Ratings & Reactions: Villa v Norwich

[BigAl]

We are playing to our strengths no point in trying to put square pegs in round holes ,we don't have the players to dominate possession wise it suits us to hit teams on the break the likes of Kodjia ,Hogan ,Admoah ,Hourihane  all suited to the counterattack  with there pace and power .I think Steve Bruce deserves a lot of credit it's the first time we have looked like a proper team in 6/7 years .

[sheepyvillian]

9 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I would also be interested in an answer to the question. It's not obvious to me that having more than 50% possession at home is important in any way whatsoever. 

Show me an instance of Newcastle consistently having less than 50 % possesion , and then have a look where they are in the league .

I can't think of any other " big " club who would end up with only 30 % possesion, playing at home to Norwich. 

And please no boring ,pedantic dissertation on the demise of Aston Villa .

[dappadan]

12 hours ago, sheepyvillian said:

Really ?

Yes really, you seemed pretty sure that we should and I am open to hearing the reasons why. That is all.

Interestingly our average possession this season is 48% so not too far away from what you think it should be? 

[Godders]

15 hours ago, sheepyvillian said:

Who questioned wins ? It's the possession stats I have issue with , like I said ,when playing at home we should be having at least 50% possession.,regardless of the result.  Fast.,we're the biggest team in the league,and Imo we should be playing like it .

Think about what you're suggesting here. I mean really think about it.

Consider a team that spends 90 minutes passing the ball between their keeper and the back 4. I've just shown you a team that likely averages far more than 50% possession a game. Have I just shown you a winning team though? Absolutely not. If the ball's not getting out of the defence, the best this team can hope for is a 0-0. Evey game.

Possession stats in isolation means f**k all. So calling for minimum 50% possession at home is absolute bollocks. You, as well as all other Villa fans, would be up in arms if we became that team passing it around the defence in order to have more possession.

Now consider a team playing the tiki-taka defenders. They could sit back for 15 minutes at a time, then nick the ball, leg it up towards their goal and carve out an opportunity. This is a team that will win with far less of the ball, because, importantly, they are the only team that has had the ball in a dangerous area.

If you want to focus on possession then, a far more important stat to look at is the difference in possession in and around the opponents area. Not possession as a whole.

Perhaps you could show us those possession stats to better support your argument that we need to control the ball better at home?

[The Fun Factory]

A win is a win. Any complaints about style of play should be reserved until after promotion, and stabilisation in the premier league. Promotion is a must next season- and most games are like yesterday's I for one would be very happy with it. 

Villa are looking solid and Kodjia is on fire. Was our downturn in form in January anything to do with him being on international duty?

Fun fact- last  7 games we have won twice as many as last season's 38 league matches. 

[Xela]

Less than 50% possession?!

BRUCE OUT!!!!!!1111111!!!! 

 

[siminjo]

Anyone seen extended highlights outside the OS? Would really appreciate a link.

[sheepyvillian]

1 hour ago, Godders said:

Think about what you're suggesting here. I mean really think about it.

Consider a team that spends 90 minutes passing the ball between their keeper and the back 4. I've just shown you a team that likely averages far more than 50% possession a game. Have I just shown you a winning team though? Absolutely not. If the ball's not getting out of the defence, the best this team can hope for is a 0-0. Evey game.

Possession stats in isolation means f**k all. So calling for minimum 50% possession at home is absolute bollocks. You, as well as all other Villa fans, would be up in arms if we became that team passing it around the defence in order to have more possession.

Now consider a team playing the tiki-taka defenders. They could sit back for 15 minutes at a time, then nick the ball, leg it up towards their goal and carve out an opportunity. This is a team that will win with far less of the ball, because, importantly, they are the only team that has had the ball in a dangerous area.

If you want to focus on possession then, a far more important stat to look at is the difference in possession in and around the opponents area. Not possession as a whole.

Perhaps you could show us those possession stats to better support your argument that we need to control the ball better at home?

You know exactly what kind of possesion I'm on about . The sort of possesion most top clubs have when playing at home , like Liverpool or Man City for instance .

[romavillan]

3 hours ago, darrenm said:

Jimmer Danger

????

[darrenm]

1 hour ago, romavillan said:

????

That's the answer to your question. Not sure how to make it any clearer.

[Godders]

1 hour ago, sheepyvillian said:

You know exactly what kind of possesion I'm on about . The sort of possesion most top clubs have when playing at home , like Liverpool or Man City for instance .

No, I'm afraid I don't. I didn't realise there was different kinds of possession depending on which teams we're talking about. I must admit I assumed that possession means the amount of time the team controls the ball, which as has been pointed out, doesn't on it's own translate to results. 

I think you may be falling foul of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here. Have you stopped to think about why the top teams have more possession? I would bet my bottom dollar that a not insignificant amount of the possession comes from the fact that the teams set up defensively when playing them because they expect a tough game. I.e. high possession is a result of successful performances. Not a driver of successful performances. A simple test of this is whether a top team playing another top team has the same amount of possession as they would against a lesser team. If it was style of play (i.e. what your suggesting, that a possession based game is the only way to get success in this sport) then Liverpool should  dominate games against both Sunderland and Barcelona at Anfield. That wouldn't be the case though. Barcelona would dominate the game. 

[romavillan]

1 hour ago, darrenm said:

That's the answer to your question. Not sure how to make it any clearer.

