by bigmick » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:28 am
Yeah I'm not sure I agree with you Sean really. Keeping posession of the football depends on lots of things, not least of course as you've pointed out how good the players are. It also depends on the opposition of course, how well they press the ball and how much they allow you to play. Mostly though, it depends on what you are trying to do with it. If you are content to simply pass the ball along the back line, chances are you'll win the posession stats at the end of the game. If however you show intent when you have the football, it stands to reason as you press forward you increase the risk of losing posession.
Liverpools difficulty in maintaining posession last night in the bits of the game that I saw were largely due to there too often being a lack of a simple pass on. This was partly due to some fairly clever closing down from the Home team, due to a greater extent to fairly lacklustre displays from our two central midfielders (for probably legitimate reasons in both cases) but mostly because Pennant got sent off. It's very hard to ask players to get clost to the front men when you are down to ten, with them knowing that they're probably going to have to bust a gut to get back. The tendency is then to hit the front men from distance and not support, making retaining posession increasingly duifficult. Of course as fatigue sets in, the problem feeds on itself.
In the case of Arsenal (who incidently do play some lovely stuff it has to be said) they support the man in posession very effectively and move with a fluency, intricacy and invention which is unparallelled amongst english teams. They rarely play a pass beyond twenty yards or so but move teams around with the speed and precision of the interplay. It is lovely, but as Leon points out can be disrupted by teams filling in the spaces and getting close to them. In their halcyon days, Henri would dig them out of tricky situations with a moment of genius, whereas Vierra would compete physically. Now though, my suspicion is that come the colder weather, heavier pitches and more physical opponents tht they will find it hard to continue their current excellence.
This Liverpool team is a really good one in my opinion, by any historical standards. If Rafa trusts them, cuts down on the tinkering and lets them go, you will see posession football from this lot that will make you very happy in my view.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".