What if... the season came down to how well you pass the ball?
As the dust settles on the 2024-25 Premier League season, we have been taking a look at some of the alternative ways the the table could have finished...Passing in football has become an obsession.The tiki-taka style of Barcelona has now become the basis of managerial philosophies across the leagues and lands of Europe and beyond.The problem is, few teams have the ability to execute it at the level required to make it effective.Pep Guardiola took it to another level when he was in charge of the La Liga giants and it has served his Manchester City side well since he took charge in 2016 having won 18 trophies in the following nine years.And, if the Premier League season had come down to how well teams pass the ball, unsurprisingly the eight-time champions would have been celebrating a ninth title.With nearly 90% accuracy, they rarely put a foot - or pass - wrong.And yet, in reality, it did not translate to success on the pitch this year.Whether it was teams finally finding the chinks in the passing-machine armour or the side's misplaced passes proving more costly than in previous seasons without key players, City could not take advantage of their dominance with the ball.And for one of the most acute examples of ability with the ball not translating to on-the-pitch success, we only have to look at Southampton.The Saints at one point looked set to break Derby County's record for the least amount of points in a Premier League campaign, and yet they were less than 1% behind actual league champions Liverpool when it came to passing accuracy.While fans could have some appreciation for watching nice football, they might have appreciated some scrappy displays that resulted in hard-fought results and possible safety more.In contrast, Crystal Palace had the least accurate passing of any team in the league.And yet, Oliver Glasner's side ultimately finished 12th - just three points off a top-half finish - and won the FA Cup final against the club with the best passing ability of them all.They are not the only team to have had successful seasons in their own right while being in the bottom six for passing accuracy.Nottingham Forest were 19th in this table metric, but in reality were fighting for Champions League places.Bournemouth and Brentford also battled for possible European spots into the final weeks of the season, and even Everton finished the campaign comfortably away from relegation that at one point they looked set to be in a battle to escape.So what does this tell us? When it comes to winning football matches, passing the ball well is not the be-all and end-all.*Table data from Opta
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