Possession?!? Is it all it's cracked up to be? Discuss ....

At 2-1 today I was screaming for us to get hold of the ball. Kill their pressure. Get the ball into their corners!

Just seen Leicester had only 22% possession at home v Man City and win 4-2!!!!!

So the question is...... do I know fook all?

 

Different scenario when you're 3-0 up after 20 minutes though. For the first 25 minutes of the 2nd half, I doubt Leicester touched the ball more than twice, they were happy to let City play slow ticky-tacky football in front of them.

 

So do I or not?;-)

 

I feel that we are better when we are not hogging possession due to us being very good on the counter-attack. I have to caution though that Red Rain regards me as a lazy thinker!

 

Every sport has something commentators make a bigger deal of than they should. Football it's posession. Darts it's what the three dart average is. Cricket it's the strike rate of the batter.

 

Rotherham won with just 35% possession today. Oddly enough they had more in the 2nd half defending a lead than they did in the first.

#TeamsLikeBarnsley

 

We only had 38% today according to the match stats on our twitter page. It felt like more than that though.

 

As a counter argument though. I'd say we won the game in the first half where we had 50% of possession. We finished the game with 39%

#TeamsLikeBarnsley

 

It was 50 at half time. But only 28 or something in the 2nd half. We didn't hold onto the ball much in the 2nd half, opting to clear our lines. Winnall and Bradshaw struggled to get a hold of the ball so it wasn't until Payne came on that we managed to keep the ball in Norwich's half of the field in the 2nd half. Up to then it just kept coming back at us.

#TeamsLikeBarnsley

 

Not to be under-estimated....
[video=youtube;bSxuXQCEC7M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSxuXQCEC7M[/video]

 

Unless you've got Messi Neymar and Iniesta up front, possession and silly tiki taka can only get you so far.. the final third. Which for normal teams is so frikin frustrating for fans. I'm glad most sensible teams have grown out of that fad now. Goals win games, not passes.

 

Depends what the opposition do with possession. 1st half today Norwich couldn't get into a rhythm because we pressed and pressed and closed down all alleys, we set up well.
2nd half Alex Neil made a couple of changes, and upped the intensity, quick & direct passing, and being two nil up we were happy to ease off the pressing. It worked for them and they looked **** hot going forward. Despite a shoddy first half Oliviera switched it on and ran the show along with Robbie Brady who was pushed up from left back. Our problem then was our front two, nothing would stick, and despite Bassong being the worse player i have seen at Oakwell this season, he won the ariel battle, basically because he was bigger than Winnall and Bradshaw, so it was just wave after wave of attacks right up until we made our changes. From the on in there was only one winner, so credit to Hecky for making the right change at the just the right time.