Is long ball always bad?

[FindernRam]

I see the self-appointed football style experts are already calling some of our play hoofball.

Personally, I would much prefer to see long balls into the opposition half than endless sideways and backward passing that usually ends up with losing the ball in our half. Or if we do keep it our opponents mass 10 men behind the ball making scoring much harder.

I'm not say punt and hope, but a long ball behind the defensive line for a forward or wing back to chase is a wonderful boost to excitement levels.

A glance at the stats will show how often possession-based football results in losing.

So, the question is: Do you want boring possession and a long stay in L1, or more excitement, more goals and a better chance to escape upwards? 

[Boycie]

Depends if it’s a short pitch I guess?

[Simmo’s left foot]

Sideways passing in our own half won't result in goals!

[IslandExile]

Does "long balls" include Jozefzoon's crosses which tended to sail into the stand, row z, on the opposite side of the ground.

They were bad.

[Anag Ram]

Long punts in the air are rarely successful, particularly with our squad. 

It’s getting the ball forward quickly that’s the key to success.

We are well-placed to play snappy, one and two touch football to bypass the defensive press which has undone us.

If Warne can instil the confidence to play this way, albeit with the occasional failure, we have the skill to do it. 

[Ghost of Clough]

49 minutes ago, FindernRam said:

I see the self-appointed football style experts are already calling some of our play hoofball.

Personally, I would much prefer to see long balls into the opposition half than endless sideways and backward passing that usually ends up with losing the ball in our half. Or if we do keep it our opponents mass 10 men behind the ball making scoring much harder.

I'm not say punt and hope, but a long ball behind the defensive line for a forward or wing back to chase is a wonderful boost to excitement levels.

A glance at the stats will show how often possession-based football results in losing.

So, the question is: Do you want boring possession and a long stay in L1, or more excitement, more goals and a better chance to escape upwards? 

1. Most comments tend to relate to having control of the game (or not as the case may be). Long balls, to forwards to don't win the ball in the air very much is pointless as the ball ends up coming straight back and having to defend against another wave of attack, often without resetting in time.

2. The occasional long ball behind the defence is useful, but it has to be with purpose, not aimless into the corner with little chance of getting something from it.

3. A quick glance at the stats will show teams towards the bottom tend to have less of the ball than those at the top. This is shown by actually looking at the stats in more detail, where only 3 sides in the top half of the table are in the bottom 12 possession stats. Ipswich are the leaders in possession and are 2nd, whereas Morecombe are 24th in the table and 24th in the possession ranking. 
The other thing is, having possession doesn't mean you can't go long very often, just like having little of the ball doesn't mean you go long all the time. Yet, we see a similar trend. 5 out of the current top 6 are in the bottom 12 for long balls per pass attempt (Portsmouth are 13th lowest), whilst only 3 of the top 12 are in the top 12 for successful long passes per pass attempt.
You also have the belief that possession means fewer goals. However, there's a general trend of more possession = more goals. Ipswich are the obvious example, leading the charts in both, whereas Morecombe are bottom in both. Only 3 sides with less than 50% possession have scored more than 15 goals, whereas 6 with more than 50% have.

4. Since you're asking people if they want to stay in L1 for a long time or having a better chance of going up, the answer would be choosing the option which involves playing a possession based side with shorter passing.

[jono]

23 minutes ago, Anag Ram said:

Long punts in the air are rarely successful, particularly with our squad. 

It’s getting the ball forward quickly that’s the key to success.

We are well-placed to play snappy, one and two touch football to bypass the defensive press which has undone us.

If Warne can instil the confidence to play this way, albeit with the occasional failure, we have the skill to do it. 

I agree. Thing is “playing out from the back” as long as the players remember the “out” part of the sentence. Midfielders moving to receive the ball forward of the defenders and past the attacking line. Thing is we didn’t do this. We became ponderous in the extreme. 

[bcnram]

There is no doubt that our playing out from the back was sometimes an issue (not as often as some say) as we had a couple of players who were uncomfortable with the style. My assumption before Rosenior left, was that we would recruit players to fit into that style. 
 

