Every team is "a bit of a long ball team", even Barcelona. What matters is not length of pass AS SUCH, but whether you keep possession or turn the ball over to the opposition. Long passes can be a hugely potent weapon e.g. played by Rooney or Carrick from their own half to Van Persie who volleys the ball into the goal. Or played diagonally into space by Gerrard to be picked up by Suarez or whoever. Or played onto Andy Carroll's head and flicked on to Nolan running past him to score. But they are the exceptions: in our case most are simply hoofs upfield to relieve pressure and in the hope that someone can get hold of them. They result in turnovers, not retaining possession. I think a lot of nonsense is talked about "long ball teams". The long ball game as a strategy for winning matches involves much more than hoofing the ball long. It is based on quickly flooding the opposition box so that when the long ball arrives you gain possession from half clearances and knock downs in potentially good scoring positions. Graham Taylor's Watford, and later Wimbledon, were genuine long ball teams. Blackburn under Allardyce, and Stoke under Pulis, were also "proper" long ball teams, the latter with a unique variation based on Delap's long throws. There are no long ball teams in the PL right now so why continue to (mis)use the description?
We are certainly less of a long ball team than lamberts ncfc, however our love of long unworked crosses is costing us points. There is little point in nice passing if you are just producing the same type of final ball as last year to one individual. We don't pull defenders out of position enough.
And when we do the cross tends to be lacking. That's the only reason I tend to lean towards Whittaker at RB because his final ball is slightly better then Russ'. I would love to see RM bang in a few goals though this season. He's usually good for a few and they are often important goals.
OK, I'll revise my statement: We are one of the teams in the Prem that could be described as a 'long ball team' when compared to other teams - and we're not very good at it.
We were ninth in the league in terms of numbers of long balls hit... But fifth when it came to percentage. I think our stats are somewhat skewed though - we turn into a long ball team when under severe pressure and then because we are rubbish at it, we put ourselves under more pressure and it happens more frequently. When we aren't under pressure, we don't tend to use a long ball - i.e. with West Ham, hitting a long ball is an attacking tactic used even when not under pressure. We rarely use it as an attacking tactic (at least not successfully). I've just found this stats table from last year that perfectly illustrates the point. Despite hitting the fifth highest percent of long balls and the ninth highest number, we are rock bottom in terms of numbers successful and miles behind the nearest in terms of percentage successful: http://www.nufcblog.org/2013/06/pulis-pips-pardew-to-premier-league-long-ball-title-the-full-table/ If ever there was a stat needed sending to the players to get them to keep it on the deck, this was it. We are categorically awful at hitting long balls.
Exactly right. Our relatively high total of long balls played last season was skewed by the practice of lumping the ball forward when defending under pressure. The low accuracy percentage was similarly skewed; balls simply lumped forward to temporarily relieve pressure are not in any real sense "aimed" and in that sense are neither accurate nor inaccurate. It would be interesting to compare these stats for the two halves of last season; I would expect the totals in the first half of the season to put us nearer the middle of the table. You can be sure those stats are pinned up on the wall at Colney. The solution (as is clear from the explanations I've posted on the "Believe it or not" thread) is teamwork and movement. You can't blame Ryan Bennett for hitting the ball long if no-one has made himself available for a simple short pass out of defence, and that player in turn has not had his task made easier by someone else running into position to make the subsequent pass easy too. I would sum us up currently as (1) NOT "a long ball team" (we don't have a game strategy based on long balls); rather (2) we are a team in transition, clearly trying to move away from reliance on long balls but struggling to do so particularly when under pressure.
Good point; the answer ought to be Yes! (certainly as far as OPTA are concerned). Why not just say we are one of the teams that make a relatively high number of long passes compared to the PL average?
Those stats of course were for last season. Our percentage of long passes averaged over the six league games played so far this season is 13.2%, close to the league average for last season which was 13%. This supports the contention that we are moving in the right direction in this respect. Ooh, we are improving!
