New season, new stats

[CroJack]

Possession:

43 % - Third worst of all Championship teams.






I am well aware that possession is not everything in football but possession is normally equal with dominance.
Mind you, last season's top four teams in the Championship had the best possession percentage.
Swans have to improve here.
If we were a great counter-attacking team who rips opposition apart by playing great counter-attacking football,
then I wouldn't say a word.


​

 

[Yankee_Jack]

If AndyPandy understood the mandate from the hiring exec to reestablish our philosophy then he didn't get it or the mandate was not made. Clearly, after a full season plus ... it's not happening. And now we have new players never before acquainted with what we have in mind.

 

[CroJack]

Passing accuracy:

60,8 % - Fifth worst.
Only Luton, Wednesday, Rotherham & Wycombe recorded worse passing accuracy than the Swans.
Not a good company.



Here are the teams with best passing accuracy:



I can not remember the last time we had worse passing accuracy. Not even under Cooper last season.
60,8 % passing accuracy is criminal compared to our passing accuracy under Potter and some previous managers like Martinez, Sousa, Rodgers and Laudrup. And not a surprise that Monk's Wednesdey is among the worst teams for both possession and passing accuracy.​

 

[CroJack]

Shots:

6 - Together with Forest second worst.
Luton worst with 3 shots.



Best teams when it comes to number of shots:



We were shot shy against Preston, and this is not a big surprise. I am going to explain it later when I do analysis
of our (quite primitive) tactics.​

 

[CroJack]

Shots on target:

1 - Joint-second worst





You must be pretty lucky when you win a game of football with only one shot on target.
All three teams who recorded most shots on target won their games
but the picture is different for the teams who recorded 1 or 0 shots on target.
Swansea and Luton won, Huddersfield and Barnsley lost, and Milwall and Forest drew their games.​

 

[CroJack]

Tackles:

10 - Joint-third worst





This is nothing new. Swans don't tackle as much as they should and could.
We can expect Birmingham to constantly tackle and foul us.

​

 

[Yankee_Jack]

In a nutshell, we won despite ourselves.

 

[CroJack]

Absent midfield

It's easy to see something's wrong here:



We didn't control the midfield against Preston, and our tactics was based on attacking through the flanks. Our attacking play was pretty one-dimensional, though some great diagonal passes by Ayew and Smith resulted in a couple of excellent chances. We scored from one of them, and the other one was waved offside.
So what's wrong? When we attacked we didn't used the shortest road to Preston's penalty area - directly through the middle. We lacked two things: direct forward passing and runs with the ball.



The result of such positioning was the lack of shots. We simply din't have anyone in a position to shoot.

Not only that our midfielders played more like wing-backs, Ayew and Lowe followed the same pattern.



So when we were attacking all our midfielders and forwards were on the wings, and only a couple of times centraly around Preston's penalty area.
This can be explained by the fact that neither Ayew nor Lowe are dedicated strikers, but some sort of attacking discipline is needed. Also, Gibbs-White has to play there where he has to play, and that's in ATM position - in front of opposition penalty area.

We have always had a direct midfield spine with direct passing and runs with the ball:

Britton - Allan - Siggy

Britton - De Guzman - Michu

Cork - Shelvey/Ki - Siggy

Grimes - Fer - Celina

but under Cooper we've somehow lost that.
Even last season when we had Gallagher in ATM position we had the same problem, and that one is on Cooper.​

 

[ivoralljack]

Great stuff @CroJack very interesting and very pertinent in respect of our shortcomings.

 

[CroJack]

Great stuff @CroJack very interesting and very pertinent in respect of our shortcomings.

Thanks . It's a pity we don't use our midfielders much better than we do. Both Smith and Gibbs-White are good football players. Also Ayew and Lowe can do a lot of damage up front if we pass the ball more directly through opposition midfield. Attacking through the flanks should be one of the weapons in our arsenal, not the only weapon. Under Potter we did a lot of direct forward passing, and our players are more than capable of doing the same under Cooper.

We were pretty good defensively against Preston. I liked how we pressed and stressed them. Lowe and Ayew worked their socks off throughout the game constantly pressing high. We kept our defensive shape and didn't allow Preston to create much. Rodon was great in the air, Cabango and Guehi made many clever interceptions. Bidwell, Roberts and Smith put some great crosses into Preston penalty area.

Saying all that, we have to improve our passing and possession %. We have to make more direct runs with the ball and more direct forward passes through the middle. It's still early to draw conclusions, the lads don't know each other's movements yet, and I'm sure we'll improve.

 

[CroJack]

Have a look at this example from the Preston game. Three passes could have created a great one on one chance but Lowe made a wrong run.

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[CroJack]

Or these examples.

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[ivoralljack]

This graphically illustrates what I've been saying for yonks about our midfield, which to my mind has far too often been ineffective. If a midfielder in possession has space in front of him, he should drive into it at pace. Defenders HATE players running at them, which has been my experience in years of playing and watching the game - more years than Cooper has been on earth in fact.

BUT, to make the best use of this, the player in possession must have others running off him to distract and occupy the defenders and the more support he has, the more options are available when he chooses/needs to pass the ball. It's not rocket science. This is simple basic football but it relies on players making the right decisions at the right time....... and that is easier said than done. This is what separates the average footballer from the good one. A player either has that ability or he doesn't but it is a quality that can be improved by intensive work in training and getting all the players singing from the same song sheet. That's where a good manager/coach earns his money.