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Manager Ange Postecoglou

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Was sacking Ange a good idea?

  • Yes, I think it was a good idea.

    Votes: 73 64.6%

  • No, I think it was a bad idea.

    Votes: 40 35.4%
  • Total voters
    113
Matt1882 said:
We can't press a team into mistakes if we already have the ball.
Pressing and possession are unrelated.
I bet we won far more presses against Brentford than Woolwich and Leicester. Possibly even Newcastle. Because against Brentford, they had a lot more of the ball in order for us to press than the other 3.

That's the difference between giving up possession and having the ball taken off you.
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Mate, you just typed “pressing and possession are unrelated” and then thought “yup, I’ll just hit send on that bad boy”?

Talk me through the practicality of “giving up possession”?
They just pass us the ball back every time?

Find a possession dominant team in history that didn’t press to get the ball back. If there is one you’ve probably found a glitch in the matrix
 
Dr Rocktopus said:
The xG data is massively flawed to the point of making it little more than an educated guess at best.

I can see why some find it useful but there are simply far too many variables to take it seriously.
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Considering it seems like every single player is graded the same it makes it even more flawed.

Haaland ia out performing his Xg this season by 5 goals.

A striker of his quality should have a different set of criteria to measure the expected outcome of his actions based on his superior quality.

As nasm_f pointed out though, I'd imagine coaching staff use much more intricate stats to measure teams and individual players.
 
xG just estimates the chance of an average player scoring from a given situation. A clinical striker will consistently outperform their xG over a season, as will a team full of clinical shooters.
 
Matt1882 said:
We can't press a team into mistakes if we already have the ball.
Pressing and possession are unrelated.
I bet we won far more presses against Brentford than Woolwich and Leicester. Possibly even Newcastle. Because against Brentford, they had a lot more of the ball in order for us to press than the other 3.

That's the difference between giving up possession and having the ball taken off you.
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Defending with 11 men behind the ball takes it toll over 90 mins though. It's mentally exhausting and you just have to make one mistake to be punished.

We have lacked quality in the speed and excecution of our passing, something which can improve over time.

Look at our first goal vs Everton as an example of when we have turned our possession against a deep block into a goal. Everyone involved produced quality in the build up to that goal.
 
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Richard Arlison said:
People have absolutely been claiming that teams let us have the ball,

How are we supposed to have the ball if we don’t win it back from them?

Or you are straight face trying to claim that our possession dominance isn’t because of our press but because teams just pass us the ball so they can sit deep and counter ? 🤣
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Sorry, I don't say this about you, I say this about your post and about this specific stance you've been voicing here over and over - but it is really stupid and way-overly-simplistic.

YES - managers absolutely set the team up with specific gameplan and task. And yes - this could very well involve instructions prioritizing compact defending in central areas above all other. Maybe it is news to you, but putting priority to one thing means less resources for others. It is calculated risk and this is how the whole world works. If priority is defending the box and central areas, it leaves less manpower to midfield and forward areas. So it is easier to overcrowd their players and turn over possession for us.

So NO giving ball away is not their GOAL but it is a sacrifice that comes as result with their main priorities. They do not intentionally pass the ball to our players or give away possession, but they are willing to accept increased risk and frequency of it happening because they have determined that this sacrifice is worth it to execute their biggest priority.

And YES this was absolutely part of the gameplan for both - Newcastle and Woolwich.
Neither came here with gameplan to always lose possession and pass the ball to our players or out of play. But losing possession more often was risk they were willing to take, yes.

What is so hard to understand or ridicule in that?
 
Richard Arlison said:
What is an outlier for you? Technically
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Outlier is statistical term of something that is very extreme.
Something that is not explained and in statistical analysis often gets eliminated from dataset and cannot be explained/ does not have relation to main phenomena or trend.

Values that are within one or two standard deviation (into which Son realization comfortably fits), are hardly "outliers" but rather just rather values that are systematically higher than average or lower than average. Just like I claim that realization of chances might be on average in Pep system (systematically below avg) and Conte system (systematically above avg).
 
TheSpurEst said:
Sorry, I don't say this about you, I say this about your post and about this specific stance you've been voicing here over and over - but it is really stupid and way-overly-simplistic.

YES - managers absolutely set the team up with specific gameplan and task. And yes - this could very well involve instructions prioritizing compact defending in central areas above all other. Maybe it is news to you, but putting priority to one thing means less resources for others. It is calculated risk and this is how the whole world works. If priority is defending the box and central areas, it leaves less manpower to midfield and forward areas. So it is easier to overcrowd their players and turn over possession for us.

So NO giving ball away is not their GOAL but it is a sacrifice that comes as result with their main priorities. They do not intentionally pass the ball to our players or give away possession, but they are willing to accept increased risk and frequency of it happening because they have determined that this sacrifice is worth it to execute their biggest priority.

And YES this was absolutely part of the gameplan for both - Newcastle and Woolwich.
Neither came here with gameplan to always lose possession and pass the ball to our players or out of play. But losing possession more often was risk they were willing to take, yes.

What is so hard to understand or ridicule in that?
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So you think pressing and possession are unrelated as well?
 
TheSpurEst said:
Outlier is statistical term of something that is very extreme.
Something that is not explained and in statistical analysis often gets eliminated from dataset and cannot be explained/ does not have relation to main phenomena or trend.

