Expect to see Premier League teams going longer more often next season

The Guardian

6 hours ago

Long-ball football has, for better or worse, been on the decline for years. Football was once a kick-and-run game, shaped by long balls and the thinking that getting the ball close to the opposition's goal as quickly as possible increased the chances of scoring, well, more quickly.
That was swiftly disproved and left further and further in the rear-view mirror as the game sped off into the Premier League era and further still in the Pep Guardiola-inspired 2010s. As the technical standard of players increased, the ball was kept on the floor more and more. The laws of the game have even been changed to allow teams to play passes so short from goal-kicks that they do not even leave the penalty area.
Long balls are never coming back in the way they were once used. The use of them has steadily declined over the past two decades, from a high of 19.4% of passes being played long in 2006-07 to a low of 10.5% this season. Here, long passes are defined as at least 32 metres in length, and it is worth noting that they do not include crosses or corners. But there is also clearly an acceptance that going long is still sometimes necessary. Even Manchester City go long from time to time.
In the stands, there has always been a view that playing out from the back is more trouble than it is worth. A major reason for fans preferring their team not to play a short-passing game near their own goal is confirmation bias. Premier League watchers are predisposed to agree with a better-safe-than-sorry attitude to defending. By and large, they do not want defenders messing around on the ball and, every time someone makes a glaring mistake that leads to a goal being conceded, that view is further cemented.
There was plenty of snobbish pleasure at the initial failure of Guardiola's incessant passing when he joined City. Every time they passed their way into trouble, the belief grew that his tiki-taka style would not work in England. Nine seasons and six Premier League titles later, he has won that battle and proved his doubters wrong.
Football in England is vastly different from the game that was played when Guardiola arrived. Playing out from the back is now the norm. As a result, pressing has become more important, and as everyone has worked to become better and more synchronised pressing units, playing out from the back has become more and more difficult.
In the last two seasons, two promoted clubs have been roundly derided and branded as naive for having the temerity to think they could play their passing game in the harsh surroundings of the Premier League. Burnley and Southampton were both relegated in their first season back in the top flight while playing the same possession-based game with which they stormed the Championship.
The best teams can get away with playing the type of football they want. If you are good enough to keep the ball on the floor even when up against a ferocious press, doing so is more likely to end positively than lumping the ball up the pitch and hoping for the best. But numbers from the most recent Premier League season show there is a correlation between short passing and mistakes. Overplaying can cause lots of problems.
The teams that play more short passes tend to make more errors that lead to an opposition chance, and the teams that go long more tend to avoid them, as the below graphic shows.
Not all errors that lead to an opposition shot are the result of trying to play out from the back, but the correlation fits with the idea that overplaying can lead to teams taking unnecessary risks. For example, Chelsea (45), Aston Villa (43) and Tottenham (41) were behind only Southampton (51) for errors leading to an opposition shot in the Premier League this season, and they make up three of the six teams to play the lowest proportion of their passes long. The other three were City, Arsenal and Liverpool, the three best teams in the country, who have better players to play a short-passing game.
But, while those three made significantly fewer errors than Chelsea, Villa and Spurs, they still each made more than 30. As did Newcastle, who ranked seventh behind those six teams for the lowest proportion of passes played long.
That means that the seven teams who most consistently stuck to playing short passes all made more than 30 errors leading to an opposition shot. Meanwhile, of the eight teams that played the highest proportion of their passes long, only one made 30 or more such errors (Ipswich, 39). Crystal Palace made fewer errors leading to an opposition shot (19) than any other team in the Premier League while ranking second for proportion of passes played long (14.5%). There is also a relationship between playing a short-passing game and the opposition forcing more high turnovers (winning the ball within 40 metres of the goalline).
As this graphic shows, there are a couple of outliers: Arsenal and City are among the teams who play the most short passes but they rarely give away high turnovers. That is because they have the best ball-playing defenders, which in turn has two consequences: they can consistently play their way out of defence and, knowing how good their defenders are on the ball, opponents press them less. Otherwise, the teams that play short passes tend to give the ball away within 40m of their own goal more often than teams who are happier to go long.
There is a balance to be struck, though. Even the teams that go long most often (Everton, 16.3% of passes long) do so less than many teams did a decade ago, and that is because keeping the ball on the floor is best if it is possible. But it is also important to be practical about it.
Tottenham's decision to replace Ange Postecoglou with Thomas Frank could be indicative of where Premier League football is going. Only City (6.0%) played a lower proportion of their passes long in the top flight this season than Spurs (7.3%), but Postecoglou's team lost the ball within 40m of their own goalline more times (354) than any other team. They also finished lower (17th) than they ever had before in the Premier League.
Frank is a pragmatist, and his Brentford side were consistently happy to go long. Only four teams played a higher proportion of their passes long this season than them (13.1%), and that was Brentford's lowest rate in any of the Danish manager's four seasons at the club. He probably will not play quite as many long balls at Spurs, but there will be less messing about on the ball than there was under Postecoglou.
We are not heading back to a long-ball era, but there could be a shift towards teams accepting the need to be smarter with their passing in defence, and that could mean defenders clearing their lines more when under pressure close to their own goal.
This is an article by Opta Analyst, who have a weekly football newsletter