My fear is that Warne will go the other way and recruit players to fit in with his style of launching balls into the other half. I shuddered at the sight of Port Vale playing better football than Derby apart from a couple of brief spells. 
#bringbackfootball

x

[Carl Sagan]

Just saying:

 

[Srg]

Depends on your definition of long ball. An aimless hoof is bad and playing it up to a striker with a defender on top of him to try and win a header (with the players we have) is bad. A longer ball, utilising channels or runs from deep is not inherently bad. In fact, going long, especially early in games, often then forces the defence to respect that ball which pushes them deeper and gives you space to play it out shorter anyway.

[Leeds Ram]

The problem with this question is that it's entirely contextual. If you have a squad that's built for a direct style of play then playing a short passing game won't work as it will inevitably break down. If you have a squad that is built for a short passing style and a slower transition then it doesn't make much sense to go direct and bypass your better players. Direct teams can be successful, look at Warnock's Cardiff City for instance a few seasons ago and even our team under Rowett who used a quicker transition style. So I'm not against direct teams on principle. 

What frustrated me against Port Vale was Warne's set up that didn't appear to reflect the strengths of our team. Playing 3-5-2 with two wingers made us defensively fragile on both the wings especially as NML seems to have poor concentration, from crosses (when stretched out in transition our box lacked good headers of the ball) and neutered our attacking strengths too. Rather than Warne adapting to the squad conditions at derby as he said he would, instead he seemed to bring Rotherham with him. Personally, I think if it continues in that vein the experiment is heading for failure. 

[maxjam]

Man City regularly use a long ball, as do some other top teams.  I guess its all about when you do it and whether its aimless lumped into the corners ?

https://www.football365.com/news/liverpool-manchester-city-long-ball-football-john-nicholson

[Ghost of Clough]

29 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Man City regularly use a long ball, as do some other top teams.  I guess its all about when you do it and whether its aimless lumped into the corners ?

https://www.football365.com/news/liverpool-manchester-city-long-ball-football-john-nicholson

No team in the top four divisions opts for a long pass less than Man City (6.8%). Derby rank 17th (12.9%), with 5 non-PL teams ranked above us.
Man City also have the greatest success at playing long balls (68.5%) than any other side (suggesting they are very good at choosing when to o long). Chelsea are 2nd with 54.3%. Derby are 60th (37.4%)

[RoyMac5]

57 minutes ago, Leeds Ram said:

What frustrated me against Port Vale was Warne's set up that didn't appear to reflect the strengths of our team. Playing 3-5-2 with two wingers made us defensively fragile on both the wings especially as NML seems to have poor concentration, from crosses (when stretched out in transition our box lacked good headers of the ball) and neutered our attacking strengths too. Rather than Warne adapting to the squad conditions at derby as he said he would, instead he seemed to bring Rotherham with him. Personally, I think if it continues in that vein the experiment is heading for failure. 

Yep. We're short a right fullback when playing a four. When playing a 3/5 we're short centre-halves comfortable on the ball and two wingbacks! Bloody annoying.

[Comrade 86]

1 hour ago, maxjam said:

Man City regularly use a long ball, as do some other top teams.

Not really. Not a statistical observation but they are all about short to medium length passing and creating overloads. Sure, every team goes long now and then, but City do not regularly play that way and have not for a fair while.

[maxjam]

23 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

No team in the top four divisions opts for a long pass less than Man City (6.8%). Derby rank 17th (12.9%), with 5 non-PL teams ranked above us.
Man City also have the greatest success at playing long balls (68.5%) than any other side (suggesting they are very good at choosing when to o long). Chelsea are 2nd with 54.3%. Derby are 60th (37.4%)

It depends whether you are judging Man City tendency to hoof it long or play it short. For sheer number of long balls they rank 15th in the PL this season and were 18th last season.  Over 1800 long balls last season suggests it not something they ever do.

https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_long_balls?se=489

https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_long_balls?se=418

I'm not saying they lump it forwards at every opportunity, of course they don't - but they do have the players to tap it around ad infinitum so their overall percentage is going to be lower than other teams.  Crucially however, all teams in the PL last season were within around 1000 long balls of each other, whereas Man City (1st) had 14k more overall passes than the teams with the fewest passes...

