Preston game dissected - First Half

CroJack

Key Player
First 19 minutes
In the first 19 minutes the Swans played good football. Not perfect, because we still lack a lot when it comes to our attack, but good. We controlled the game as much as we controlled the ball and we finally converted our dominant play into 1:0 lead in the 19th minute. There were some moments of sloppiness, but, overall, our performance was pretty good having in mind that we played an away game.

Here are the stats from the first 19 minutes

Screenshot 2021-08-30 at 19.14.20.png

We had 3 shots to Preston's one, 2 shots on target to Preston's 0, 69.8 % possession, 89 % passing accuracy, and 1 corner-kick to Preston's 0.

Before I start analysing our performance of the first 19 minutes of the Preston game I'll give you the stats from the 20th til 47th minute of the first half so you can see the difference.


Here are the stats from the 20th til 47th minute

Screenshot 2021-08-30 at 19.16.06.png
We can see in the screenshot above a totally different picture which reflects a totally different game. Preston had 6 shots to our 0 shots, our possession dropped from 69.8 % to 54.2 %, our passing accuracy dropped from 89 % to 79 % etc. From a team who totally dominated the first 19 minutes of the game we suddenly stopped playing passing football and allowed Preston to dominate us.

But why? What happened? I don't have time to post every sequence of the game and analyse everything we did well, so I am going to concentrate on what was wrong and what/where we should improve.

Laird has two passing options, an attacking one and a boring one.
He tries to pass the ball backwards to Grimes but the much better option is Peterson
in the attacking position. That's something we should not be doing when we reach the opposition third.
What happened is even worse, because Laird's pass totally misses Grimes and ends up in a dangerous area
and in Preston's possession.

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CroJack

Key Player
During the first 19 minutes we either got dispossessed in dangerous areas or made sloppy passes five times. On average we allowed Preston to start dangerous counter-attacks every four minutes, and that's simply too much. Sloppy passes and players getting dispossessed happen in a football match, but not at that rate.
 
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