"Long Ball Reading"

[ZacNaloen]

http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/statszone/ ... elsea.aspx?
20.4% our balls were long and they all seem to be passes out to our wingers from either flank , who knew?

Boring long ball football.

[marcusopp]

http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/statszone/ ... elsea.aspx?
20.4% our balls were long and they all seem to be passes out to our wingers from either flank , who knew?

Boring long ball football.

So what do they consider to be a long ball? A long pass is totally different to hit and hope football. If one of our wingers looks like he's in space, it's well worth putting him in. Nothing wrong with direct football, beats pussy-footing around with it at the back like liverpool!
I quite like our style of play. Proper 4-4-2 with wingers in each side and 2 strikers. Crosses into the box etc. Hopefully the Pog can be the new Jimmy Quinn!

[ZacNaloen]

Long ball is anything over 30 yards.

Yeh, it's quite clear just from their graphic the difference between our style of long ball and Stokes style.

[Extended-Phenotype]

Even more telling is that half of these ‘long balls’ are hit from one flank to the other which, if Gerrard or Lampard were the catalyst, would be referred to as “switching the play” or “crossfield balls”.

[PistolPete]

+ 1-1 fair result, Stoke play like Reading but with more 'gamesmanship' - lets not kid ourselves about that - and more experience.

When pundits say 'Reading play the game the right way, or words to that effect, I ready do begin to wonder how much they watch us.

Guthrie now wants the ball all the time which should see us cut out the long ball a bit. On the other hand we now have the Pog, which means we'll do it more!

Yep, we're long ball.

[ZacNaloen]

Yeh we do seem to play it from left to right a lot.

[West Stand Man]

Even more telling is that half of these ‘long balls’ are hit from one flank to the other which, if Gerrard or Lampard were the catalyst, would be referred to as “switching the play” or “crossfield balls”.

.. and the pundits would be getting highly aroused by the amazing talent it takes to make that type of ball (not to mention to control it when it arrives on the wing).

[Platypuss]

Even more telling is that half of these ‘long balls’ are hit from one flank to the other which, if Gerrard or Lampard were the catalyst, would be referred to as “switching the play” or “crossfield balls”.

A 1-third success rate is shoite though.

[ZacNaloen]

+ 1-1 fair result, Stoke play like Reading but with more 'gamesmanship' - lets not kid ourselves about that - and more experience.

When pundits say 'Reading play the game the right way, or words to that effect, I ready do begin to wonder how much they watch us.

Guthrie now wants the ball all the time which should see us cut out the long ball a bit. On the other hand we now have the Pog, which means we'll do it more!

Yep, we're long ball.

It's quite clear from that graphic we play nothing like Stoke...

[ZacNaloen]

Even more telling is that half of these ‘long balls’ are hit from one flank to the other which, if Gerrard or Lampard were the catalyst, would be referred to as “switching the play” or “crossfield balls”.

A 1-third success rate is shoite though.

Yes, we definitely need to improve that.

[Turns8]

Be interesting to see the 'short pass' comparison and then the total passes through the game....

If we made say 55 long passes and only 10 short passes, I'd agree we are all 'long ball'. However, as already mentioned our 'long' passes seem to be to the flanks rather than Stoke who just pump it straight down the middle.

Also, with Guthrie always looking to be the catalyst, I can see the style changing slightly...with more 'clever' through balls for the forwards and wingers to run onto, only problem with this is the moment Guthrie doesn't make 2 or 3 of these count within the first 20mins people will start with all the negatives about him being rubbish!!!

[ZacNaloen]

You can work out our short passes I think.

If we made 55 Long passes, 19 of which was succesful, and this was 20.4% of our total passes... . Make it a bit easier by rounding the percentage down = 275 passes total.


LOL, that's how many passes Xavi makes in a Barcelona game

Over all passing accuracy was 65%.%. Someone else can work out how many of our short passes was succesful then

[Extended-Phenotype]

Even more telling is that half of these ‘long balls’ are hit from one flank to the other which, if Gerrard or Lampard were the catalyst, would be referred to as “switching the play” or “crossfield balls”.

A 1-third success rate is shoite though.

Not really. That's pretty much average for passing 30yds+.

[pea]

Just to say that whilst Guthrie is a good passer he's also pretty direct and I don't think having him in the team will affect the long ball stats much, one of his talents in the games I've seen him in so far is spotting a player on the other side of the pitch in space and getting the ball to him, which he does pretty effectively. Nothing negative about long balls when it is done with the intent and accuracy that players like Guthrie do.

[Ian Royal]

Personally I don't think anything over 30 yards is a good indicator. That would include a goal kick to about 5-10 yards inside your own half. Which is anything but long. I'd like to see us bring it down to about 15%, mainly by cutting out a lot of the balls up the pitch from the CBs and FBs which seem to be more hopeful than creative.

[Esteban]

Guthrie now wants the ball all the time which should see us cut out the long ball a bit. On the other hand we now have the Pog, which means we'll do it more!

If we start playing long balls towards Pogrebnyak, we'll fail unfortunately. He prefers the ball to feet, similar to Jason Roberts. On the few occasions we did hit Pogrebnyak's feet on Saturday, he held the ball up very well and brought others into the game. I remember one very good passage of play in the first half when he dropped deep to pick up the ball, beat Shawcross and Huth, then played it out wide to Robson-Kanu. That's how we'll see his value and quality. I thought his movement was good on Saturday and once he and Le Fondre get a bit more game time together and we've settled into the league as a team, he should start to shine.

As for us playing long ball, in the 20 minutes either side of half time when Stoke were on top we were definitely playing that way; but that was because we let them dictate the game and we were a bit naive in that respect. Although a 'long ball' may be considered anything over 30 yards, it is different to Stoke's tactics of looking for Crouch's head all game long. I'd describe us as direct, but not a long ball team in the same way Stoke played it.

[melonhead]

any system that bins passes together in broad blocks, and where a 30 yard pass is "long" but a 29 yard pass is "short"
is pretty damned meaningless

[maffff]

Yeh we do seem to play it from left to right a lot.

How many of those were balls to McCleary when he was tearing their LB/LCB to shreds? I can recall 4/5 times when it was working that we switched play like that over to him as he was in acres of space. He was also having the ball switched over to him around the halfway line and pegging it up the wing.

[JordCot]

One successful long ball I remember in particular was a lovely ball from Harte on the half way line swung right over to Mcanuff high up on the right touchline which he didn't really gather well. When done properly and to the wingers its a great way of getting into a team but they have to be played pretty pacey otherwise they are easy to defend against as a number of ours seemed to be cut out easily enough

[Stuboo]

+ 1-1 fair result, Stoke play like Reading but with more 'gamesmanship' - lets not kid ourselves about that - and more experience.

When pundits say 'Reading play the game the right way, or words to that effect, I ready do begin to wonder how much they watch us.

Yep, we're long ball.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with that, though we also play a short passing game, especially in the final third. I think our biggest amount of long balls come from defence, which is a safe bet when being chased down by the other team, but I feel we could play it out a bit more.