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?
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?
