Possession vs Transition

RedDevilCanuck

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What style do you prefer?

What style suits the majority of the squad?

It seems ETH is caught between two minds. He wants to be a transition team due to the skill set of our two best attackers - Bruno and Rashford. But he's also Dutch and coached a Ajax team that controlled games.

I would like a possession based team due to the fact we are not that athletic. Of course transitions are important but using it as the main creator doesn't work.

Zirkzee, Amad, and Mainoo are all talented possession players that should be built around with some directness sprinkled in like Garnacho and Hojland.
 
Which answer will make the highest amount of inflexible nerds angry? I reckon it's transition? That then.
 
Does any possession team not press though? Similarly does any transition team not keep possession at all?

Don’t think our issue is this, it’s simply setting up a midfield that can’t be bypassed by any player with an ounce of pace. It starts with defending from the front which essentially doesn’t happen when certain players start. Meaning we face wave after wave of runners throughout a game.
 
A "transition heavy" team still wants to dominate all phases of play, and possession too. It's true for us and ETH as well, he just hasn't been able to successfully implement it.

A possession heavy team still heavily relies on transitions as one of their main ways of putting the ball in the opposition's net.

This question doesn't really make sense IMO. If had ETH managed to get us playing the way he wants, and never said the transition thing publicly, 99% of people wouldn't be able to tell whether we were a "transition" or a "possession" team.
 
Rojofiam said:
A "transition heavy" team still wants to dominate all phases of play, and possession too. It's true for us and ETH as well, he just hasn't been able to successfully implement it.

A possession heavy team still heavily relies on transitions as one of their main ways of putting the ball in the opposition's net.

This question doesn't really make sense IMO. If had ETH managed to get us playing the way he wants, and never said the transition thing publicly, 99% of people wouldn't be able to tell whether we were a "transition" or a "possession" team.
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That's a mental opinion, no one with any footballing knowledge would think this is a possession team. Possession teams don't vacate midfield and run away from the ball limiting options for the passer. Basic stuff.
 
Smores said:
That's a mental opinion, no one with any footballing knowledge would think this is a possession team. Possession teams don't vacate midfield and run away from the ball limiting options for the passer. Basic stuff.
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"If had ETH managed to get us playing the way he wants"
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Does any possession team not press though? Similarly does any transition team not keep possession at all?

Don’t think our issue is this, it’s simply setting up a midfield that can’t be bypassed by any player with an ounce of pace. It starts with defending from the front which essentially doesn’t happen when certain players start. Meaning we face wave after wave of runners throughout a game.
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It’s all Rashford’s fault?
 
tomaldinho1 said:
I think multiple of our forwards don’t really suit that game, he’s just unlucky that he’s on silly money and is a senior player.
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Putting it on any individual beyond the manager is silly at this point.
 
Giggsy13 said:
The best clubs can do both. It shouldn’t be one or the other.
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This is the truth.

There are teams that focus on fast transitions as their main attacking strategy, but you need to to be defensively solid, have a high work rate, be really aggressive in pressing, and some of your key players need great awareness and ability on the ball to see the runs, and execute often challenging passes quickly and accurately.

Basically all the things we don't do well every week at this point.

Only two teams come to mind as having done this to a really high level which is some of the recent Real Madrid sides and some of Klopps Liverpool teams. They both had much higher quality of players the we do throughout their sides.
 
I find Klopp's style more appealing than Pep. As good as Pep's football is, I do find it a bit boring.
 
Forget this false dichotomy. Good teams keep possession well and are good on transitions. We need players who do the basics well. Hard work, good touch, good passing, good game awareness, some dark arts, playing for each other and not being stupid selfish street ballers only concerned about stats.
 
RedDevilCanuck said:
What style do you prefer?

What style suits the majority of the squad?

It seems ETH is caught between two minds. He wants to be a transition team due to the skill set of our two best attackers - Bruno and Rashford. But he's also Dutch and coached a Ajax team that controlled games.

I would like a possession based team due to the fact we are not that athletic. Of course transitions are important but using it as the main creator doesn't work.

Zirkzee, Amad, and Mainoo are all talented possession players that should be built around with some directness sprinkled in like Garnacho and Hojland.
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Balance of both is really the answer, a la how Real Madrid has played for over a decade. A one size fits all style will just make you easy to plan against. Problem is we aren’t good at either.
 
