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Paul Tomkins is back on LFC.com
After taking a break from the official LFC website for a couple of years, acclaimed author and respected writer Paul Tomkins returns today with the first instalment of what will be a regular column this season...
For more than 30 years, between the early-'60s and the late '90s, Liverpool fans knew what to expect from their manager. Whenever the boss changed, his replacement followed suit; 'same again this week' was also 'same again this season'. But ever since, in 1998, when the club looked to it's first fully external appointment since 1959, we've been having to get used to different ideas, and some swift sea changes.
Whenever you get a new manager, you look to his history to see what you can expect. With a different set of players to work with, it's impossible to exactly replicate the circumstances of what first attracted the club to a certain candidate, but his philosophies should remain fairly constant; even if he has to adapt to his surroundings and, for the most part (initially, at least), work with what he's got.
When Gérard Houllier arrived, we expected continental professionalism. With Benítez, we knew we'd get calculation: the rotation system, zonal marking and his Valencia side's feverish pressing. Hodgson represented rigid 4-4-2 and a low-risk approach.
Each lived up to expectations in certain ways; none came and did the opposite of what was expected.
With Kenny Dalglish, given his time out of the dugout, we tried to work out if we'd see his pass-and-move style of the late '80s or the more pragmatic and direct approach seen at Blackburn, where he won the league with two big strikers.
At times there was the brilliant football of Dalglish's halcyon age - particularly in his caretaker period - but perhaps because of the influence of Steve Clarke, the defence was often stationed fairly deep. On this platform, there was a mix of the old Liverpool and the mid-'90s Blackburn 'cross to a target man' philosophy, but it never quite gelled into one coherent picture; perhaps exacerbated by the turnover of players in the past two or three years.
With Brendan Rodgers, we get a clearly defined philosophy, even if it's yet to be tested at such a level. He likes the high-pressing we saw under Benítez, and the quick passing of Dalglish's best sides. Like the best managers, he's keen on organisation, too. But if there's one word that sums up what he seems to be about, it's possession.
One of the great football questions revolves around how important possession is in terms of winning games, and it was in the news during Euro 2012 when England's percentages were amongst the lowest; while the champions, Spain, registered the highest.
"Doing a Chelsea" must have been mentioned a dozen times as England toiled - in reference to how, despite having almost none of the ball against Barcelona, the Londoners knocked out the Catalans in last season's Champions League. Individual games will always rely on more than just possession; for example, Lionel Messi missed a penalty - and his side wasted countless good chances - against Roberto Di Matteo's team. On any given day, your finishing can be poor, the opposition's goalkeeper inspired and key decisions might go against you.
Last year, Barcelona were still an exceptionally good side, but somehow the validity of keeping the ball was questioned, as if it was for mere show; a vanity project. They scored 114 league goals and had their best-ever goal difference: +85! People were starting to tire of Barça and the Spanish national team were called "boring" by some pundits. (Rather than tire of this football, it seemed that many of the players were tired, after several successive years of success, with all the extra games and pressure it can bring.)
There will always be examples of games where the team with less possession wins, but what's the overall trend?
Upon taking the Liverpool job, Rodgers noted that "If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game."
Just over a year earlier, having won promotion to the top flight with Swansea, he had said:
"We analyse passes that we make and that is one of our key performance indicators. Nine times out of 10, if we make a certain number of passes we will win the game. It means that we have control and our game is based around control and domination. We want to dominate with the ball. We average 526 passes per game and our average share of possession is 61 per cent."
Upon promotion, Swansea completed more passes than any team bar Manchester City last season, but that didn't elevate the Swans into the top two, did it? Possession without some of the world's best strikers and attacking midfielders is never going to win as many games as slightly lower possession levels for a team packed with them.
Swansea were by far and away the least-expensively assembled team in the Premier League last year, so they weren't going to have too many 'match-winners' who can steal a game from nothing. They exceeded expectations, but did so with a style suited to a bigger club.
A lot was made of Rodgers' side's possession being in deep areas, but this was also part of the defensive strategy; they kept an incredible amount of clean sheets for a newly promoted side.
