each other, followed by an aimless hoof after a while when it's apparent we're going nowhere.

We're not a long-ball team, we're not a short passing team, we're just a team without ideas or creativity.
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They're not really aimless though since we are first in long ball accuracy (someone posted that above). They must be quite precise. A lot of it has to be switching the play which we do a bit too much imo, and yet I can't remember us benefiting from it.
 
LR7 said:
They're not really aimless though since we are first in long ball accuracy (someone posted that above). They must be quite precise. A lot of it has to be switching the play which we do a bit too much imo, and yet I can't remember us benefiting from it.
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Fair enough. It definitely doesn't feel like we benefit in any way or form from our long ball accuracy.
 
Yep. We are extremely static as well which doesn't help in playing the ball forward.
 
See now those stats paint a much better picture and once we perfect that type of attacking, we will come good. Having a disproportionate amount of passes either long or short, in an attacking sense, is no good because it makes it too predictable but a 50/50 40/60 split is much better.
 
The absolute number of long balls forward to me is more informative than share. If two CBs 25 yards apart pass to each other before one lumps it forward-that's 3 long passes, 33.33% forward.

If, instead, a CB gets a ball from the keeper and then makes a long ball forward pass, that's one long forward pass-100% of long ball passes.

It's the same style of play in either case.
 
Feed Me said:
The stats are exactly as I expected.

We're one of the most dominant sides when it comes to overall possession, we play amongst the most long passes and amongst the most short passes.

That doesn't make us a long ball team, it makes us a team that makes a shit load of different types of passes.

The media will run with this for months now though.
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Obviously you're not that long ball, but for a top half team you are a little bit. Largely because of that huge gap between the front 5 and the back 5.

The media want the story about Van Gaal being no better than Moyes because it's the one to sell papers with. If he was doing well they'd use the Van Gaal better than Mourinho story. They feed off surprise and friction. Van Gaal this season has been more surprise at the mediocrity and mistakes than friction against the top managers. That's what the story is.

You're half way between Arsenal and West Ham or Spurs and Sunderland. It's got a mid table feel to it, so the papers are making that the story. United feel mid-table in tactics, even though they're much better in personnel and points. They're not Crystal Palace or West Ham of course but they're still relying on long balls more than most top clubs would.

Long passes.

Crystal Palace 22%
Burnley 21%
QPR 21%
Leicester 20%
West Ham 19%
Hull 18%
West Brom 17%
Aston Villa 16%
Sunderland 16%
Newcastle 15%
Stoke 15%
Man Utd 14%
Southampton 14%
Everton 13%
Swansea 12%
Tottenham 12%
Chelsea 11%
Liverpool 11%
Arsenal 9%
Man City 9%
 
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Seems like LVG got the right hump with sam going by todays press conference. Bit embarrasing really, media will liken it to benitez's breakdown or at least to me shows a sign of weakness. Serves
LVG right really for playing this boring style of football. He might say things like we should pass quicker and all this BS but the way he sets the team up with Rooney being a passenger in the game is unacceptable really.
 
luckyspurs said:
Obviously you're not that long ball, but for a top half team you are a little bit. Largely because of that huge gap between the front 5 and the back 5.

The media want the story about Van Gaal being no better than Moyes because it's the one to sell papers with. If he was doing well they'd use the Van Gaal better than Mourinho story. They feed off surprise and friction. Van Gaal this season has been more surprise at the mediocrity and mistakes than friction against the top managers. That's what the story is.

You're half way between Arsenal and West Ham or Spurs and Sunderland. It's got a mid table feel to it, so the papers are making that the story. United feel mid-table in tactics, even though they're much better in personnel and points. They're not Crystal Palace or West Ham of course but they're still relying on long balls more than most top clubs would.

Long passes.

Crystal Palace 22%
Burnley 21%
QPR 21%
Leicester 20%
West Ham 19%
Hull 18%
West Brom 17%
Aston Villa 16%
Sunderland 16%
Newcastle 15%
Stoke 15%
Man Utd 14%
Southampton 14%
Everton 13%
Swansea 12%
Tottenham 12%
Chelsea 11%
Liverpool 11%
Arsenal 9%
Man City 9%
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As Van Gaal pointed out today, that means feck all without considering the direction of those long passes. If they're switching play from one side to the other then that's clearly not comparable with other teams that constantly punt long balls up to their strikers.

Your "mid-table" tactics jibe is horseshit, by the way. We're more or less top of the table when it comes to total number of passes, or total possession. Neither of which are stats you'd associate with a mid-table team (apart from a club like Swansea, who have always been kind of unique)
 
Don't have a fit in the match day thread when opposition fans shout hoof every time we play a long ball. It's going to happen, get over it. The media have completely ran away with LvG's comments which fuels the fire.
 
We're a long ball team that dominates possession and has one of the highest short pass ratio's in the league. Sounds good to me
 
Big Sam know exactly how United played under Fergie... he got spanked many times by the Godfather and he may spotted few interesting differences from that time.

I still like that fat bastard. He got balls to speak what he thinks, just like LVG in his responses to journos.
 
Siorac said:
The stats reflect what we actually see: our defenders - and midfielders coming back for the ball - spend a lot of time passing the ball to each other, followed by an aimless hoof after a while when it's apparent we're going nowhere.

We're not a long-ball team, we're not a short passing team, we're just a team without ideas or creativity.
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Bang on with that!
 
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