Values that are within one or two standard deviation (into which Son realization comfortably fits), are hardly "outliers" but rather just rather values that are systematically higher than average or lower than average. Just like I claim that realization of chances might be on average in Pep system (systematically below avg) and Conte system (systematically above avg).
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Players who outperformed their xG for one season are standard deviations around the norm.

Son does it pretty much every season, if you looked at an X Y plot of seasons vs number of seasons outperforming xG, I’d be very shocked if Son isn’t an outlier.
 
Matt1882 said:
We can't press a team into mistakes if we already have the ball.
Pressing and possession are unrelated.
I bet we won far more presses against Brentford than Woolwich and Leicester. Possibly even Newcastle. Because against Brentford, they had a lot more of the ball in order for us to press than the other 3.

That's the difference between giving up possession and having the ball taken off you.
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I have no idea the point you are making. I simply stated that the idea teams were "letting us press them was wild" I maintain teams are allowing us possession of the football and minimally contesting it in certain areas. I think you are confusing yourself. You seem a bit over fixated on the idea of pressing with out fully appreciating some of the nuance. 'Pressing and possession are unrelated' seems like something Mike Bassett would say....
 
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Richard Arlison said:
People have absolutely been claiming that teams let us have the ball,

How are we supposed to have the ball if we don’t win it back from them?

Or you are straight face trying to claim that our possession dominance isn’t because of our press but because teams just pass us the ball so they can sit deep and counter ? 🤣🤣
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You're an odd fellow look what you have written. Do you actually read stuff you are replying to? I'm right about this people are talking to themselves.

YES Richard Arlison Richard Arlison people have absolutely been claiming that teams let us have the ball. THAT was what I fucking said mate.As opposed to what you answered

Why would teams let's us 'press them? This is a literary device it's call a rhetorical question. I'm sorry if it confused you. The gibberish you added with emoji is what you seem to be saying not what I have said. Prehaps you and Matt1882 Matt1882 should debate it as he think pressing and possession are unrelated. You should be all over that tactico. 🫣
 
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Teams have very obviously come with a plan to sit deep and hit it long and accurately. They’ve also struggled with the intensity of our press as no team wants to blindly boot it upfield or lose it while playing out.

It’s both. Obviously. None of Leicester, Everton or Brentford are good enough to compete. Newcastle had like 24% of the ball against us last season too. It’s tactical. Obviously.

Woolwich had the most obvious game plan ever. Yes we turned it over at times and obviously that wasn’t intended but we didn’t have more % purely due to our own brilliance. None of these teams intended to control possession.
 
Deuterz said:
Teams have very obviously come with a plan to sit deep and hit it long and accurately. They’ve also struggled with the intensity of our press as no team wants to blindly boot it upfield or lose it while playing out.

It’s both. Obviously. None of Leicester, Everton or Brentford are good enough to compete. Newcastle had like 24% of the ball against us last season too. It’s tactical. Obviously.

Woolwich had the most obvious game plan ever. Yes we turned it over at times and obviously that wasn’t intended but we didn’t have more % purely due to our own brilliance. None of these teams intended to control possession.
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Not sure why what you have written offends some so deeply. One of the managers actually said it! It won't always work mind, and that should give us all hope. But it's clearly an intention.
 
Deuterz said:
Teams have very obviously come with a plan to sit deep and hit it long and accurately. They’ve also struggled with the intensity of our press as no team wants to blindly boot it upfield or lose it while playing out.

It’s both. Obviously. None of Leicester, Everton or Brentford are good enough to compete. Newcastle had like 24% of the ball against us last season too. It’s tactical. Obviously.

Woolwich had the most obvious game plan ever. Yes we turned it over at times and obviously that wasn’t intended but we didn’t have more % purely due to our own brilliance. None of these teams intended to control possession.
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It may be both for us but the correlation between pressing to reduce the number of passes per defensive action and possession is blindingly clear across ALL teams.

It’s pretty clear that our press is the reason we have most of the ball.

Teams haven’t been happy to let us have the ball, we have taken it from them. Teams HAVE been happy to sit deep and defend when we have the ball because we haven’t been hurting them enough and we haven’t punished them after we turned them over.

Brentford showed encouraging signs because we did hurt them when we had the ball and after we turned them over.

But the season is 5 games old. Let’s see what it all looks like when we’ve played everyone once.

Shotgunofmichalebrow said:
You're an odd fellow look what you have written. Do you actually read stuff you are replying to? I'm right about this people are talking to themselves.

YES Richard Arlison Richard Arlison people have absolutely been claiming that teams let us have the ball. THAT was what I fucking said mate.As opposed to what you answered

Why would teams let's us 'press them? This is a literary device it's call a rhetorical question. I'm sorry if it confused you. The gibberish you added with emoji is what you seem to be saying not what I have said. Prehaps you and Matt1882 Matt1882 should debate it as he think pressing and possession are unrelated. You should be all over that tactico. 🫣
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An odd fellow or not, I’ve tried to explain it as clearly as I can above.

No teams aren’t happy to give us the ball, we generally haven’t given them much choice either way. What they have been able to do is sit deep when we do have the ball because we hadn’t been breaking them down and we also hadn’t punished them when we did turn them over.
 
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