I like to have a perusal of the games stats after most games, always a good to have a little peek to see if anyone stood out statistically and whatnot, but today I saw something interesting. In that game we had our lowest pass completion percentage of the season - 64%. This isn't to say our passing was poor, at times we were a little bit sticky trying to play it out from the back, but in the middle and final thirds it was slick, incisive and beautiful. So what you have to draw from this is that we played much more direct, tried many more dangerous attacking balls, through-balls and so on, and spent a lot less time passing it around the back. I then quickly scrolled back through our previous games. Our highest pass comp % have been 85, 84, 82, 82, 81, 81, 81. Those games were Arsenal, Wigan, United, City, WBA, West Ham and Spurs respectively. 7 losses. Our lowest has been 64, 73, 76, 77, 77, 78. Those games being Newcastle, Fulham, Villa, QPR, Everton and Swansea, 3 wins, 2 draws, one loss. Forgive me if those are slightly inaccurate as I did this in a rush, but they should be sound. That seems to fit too neatly to be coincidence, so what does this tell us? The obvious thing points to that when we try and force the play more, drive forwards and make more risky and dangerous passes rather than safe sideways passing, we play better and get better results. But of course if you swap Wigan and Everton, the games also fit nicely into our hardest and easiest fixtures, so you could say we tried to play safer against the bigger teams, whilst we went and attacked the weaker teams which makes sense. That also fits with the fact that we were too attacking against Everton and got punished, whilst we were not dangerous enough against Wigan. So what do people make of this? Another pointless stat? Does it show that we need to scrap our Barcelona aspirations and be more direct? Or does it show we need to find a balance? Or that we have our approach close to bang on, considering we came very close to stealing victories or draws from both Manchester sides and with better fortunes could have come away from the WBA, Spurs and West Ham games with points, whilst excluding the Wigan result, we have now got results in our easy games? Am I asking too many questions?
Well most of the games with a lower pass completion were at home so our passes are bound to be more adventurous.
The weather conditions played a part, more long balls today. That goes some way to explaining it I'd imagine. Maybe shorter passing is more risky though, we have been caught on the counter a few times when these passes have gone astray in midfield so maybe we're deliberately trying to play higher up the pitch.
I think you've made a good point, Mikey. Saints have been a little guilty of passing the ball around at the back, waiting patiently for an opening. It's the high-possession way of playing and these are free pass completions that go nowhere, and tend to be in our own half. When Saints become more adventurous, sure the pass completion percentage goes down, but the effectiveness of those that succeed is much greater because the Saints players are capable of it. We have a bloody talented squad.
Praise must go to the groundsmen, that pitch played superbly considering the rain. At least they didn't water it before kick off! I thought someone said that Newcastle play a lot of long balls, they didn't play many today but those they did were fairly effective, but with back four on song didn't come to much.
It was raining solidly yesterday. I'm hardly surprised that our passing stat was a little low. It might be worth contrasting with other teams that were playing in the rain this weekend.