Ahhhh, got it , jimmy danger kodija is the answer, thought i was going mental for a bit, needed the surname

[sheepyvillian]

1 hour ago, Godders said:

No, I'm afraid I don't. I didn't realise there was different kinds of possession depending on which teams we're talking about. I must admit I assumed that possession means the amount of time the team controls the ball, which as has been pointed out, doesn't on it's own translate to results. 

I think you may be falling foul of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here. Have you stopped to think about why the top teams have more possession? I would bet my bottom dollar that a not insignificant amount of the possession comes from the fact that the teams set up defensively when playing them because they expect a tough game. I.e. high possession is a result of successful performances. Not a driver of successful performances. A simple test of this is whether a top team playing another top team has the same amount of possession as they would against a lesser team. If it was style of play (i.e. what your suggesting, that a possession based game is the only way to get success in this sport) then Liverpool should  dominate games against both Sunderland and Barcelona at Anfield. That wouldn't be the case though. Barcelona would dominate the game. 

Behave .

[Godders]

30 minutes ago, sheepyvillian said:

Behave .

Well done. Cracking argument. Almost has me coming round to your way of thinking.

Just to put this one to bed though, I was interested in exploring exactly how much of a relationship there was between possession and league points scored. So I've looked at the data for the Premier League, Championship, La Liga and Bundesliga and plotted points per game (to allow for the difference in games played between the teams) and average possession across the season. I then calculted the coefficient of correlation (if you're not aware of what this is, it shows how correlated one set of data is to another. It ranges from 0 to 1 with 1 being perfectly correlated, 0 meaning there is no relationship at all). For comparison I also did the same with goal difference per game as well. 

The findings:

Possession vs PPG = 0.534

GD per game v PPG = 0.900

So while there does appear to be some correlation between league success and possession, there is a far greater siginficant correlation between goal difference per game and league success. If I were a football manager, statistically it seems I would get far more success concentrating on getting my team to concede less goals and/or score more goals than I would be getting them to keep more of the ball.

It seems Steve Bruce may actually know what he's doing, despite you wanting a more possession based game.

[HanoiVillan]

This debate is surreal. Possession is not, in itself, important. Only what you do with the ball matters. And we aren't Liverpool or Barcelona either, come to that. 

[romavillan]

wow, comparing goal difference per game to possession per game with respect to points? 

That's like comparing the effectiveness of shots that go in against shots that go wide and concluding it would be better for a coach to get his players to get their shots to go in than go wide.

Possession is important in and of itself, if only because if you have it they cannot score. Being better at keeping the ball would stop us going so deep and inviting on pressure when defending a lead. It's clearly not the only stat that counts but all the great sides have been good at keeping the ball, seems like a non argument to me.

Is it the most important thing for us now? No, points are until we are mathematically out of the chase. Then we should experiment a bit and use the remaining games to play a bit better regardless of result. 

[Godders]

4 minutes ago, romavillan said:

wow, comparing goal difference per game to possession per game with respect to points? 

That's like comparing the effectiveness of shots that go in against shots that go wide and concluding it would be better for a coach to get his players to get their shots to go in than go wide.

Yes, you are exactly right. Most here seem to be able to grasp that the most important thing to be a good team in football is to score more goals than your opponents score against you. Some though seem to think that having more of the ball is more important. 

[sheepyvillian]

1 hour ago, Godders said:

Well done. Cracking argument. Almost has me coming round to your way of thinking.

Just to put this one to bed though, I was interested in exploring exactly how much of a relationship there was between possession and league points scored. So I've looked at the data for the Premier League, Championship, La Liga and Bundesliga and plotted points per game (to allow for the difference in games played between the teams) and average possession across the season. I then calculted the coefficient of correlation (if you're not aware of what this is, it shows how correlated one set of data is to another. It ranges from 0 to 1 with 1 being perfectly correlated, 0 meaning there is no relationship at all). For comparison I also did the same with goal difference per game as well. 

The findings:

Possession vs PPG = 0.534

GD per game v PPG = 0.900

So while there does appear to be some correlation between league success and possession, there is a far greater siginficant correlation between goal difference per game and league success. If I were a football manager, statistically it seems I would get far more success concentrating on getting my team to concede less goals and/or score more goals than I would be getting them to keep more of the ball.

It seems Steve Bruce may actually know what he's doing, despite you wanting a more possession based game.

It's amazing what you can interpret from a post .

[Stevo985]

Didn't see the game. 

But I'm assuming, if the only thing people can moan about after it is the lack of possession, that it went well.

[Grasshopper]

The whole Stats v Result a non starter.

If we didnt have Kodjia then our Possesion % would only be relevent to how much we would need for others to score (at the same rate)

A low possesion % meaning opponents in our box creating chance after chance is more dangerous than

A low possesion % when opponents are passing back and forth along the half way line

whether the opposition has the firepower to outscore us or our defence outmistakes them is more likely to reflect the result.

The only real barometer you can state is that

If we have no possesion in their box but they do in our box we are less likely to keep it at 0-0

A shot/mistake at either end can decide more than possesion % north or south of 50%

I can only state that I would prefer more possesion, more shots, more passes resulting in more goals than the opposition (in this league).

If by some miracle we get promoted this year - fantastic. If not, I think we need a different gameplan to be top 2 to get promoted for sure (no playoff escapades). Once we are up, we enter a whole new level and another ball game, we'll have to fine tune even more than just relying on "a bit o' Kodj"