It's obviously easier to keep the ball in deeper areas, where there are fewer opposition players, but most 'smaller' clubs don't even attempt it; instead, they'll cede possession with men behind the ball and look to play on the break, or by hitting long balls upfield. Swansea weren't negative, they simply controlled the game and measured their attacking moves.
With better players, Rodgers can now expect to see a side of his keeping the ball further forward. But of course, the further forward you go, the less room there is to play in.
So Liverpool may not have better overall ball-retention stats than Swansea; they'll just have more of the ball further forward (not least because teams sit back more against bigger clubs). The higher you go, the greater the need is to keep possession in the opposition's third of the pitch. But in and of itself, it guarantees nothing in individual matches. Possession should be a means to create chances, and a way of stopping the opposition from having any of their own.
In May 2010, in response to Inter Milan beating Barcelona despite a measly 16 per cent possession, Jonathan Wilson, writing in The Guardian, noted that:
"Opta statistics, produced in conjunction with Castrol, show that over the past two seasons in the Premier League in only around a third of games did one side have 60 per cent of possession or more, and when they did they won 52 per cent of the time, and lost 25 per cent. If a side had 70 per cent possession or over (which happened in 4.7 per cent of games), they won 67 per cent of the time and lost 17 per cent. Only once in the past two seasons did one side have over 80 per cent possession - Liverpool, in their 3-2 win at Bolton last August.
"In the closer games, having 50-59.9 per cent possession meant a side won 43 per cent of the time and lost 31 per cent. So there is a clear correlation between dominating possession and winning matches."
Crucially, though, he ends the paragraph with:
"Intuitively, we know that there are sides who are successful at counter-attacking, which logically means accepting a lower percentage of possession."
To me, counter-attacking only makes sense against better sides. The first half of the 2010-11 season was marked by Liverpool counter-attacking against inferior sides - something we weren't used to seeing - and I believe I'm right in saying that the only time Stoke had registered more possession than their opponents in the Premier League was against the Reds (64 per cent - 36 per cent) in the Potters' 2-0 victory. It was the Liverpool's 11th Premier League game that season, and their overall possession percentage in those matches was just 46 per cent. The club were in mid-table.
Of course, there are different types of possession stats, often treated as if they were the same; some data sources base it on the number of passes, others on the time the ball is with one team or the other. Overall, however, the difference shouldn't be too great; although, presumably, one long pass into the channel which is held up by a striker near the corner flag only counts as one successful pass, whereas in the same time frame, a short-passing side may have made half a dozen exchanges. In both instances, the team is in possession.
Also, the quality of a team's passing can be monitored by the number of passes attempted and completed, but also the pass accuracy.
Swansea, who ranked second in the overall number of passes, 'only' ranked fifth on overall possession, with a virtually identical figure to Liverpool: 55 per cent. The top four in finishing positions were also the top four in this metric; Chelsea's possession was a fraction behind that of Liverpool and Swansea. The top seven in possession percentages was the top seven in the table, with one exception.
Newcastle were the outliers, with a figure below 50 per cent (49.3 per cent), and yet finished fifth. Their success - in overreaching - was almost certainly down to the brilliant finishing of Demba Ba in the first half of the season and then, when his goals dried up, that of Pa******** Cissé. How would Swansea have fared had they been able to afford someone like Cissé?
If you don't have possession, you have to be well organised. We've all seen disorganised sides trying to attack in a frenzy, but the beauty of Barcelona, for example, is how organisation is allied to possession. Equally, they don't 'waste' players on the pitch: if teams come to sit with 10 men behind the ball, then they virtually abandon using centre-backs, and push defenders forward in choreographed manner. No-one is a passenger.
Liverpool's home form was the problem last season, and, like Chelsea, their average percentage was just over the mid-50s. Spurs, who came fourth, had a figure of 59 per cent. But the top three all had figures between 60-61 per cent. Did they finish like that because of possession, or was possession just a byproduct of having the best players?
I have a feeling that possession will be the topic we come back to, time and again, to praise Liverpool when they are winning, and to study in inquests when losing. A bottom dollar can be bet on Rodgers' approach drawing criticism in the media if the team has a couple of bad results, even though a couple of bad results is par for anyone's season.
