Are Pardew’s long balls getting even longer?

Posted on December 3rd, 2012 | |

“Alan Pardew will tell you that he tries to play good football – That’s rubbish, he plays long ball football. It’s very direct, there is no creativity in midfield, he just wants to play route one football. Every time I’ve seen his teams play, they play that way but he’ll say in the Press ‘we play good football.’ At times he can be a conman.” – ex player and pundit Stewart Robson when Pardew was appointed as Newcastle United’s manager.

In my previous story on Alan Pardew’s long balls, “Pardew’s long balls – An in depth probe,” I revealed that thanks to our Silver Supremo’s love of “route one” football, Newcastle United are now the biggest long ball team in the Premiership. Indeed, they are eclipsing even the high priests of long balls, Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce, as well as Pardew’s own long ball protege, Brian “long balls” McDermott at Reading, who Pardew beat into second place by some distance. This piece is intended as some kind of follow up to that.

But first however, here’s a truncated version of the table I presented in that piece, which covered our first eleven Premiership games (up to and including West Ham).

Premiership long ball table (after 11 games) No Team Gms TP LB ALB LBA LB % 1 Newcastle Utd 11 4081 724 417 58% 17.7% 2 Reading 10 3048 497 214 43% 16.3% 3 Stoke City 11 3463 562 300 53% 16.2% 4 West Ham Utd 11 3800 572 310 54% 15.1% … … … … … … … … 20 Arsenal 11 6412 496 328 66% 07.7% TP – Total Passes.

LB – Long Balls (over 25 yards).

ALB – Accurate Long Balls.

LBA – % of Accurate Long Balls.

LB % – % of total passes which are 25 yards+ long balls.

All stats by OPTA.





Newcastle United’s last three games.

Newcastle United’s recent games Newcastle United v Swansea City – 17/11/2012. Team TP LB LB % Newcastle Utd 439 69 15.7% Swansea City 406 39 09.6% Southampton v Newcastle United – 25/11/12. Southampton 339 44 13.0% Newcastle Utd 332 78 23.5% Stoke City v Newcastle United – 28/11/12. Stoke City 366 54 14.8% Newcastle Utd 344 64 18.6% TP – Total Passes.

LB – Long Balls (over 25 yards).

LB % – % of passes which are long balls.

All stats by OPTA.

Moving on then, to the side you can see a table charting the use of long balls in the three games since I compiled the table above.

In the first game against Swansea City you can see that the percentage of long balls actually declined slightly from the average shown above, though it was still very high in comparison with other teams. In the next game however, it went through the roof to record breaking levels. I have looked at the percentages for other teams over the whole of the last two and a half seasons and the huge total of 23.5% is a record which would even make Stoke, the only other side to break the 20% barrier with an average of 20.2% for last season, blush!

After that game, the club’s third defeat in a row, Pardew, after blaming the club’s decline on injuries several times, announced that in the wake of injuries to two of the side’s most creative players, the team would be going in a new tactical direction against Stoke City.

The Silver Supremo said:

“We have looked at things we have done well in the past, but we have got a different team now.”

Then, speaking of the loss of two of the teams most creative players to injury, Hatem Ben Arfa and Yohan Cabaye, he continued:

“We have a lot of creative flair unavailable, Cabaye and Hatem especially. So we have to find a route to winning games that is a bit different. We have changed a few things and talked about it.”

A whole Geordie nation awaited the results with bated breath, and as you can see, the result was more long balls (and another defeat). Pardew was delighted at the performance however. After the game he purred:

“The improvement from Sunday [2-0 defeat by Southampton] was immense and we deserved something. I thought we were the better side.”

“I thought we could have had a penalty at 1-0 but two sucker punches have cost us. It’s galling because we’re on this run and we’re having setback after setback and I feel sorry for the players. That team won’t go far short if we play like that.”

And so Pardew’s new, improved Toon face Wigan Athletic later this evening, and I shall be posting the long ball results from the game in our match highlights post after the game or as soon as they are available. As Pardew undoubtedly finds the habits of a career in “route one” football hard to break, win or lose, he will probably press on with his method. The method usually being Newcastle ceding the midfield to the oppostion, playing much of the game in their own half and seeking to dispossess the other team and hit them with counterattacks, with many more long balls bridging the huge chasm between the midfielders and the forward players.

Time will tell though and I really hope I’m wrong.

Poll



NUFCBlog Author: workyticket workyticket has written 1078 articles on this blog.

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