Thanks
Guido ๐บ๐ฆ
. I understand the theory, which is the same whether it's a goal kick or not. I've yet to see evidence that it's better than playing a long ball, unless you're a superior team already.
If someone can show me stats that prove it, for Spurs for example, I'll happily accept it.
Will have to hunt around, not hopeful I could find anything though.
But you have to think back to what happens over a period of an entire 90mins, during this time a team who dose it will consistently attempt doing it, it's their default, so allow me to pull a figure out of the air, let's say they play out 40 times (20 times each half), how many times does the oppo score from pressing that team-high and winning the ball back to actually scoring a goal as a consequence? It's not that common that this scenario happens - YES it happens of course but it's a lot less than it "feels".
I can think of an example: CL Inter vs Spurs 2-1 Inter pressed us high throughout the first half as we attempted to pass out. Their press was reasonably successful, in so far as our passing wasn't very good, the lads were pressured into some poor passing.
BUT did Inter gain an advantage from it? The answer is an emphatic NO! They barely had a decent shot, limited to speculative ones from long range and absolutely NOTHING as a direct result of winning the ball whilst we attempted to play through their press.
However, the limited chances we created every single one of our opportunities, bar one - a FK from Eriksen came as a direct result of us playing through their press. Whilst we didn't do this as often as we had done under Peak Poch, it still demonstrates the risk and reward for doing it. (Kane missed a couple of absolute sitters as well).
The feeling however in post-match discussions was that Inter were brilliant first half, the perception was they were better because they were pressing high and we couldn't get our passing together to play through them (even though all the chances created were by us and as a result of playing through them), the feeling makes fans nervous and uncomfortable and this feeling dominates and over-rides the statistic that they created fuck all from pressing us high whilst we played out and created our chances doing exactly that.
TDLR: When it's obvious that when a team attempting to do it isn't as good at it as Man City at doing it, the "feeling" overrides what is still actually happening in many cases. The fans (and the commentators) are all more nervous than the players in most cases.