Critics can turn against possession-based teams whenever they slip-up, with accusations of trying to walk the ball into the net. But it's a philosophy that needs to be stuck to, through good and bad - because overall, it's a sensible approach.
After taking a break from the official LFC website for a couple of years, acclaimed author and respected writer Paul Tomkins returns today with the first instalment of what will be a regular column this season...
For more than 30 years, between the early-'60s and the late '90s, Liverpool fans knew what to expect from their manager. Whenever the boss changed, his replacement followed suit; 'same again this week' was also 'same again this season'. But ever since, in 1998, when the club looked to it's first fully external appointment since 1959, we've been having to get used to different ideas, and some swift sea changes.
Whenever you get a new manager, you look to his history to see what you can expect. With a different set of players to work with, it's impossible to exactly replicate the circumstances of what first attracted the club to a certain candidate, but his philosophies should remain fairly constant; even if he has to adapt to his surroundings and, for the most part (initially, at least), work with what he's got.
When Gérard Houllier arrived, we expected continental professionalism. With Benítez, we knew we'd get calculation: the rotation system, zonal marking and his Valencia side's feverish pressing. Hodgson represented rigid 4-4-2 and a low-risk approach.
Each lived up to expectations in certain ways; none came and did the opposite of what was expected.
With Kenny Dalglish, given his time out of the dugout, we tried to work out if we'd see his pass-and-move style of the late '80s or the more pragmatic and direct approach seen at Blackburn, where he won the league with two big strikers.
At times there was the brilliant football of Dalglish's halcyon age - particularly in his caretaker period - but perhaps because of the influence of Steve Clarke, the defence was often stationed fairly deep. On this platform, there was a mix of the old Liverpool and the mid-'90s Blackburn 'cross to a target man' philosophy, but it never quite gelled into one coherent picture; perhaps exacerbated by the turnover of players in the past two or three years.
With Brendan Rodgers, we get a clearly defined philosophy, even if it's yet to be tested at such a level. He likes the high-pressing we saw under Benítez, and the quick passing of Dalglish's best sides. Like the best managers, he's keen on organisation, too. But if there's one word that sums up what he seems to be about, it's possession.
One of the great football questions revolves around how important possession is in terms of winning games, and it was in the news during Euro 2012 when England's percentages were amongst the lowest; while the champions, Spain, registered the highest.
"Doing a Chelsea" must have been mentioned a dozen times as England toiled - in reference to how, despite having almost none of the ball against Barcelona, the Londoners knocked out the Catalans in last season's Champions League. Individual games will always rely on more than just possession; for example, Lionel Messi missed a penalty - and his side wasted countless good chances - against Roberto Di Matteo's team. On any given day, your finishing can be poor, the opposition's goalkeeper inspired and key decisions might go against you.
Last year, Barcelona were still an exceptionally good side, but somehow the validity of keeping the ball was questioned, as if it was for mere show; a vanity project. They scored 114 league goals and had their best-ever goal difference: +85! People were starting to tire of Barça and the Spanish national team were called "boring" by some pundits. (Rather than tire of this football, it seemed that many of the players were tired, after several successive years of success, with all the extra games and pressure it can bring.)
There will always be examples of games where the team with less possession wins, but what's the overall trend?
Upon taking the Liverpool job, Rodgers noted that "If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game."
Just over a year earlier, having won promotion to the top flight with Swansea, he had said:
"We analyse passes that we make and that is one of our key performance indicators. Nine times out of 10, if we make a certain number of passes we will win the game. It means that we have control and our game is based around control and domination. We want to dominate with the ball. We average 526 passes per game and our average share of possession is 61 per cent."
Upon promotion, Swansea completed more passes than any team bar Manchester City last season, but that didn't elevate the Swans into the top two, did it? Possession without some of the world's best strikers and attacking midfielders is never going to win as many games as slightly lower possession levels for a team packed with them.
Swansea were by far and away the least-expensively assembled team in the Premier League last year, so they weren't going to have too many 'match-winners' who can steal a game from nothing. They exceeded expectations, but did so with a style suited to a bigger club.
