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Backpass FC

Eduardo_da_Silva

Active Member
I have been in football my entire life, and I have never seen a topflight team with such negative football setup when it comes to breaking lines. Number of backpasses in situations where players have the option to take a risk and pass or drive the ball forward is beyond me. Xhaka is by far the worst in this segment but when You see rest of our team constantly doing this, then it must be a part of our game plan. This is for me one of the most obvious reason we have struggled so much in creating chances. I feel Arteta went for solidity in the back but directly influenced our forward plays and mechanisms making them inconsistent and really awful to watch. Worst thing is that when You have Auba and Pepe who should be feasting on open space and quick transition You are not only destroying our general style of play but also individual members of the team by not playing to their strenghts. Until we change this, we are going nowher no matter what players we play. Am I crazy or do others see this as well?
 

Maybe

You're wrong, no?
So many times our FB's could pass to midfielders through channels, but they pass it back to CB's/Leno because it's safer. After that, we have Luiz on the ball thinking for 20 seconds what to do with it, and then he tries a long pass which is always a lost ball
 

Country: Iceland
Stop it. Xhaka was our best player. He made a few mistakes, but his workrate and passing made up for it.

He was constantly misplacing passes and passing to CP or backwards to Leno.

He did fine defensively but this thread is about passing and tonight he was terrible at it. Probably the main reason why he had to contribute this much defensively.
 

bingobob

A-M’s Resident Hunskelper
Trusted ⭐

Country: Scotland
Football is mechanical. Teams are better drilled than they were and they are fitter than they were in the past. The outcome of that is what we are seeing now in almost every game of football. Safe, passive football. Football needs to fight for its soul. Smash the academy system, bring back flair and rid itself of the money in the game. It's becoming a soulless joyless highly expensive hobby.
 

Anders Harbo

Angry Scandinavian #6
Today it was very obvious, that our gameplan is 100% dependent on our fullbacks and our wingers to take on their opponent. If you take that out of our game and force us to play tvrough the middle, then we are lost.
 

Country: Iceland
So many times our FB's could pass to midfielders through channels, but they pass it back to CB's/Leno because it's safer. After that, we have Luiz on the ball thinking for 20 seconds what to do with it, and then he tries a long pass which is always a lost ball

It's one of the reason I don't want Luiz on the field. He stalls our game and he is not even good at this long-range passing thingy.
 

Country: Iceland
Football is mechanical. Teams are better drilled than they were and they are fitter than they were in the past. The outcome of that is what we are seeing now in almost every game of football. Safe, passive football. Football needs to fight for its soul. Smash the academy system, bring back flair and rid itself of the money in the game. It's becoming a soulless joyless highly expensive hobby.

The game needs to change.

Time to scrap the offside rule and add 2 players to each team that are only allowed to play in the opposition half.
 

Yousif Arsenal

On Vinai's payroll & misses 4th place trophy 🏆
Trusted ⭐
Yes it frustrate the hell out of me but that down to players lack of movement afraid of taking risks.
 

bingobob

A-M’s Resident Hunskelper
Trusted ⭐

Country: Scotland
The game needs to change.

Time to scrap the offside rule and add 2 players to each team that are only allowed to play in the opposition half.
I don't even know if the game itself needs to change. I just think they've got to get back to the basics. Holding onto possession to defend has created this environment. Play the safe pass, keep the ball, good, don't just go forward that's bad. And suddenly you've got academies producing little clones all happy to go sidewards and backwards, rack up lots of passes and accurate passes and people suddenly think they are the real deal.

Its almost the same problem we had when smaller kids were over looked for bigger stronger kids at youth age.
 
If Xhaka wasn't misplacing passes forward all night then he was passing the ball back to Leno, even if he was under zero pressure.

absolute nonsense. Watch the game and look how many times Xhaka got our players in a good position around the crystal palace’s box.

Aubameyang and AMN are the worst left side in the league right now. Imagine having two players on your side who contribute NOTHING offensively. And Saka, Emile and Laca didnt do anything either.
 

bingobob

A-M’s Resident Hunskelper
Trusted ⭐

Country: Scotland
Fwiw I think we are a massive reason why this has come about. Wenger adopted a possession as defence strategy. We've slated and made fun of other ways of playing. The media and world of football worshipped Pep and demonised other ways of playing. And suddenly coaches wanted everyone to play with the ball on the deck, progressive and so on but not everyone can play this way. And it doesn't suit everyone to play that way. And when you set teams to play up that way you've got high percentages of the game where nothing happens until play breaks down and there is a turnover or a moment of magic.
 

Bloodbather

Established Member

Country: Turkey
Yeah and maybe it was needed at the time but now it's time to go back and see if the game can be improved again.

Getting rid of the offside rule would be the nail in the coffin for the game of football. I get the frustration, but I'm not sure if you're thinking it through as to the scenarios that would arise if offside wasn't a thing. You'd basically be looking at hoofball on steroids.
 

Hleb's Sirush

Established Member
I have been in football my entire life, and I have never seen a topflight team with such negative football setup when it comes to breaking lines. Number of backpasses in situations where players have the option to take a risk and pass or drive the ball forward is beyond me. Xhaka is by far the worst in this segment but when You see rest of our team constantly doing this, then it must be a part of our game plan. This is for me one of the most obvious reason we have struggled so much in creating chances. I feel Arteta went for solidity in the back but directly influenced our forward plays and mechanisms making them inconsistent and really awful to watch. Worst thing is that when You have Auba and Pepe who should be feasting on open space and quick transition You are not only destroying our general style of play but also individual members of the team by not playing to their strenghts. Until we change this, we are going nowher no matter what players we play. Am I crazy or do others see this as well?

You aren't crazy. It was even backed up by stats. Earlier in the season we had the slowest ball progression of all professional teams in this country, not just the PL. That problem is made even worse when we decide to play forward we apparently can only choose a few passing lanes. It has to go always to the CB or fullback. It isn't just because we don't have the players to play otherwise. Partey is excellent at progressing the ball quickly and mainly through the middle. When he was on the pitch we hardly used him, constantly bypassed, even when he was free.

It just doesn't make sense. And when we finally manage to get further up the pitch, again we seem to be limit ourselves to only a few options. Get the ball wide to our fullbacks for a cross or cutback. The fullbacks are always where our wingers should be and vice versa. In this particular game you end up with Auba trying to put hopeful crosses in the box with his weaker foot or Bellerin taking up dangerous positions inside the box while Pepe is harmlessly holding the width near the corner flag. Unless someone produces a piece of magic or we manage to get 20 passes in perfect positions we aren't likely to trouble the opposition. No real sustained pressure, no plan b. Opposition defence then gets so confident they aren't even likely to make a single mistake, no panic, no doubts into their minds because everything we do is so so slow and telegraphed.

We will still win enough games because we just have too much quality for most of the teams in this league and we are fairly organised at the back but it will mean if we keep to this we will always underperform.
 

Macho

In search of Pure Profit 💸
Dusted 🔻

Country: England
This is still the same team that struggles with low block tbh. Some of you got carried away against a Chelsea and Brighton, ball playing teams.

All we were missing was double digit crosses from Tierney to add to the mix, but we been playing this way all season.
 

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