How much verticality you have in a positional play system is up to the manager to tune. Ange, Klopp etc. prefer one way. Pep prefers a different way. Arsenal are somewhere in the middle. Slot maybe more towards the Ange / Klopp territory than Pep. Just because you counter attack fast doesn't mean you just hit and hope or just resort to Bruno hero-ball on the counter.
 
A small point. Dutch Football is mainly built around transition Football, Total Football and Ajax main identities are based on transition Football. The reason they have high possession stats isn't because they want to keep the ball but because the philosophy is to regain possession extremely quickly.

The dichotomy transition vs possession is also limited to the transition from defense to attack because possession teams rely on dominating their opponents on the defensive transition. So ETH isn't caught between two ideas, he is just terrible at his job with no silver lining.
 
Many say balance. It is easy to say balance and how they are not mutualy exclusive but in reality that (perfect) balance is reached only by few (and best) clubs.
In reality clubs do have specific style of play with which they play most parts of the game (possession, transition, counter, defensive etc...).

Transition is probably the most entertaining to watch but possession is the one who would i choose for my club. Possession gives you control during the match. I would rather that my team is capable to bore opposition to death than playing run and gun with chances flying on both ends. I rather choose steady, comfortable 1:0 or 2:0 win than 5:4 or 4:2 spectacle.

The thing which i love the most with possession type of teams is how they are capable to "protect" a lead. You will rarely see them parking the bus in dying minutes. They just kill the game with passes.

That is why i always claim that we only with LVG had the most clear (and modern) style of play with clear patterns in play. But yeah, it lacked execution in final third so we were pain to watch.
 
You've got to have balance to be a good side, especially when we're a team that half of the league will play a low block against.

It's fine that we try and play to our strengths but a massive problem we have is that we're so focused on trying to get the ball forward quickly that we end up giving it away and it's awful to watch. We did it constantly on Sunday. There's nothing wrong with calming down a bit at times and picking and choosing your moments.
 
It almost feels as mythical as Ralf's first half against Crystal Palace at this point but i actually liked our first half performance against Palace this season and that was the best i've seen us play with the ball for a very long time. Pity about the lack of goals and the second half display but I would prefer us to have possession and dominate teams more. Our back 4 and players like Mainoo and Zirkzee seem to be perfect fits for a more possession based system.
 
AndyMUFC said:
You've got to have balance to be a good side, especially when we're a team that half of the league will play a low block against.

It's fine that we try and play to our strengths but a massive problem we have is that we're so focused on trying to get the ball forward quickly that we end up giving it away and it's awful to watch. We did it constantly on Sunday. There's nothing wrong with calming down a bit at times and picking and choosing your moments.
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Being adaptable and varying shapes is the hallmark of a lot of the newer coaches. For Maresca, his central core and tenants revolve around tempo, generally keeping possession (but only with purpose), and the rest of the team moving with 2 or 3 passes in the future in mind, combined with principles of defending from the front.

Everything else is tailored to who you are playing. People say “well he inverts his fullbacks” except sometimes he doesn’t. The possession based counter attack we had set up for West Ham and Brighton were unique to preparing for those teams; Palmer even talked about it.

You want a consistent philosophy, but I don’t think you want an Ange where you can literally predict where their players will be in a given situation to a pint of stubbornness.
 
JPRouve said:
A small point. Dutch Football is mainly built around transition Football, Total Football and Ajax main identities are based on transition Football. The reason they have high possession stats isn't because they want to keep the ball but because the philosophy is to regain possession extremely quickly.

The dichotomy transition vs possession is also limited to the transition from defense to attack because possession teams rely on dominating their opponents on the defensive transition. So ETH isn't caught between two ideas, he is just terrible at his job with no silver lining.
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I'd probably agree with you. I understand what he is trying to do, even with the lone CM in midfield (he did the same at Ajax) but its clear there is a disconnect somewhere with how it is being translated on the pitch. It may just also be that the premier league is too fast and powerful to be able to implement his tactics without the actual best of the best. Its one thing doing it when you are Ajax and have better players than the entire league, and then doing it with a united squad that doesn't have that luxury. Even Pep ball requires the best in their specific positions to come off. Its sad, as I do think his tactics are quite interesting.
 
We can barely string 5 passes together when we are pressurised. It’s clearly what we need someone to ingrain in our ethos. Transitions are easy to implement thereafter.
 
Possession obviously. Counter attack is dead as a go to style. Even in the SAF days we didn't do it constantly, we still had passers and technical players. We seem allergic to those players nowadays.
The term counter press can feck off too
 
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