...and if you were in doubt, last night should go some way to swaying your opinion. Norwich City 6-3 Bury - possession for Bury 53% Peterborough 6-0 Reading - possession for Reading 50% Barnsley 1-5 Southampton - possession for Barnsley 50% Derby Co 5-0 Brentford - possession for Brentford 49% West Brom 3-0 Newport - possession for Newport 51% Carlisle Utd 2-5 Leicester City - possession for Carlisle 50% Is it me, or do these figures almost defy belief? Quite incredible that seemingly "even" games, can be so one sided in terms of the result.
Possession figures are never accurate, I have no idea why people put so much faith in them. There is no way in hell Bury had 53% possession last night
If these are correct I think it underlines the old saying, "it aint what you got,it's what you do with it"
Do you count as in possesion whilst you take the ball out of the back of the net and get ready to kick off again?
as usual, the bbc stats are completely wrong, so can be dismissed anyway bury had about 40% of the ball, no more than that
Although it's true that some critics put too much emphasis on possession stats, surely it's true that if you afford Bury (for example) most of the possession, they will hurt you less than if you afford the likes of Manchester Utd the majority of possession.
That would be a reasonable assumption but it does not always ring true. Last season, Man Utd probably had more possession against us than most teams at Carrow Road, but they still went away with nothing
I do find it hard to believe, I thought, although they did very little to hurt us with the ball on the day, they did pass and retain it very well for long periods of the game and would have thought that figure would have been considerably higher, perhaps 60%
Granted, I do understand that it is far more difficult to limit the amount of possession a side like Man Utd has.
that's because opta had it around the 43-57% mark if i remember correctly. the beeb make up their stats. they said we only had 3 corners against everton the other week yet had 6 in the first half alone.
That would appear to be a better reflection of the days events BBC suck then I will only use them for the shot count in future.
possession is important but it is not vital. celtic had 14% possession against barcelona last season and won 2-1. it's what you do with the ball that matters, not how long you keep it or how many passes you make. any team can get 60-70% possession by simply knocking the ball around at the back, in your own half.
Unless you are Peterborough Utd against a certain team from south of Norfolk - what was it again? 7-1 with 91% possession
I have the FourFourTwo StatsZone app on my iPhone. It is powered by OPTA and so is a more reliable source than others. Re. possession, the first thing I do is work out the effective use of possession ratio i.e. divide the number of goals each team scores by their possession % then compare the two. Or you can use points won rather than goals scored.