It's obviously easier to keep the ball in deeper areas, where there are fewer opposition players, but most 'smaller' clubs don't even attempt it; instead, they'll cede possession with men behind the ball and look to play on the break, or by hitting long balls upfield. Swansea weren't negative, they simply controlled the game and measured their attacking moves.
With better players, Rodgers can now expect to see a side of his keeping the ball further forward. But of course, the further forward you go, the less room there is to play in.
So Liverpool may not have better overall ball-retention stats than Swansea; they'll just have more of the ball further forward (not least because teams sit back more against bigger clubs). The higher you go, the greater the need is to keep possession in the opposition's third of the pitch. But in and of itself, it guarantees nothing in individual matches. Possession should be a means to create chances, and a way of stopping the opposition from having any of their own.
In May 2010, in response to Inter Milan beating Barcelona despite a measly 16 per cent possession, Jonathan Wilson, writing in The Guardian, noted that:
"Opta statistics, produced in conjunction with Castrol, show that over the past two seasons in the Premier League in only around a third of games did one side have 60 per cent of possession or more, and when they did they won 52 per cent of the time, and lost 25 per cent. If a side had 70 per cent possession or over (which happened in 4.7 per cent of games), they won 67 per cent of the time and lost 17 per cent. Only once in the past two seasons did one side have over 80 per cent possession - Liverpool, in their 3-2 win at Bolton last August.
"In the closer games, having 50-59.9 per cent possession meant a side won 43 per cent of the time and lost 31 per cent. So there is a clear correlation between dominating possession and winning matches."
Crucially, though, he ends the paragraph with:
"Intuitively, we know that there are sides who are successful at counter-attacking, which logically means accepting a lower percentage of possession."
To me, counter-attacking only makes sense against better sides. The first half of the 2010-11 season was marked by Liverpool counter-attacking against inferior sides - something we weren't used to seeing - and I believe I'm right in saying that the only time Stoke had registered more possession than their opponents in the Premier League was against the Reds (64 per cent - 36 per cent) in the Potters' 2-0 victory. It was the Liverpool's 11th Premier League game that season, and their overall possession percentage in those matches was just 46 per cent. The club were in mid-table.
Also, the quality of a team's passing can be monitored by the number of passes attempted and completed, but also the pass accuracy.
Swansea, who ranked second in the overall number of passes, 'only' ranked fifth on overall possession, with a virtually identical figure to Liverpool: 55 per cent. The top four in finishing positions were also the top four in this metric; Chelsea's possession was a fraction behind that of Liverpool and Swansea. The top seven in possession percentages was the top seven in the table, with one exception.
Newcastle were the outliers, with a figure below 50 per cent (49.3 per cent), and yet finished fifth. Their success - in overreaching - was almost certainly down to the brilliant finishing of Demba Ba in the first half of the season and then, when his goals dried up, that of Pa******** Cissé. How would Swansea have fared had they been able to afford someone like Cissé?
If you don't have possession, you have to be well organised. We've all seen disorganised sides trying to attack in a frenzy, but the beauty of Barcelona, for example, is how organisation is allied to possession. Equally, they don't 'waste' players on the pitch: if teams come to sit with 10 men behind the ball, then they virtually abandon using centre-backs, and push defenders forward in choreographed manner. No-one is a passenger.
Liverpool's home form was the problem last season, and, like Chelsea, their average percentage was just over the mid-50s. Spurs, who came fourth, had a figure of 59 per cent. But the top three all had figures between 60-61 per cent. Did they finish like that because of possession, or was possession just a byproduct of having the best players?
I have a feeling that possession will be the topic we come back to, time and again, to praise Liverpool when they are winning, and to study in inquests when losing. A bottom dollar can be bet on Rodgers' approach drawing criticism in the media if the team has a couple of bad results, even though a couple of bad results is par for anyone's season.
Critics can turn against possession-based teams whenever they slip-up, with accusations of trying to walk the ball into the net. But it's a philosophy that needs to be stuck to, through good and bad - because overall, it's a sensible approach.
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