As you said, its about picking your time to play the long ball and having the skill to execute it.  

[maxjam]

4 minutes ago, 86 Hair Islands said:

Not really. Not a statistical observation but they are all about short to medium length passing and creating overloads. Sure, every team goes long now and then, but City do not regularly play that way and have not for a fair while.

see above stats

[angieram]

23 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Yep. We're short a right fullback when playing a four. When playing a 3/5 we're short centre-halves comfortable on the ball and two wingbacks! Bloody annoying.

We were short of less players to suit Rosenior's system, than we are to suit Warne's system. 

This is what happens when you let a manager recruit for one system and then change to a manager with a different system after a handful of games.

[RodleyRam]

Play to your strengths. We are not set up to play percentages or traditional long balls to a big striker and feeding off second balls. Not saying it can't be effective for some clubs but there are limitations to hire successful you will be if you sacrifice possession through too many aimless long balls.

The key thing for us is dictating tempo and controlling games according to circumstance. 

I personally felt we did this reasonably well under LR but didn't convert control into results. 

Against Port Vale we had very limited control, mostly because we didn't control possession. We gifted then the ball too often and failed to dictate the tempo when we were ahead.

We have to learn to mix up and use our considerable talent to get control of tempo and possession. I don't think a long ball game is suited to our personnel and I don't think it's going to get results that a possession based game would...

[Ghost of Clough]

5 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Yep. We're short a right fullback when playing a four. When playing a 3/5 we're short centre-halves comfortable on the ball and two wingbacks! Bloody annoying.

Warne has stated he seeing his 3 CBs as his defenders. "Their job is to defend". That suggested to me he sees the wing backs more as wingers. If we had a pacey RCB, I don't think it would matter as much having Mendez-Laing in his current role.

January will be a very important month if we are to push on in the second half of the season. We need to add experience to our bench (aged 23-29), fill gaps where players aren't quite suited to the role required, whilst not adding much to the wage bill. I can't see us changing our first choice CBs this season though, and perhaps only getting a LWB/LM/LW in out of those 5 positions you've flagged up. Next summer will see a big transformation in defence, with only Cashin out of the current 6 first team CBs being contracted being the end of the season.

Warne's first 11 at the moment (with everyone fit) is probably: Wildsmith, Chester, Davies, Cashin, Mendez-Laing, Knight, Bird, Hourihane, Barkhuizen, McGoldrick, Collins.
The 'second 11' being: Anang, Rooney, Stearman, Forsyth, Oduroh, Sibley, Smith, Tommo, Roberts, Dobbin, Osula.
We already have 3 players in the under 23 bracket in the first 11, then only Smith as an experienced player in midfield or upfront. It's clear we'll be targeting to improve that. 

As I previously mentioned, I expect a left sided player to come in, as a starter, meaning Barkhuizen is backup to NML on the right (Oduroh then has a few months to develop in the U21s), and Roberts is backup to the new signing. Osula to be sent back to Sheff Utd with an older player coming in. We could see an older CM coming in, so it isn't just Hourihane and Smith as wise heads, which may result in Hourihane not being forced to play the full 90 every game. We'll probably look at finding a loan for Tommo so he gets some decent game time in.
Suddenly, the squad feels a bit more balanced and we have a few decent options off the bench: Smith, Barkhuizen, Sibley, Dobbin and another CF.

 

Wildsmith
Chester   Davies   Cashin
Mendez-Laing   Knight   Bird   Hourihane   **New**
McGoldrick   Collins

Anang
Rooney   Stearman   Forsyth
Barkhuizen   Sibley   Smith   **New**   Roberts
Dobbin   **New**