Yet if you look under "Styles" in the Match Summary you will see that it says "Played with width". Also, if you look at the Player Positions graphics for all the matches that were played last night, you would conclude that none of the teams involved played with width.
I'll second that (although happy enough for Martin ahead of Whittaker, they both seem as bad as each other recently). I'd like to see it played with some freedom for the attcking midfield trio to interchange and keep the oppo defense guessing, I fear however such freedom would not be tolerated! Bah!
I'm not sure I agree with them in it though - the player positioning quite clearly shows we were narrow as you say, but the reason they conclude that is because our attacks apparently "came" from the side. The trouble is, I think they must be basing that on the fullbacks moving forward, but given how few crosses we put in, width really doesn't represent our style of play. The fact that "playing through the middle" doesn't represent our style either just goes to show how blunt we are.
As pointed out by Supers I obviously don't know what a diamond is. My understanding was 1 striker,2 widemen and I centre midfield backed be 2 defensive/holding midfield.and a back 4. striker wingman wingman attack/centre midfield def/holding midfield def/holding midfield back c/back c/back back Can someone educate me please
I think traditionally and generally, people tend to picture a four-man midfield (one DM, one AM, and either two wide men or two CMs) when anyone uses the phrase 'diamond'. Your version (aesthetically anyway) Yarco, appears to be more of a 'Christmas Tree' to me.
I think most people view it like this: Goalkeeper Fullback ... Centreback ... Centreback ... Fullback Holding Midfielder Right Midfielder............. Left Midfielder Attacking Midfielder Centre Forward ... Centre Forward I.e., you look at just the midfield and it forms a diamond.
But as I pointed out, if you look at the Player Positions graphics for all the matches played last night, you would have to conclude that no team played with width (despite being described on the same page as having done just that). You say we put in few crosses, but OPTA recorded 19, which I wouldn't call "few".
Good assessment from Paddy Davitt (I wish he would write lucidly like this in the EDP instead of trying to be a clone of Rick 'waffle' Waghorn) http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/norwichcity/id/1529?&cc=5739
Admittedly few is an exaggeration, but a lot fewer than Newcastle - they put in 28 - and they only had one striker. And even as a percentage of possession, Newcastle crossed the ball much more. I quite literally can't remember us putting in a single cross, though
For what it's worth, our ratio of successful crosses was much better than Newcastle's (30% to 10%). People "see" and "remember" different things, which is why I keep banging the stats drum.
But, is it fair to say that: More crosses = more chances created from crosses BUT usually a lower overall ratio of successful crosses
Newcastle has two top quality FBs (have a look at their Whoscored ratings for the match: 8.1 and 7.5 and for the season: 7.5 and 7.13) and that had a lot to do with City's undereffectiveness from the flanks. City's FBs by comparison have these ratings: Whittaker 6.85, Olsson 6.76 and Martin 6.5). That differential is much the same for the whole starting line-up and it becomes even greater when you compare the top five teams.
No, because there can be no chance created from an unsuccessful cross; unless a cross is successful in the first place, a chance cannot be created from it. Unsuccessful crosses are crosses e.g. cleared by defenders or claimed by the keeper. What you could say is that a high number of crosses indicates a high degree of pressure on the opposition defence, but as we know too well, a team can exert a lot of pressure on the opposition defence yet fail to create many chances, score or win the game.
Exactly right. If you look at the Player Influence stats for the match, Debuchy heads the list and Santon is not far behind.
Really weird that when Hughton sets up defensively with 1 up front we seem to concede easily yet when he plays 4 4 2 we keep getting clean sheets<8 now i think>, the clean sheet factor is our only saving grace this season and may keep us up if we do it against our rivals.
Put it this way 21% of our passes were long, a staggering amount 12% for Newcastle It stands to reason that if you hit long passes you are more likely to give it away and fail to put in a cross. It's not a case of us not playing the crossing game, more to do with us being unable to get the ball to the correct position to do so. It is even worse than normal.
