Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Tactics and stats at Blackburn « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does

By Walter Broeckx

A tactical and statistical view on the Blackburn game.

As a Dutch speaking person I have had the pleasure many times to listen to Johan Cruijff when he was talking about football and tactics at half time or at the end of a game. It is not that one has to agree with all he says but when a world class player of his calibre and also a world class trainer who has been managing successful at Barcelona for many years is talking it is always interesting to listen.

So once Cruijff said that the most important thing to not concede a goal is to keep the ball out of reach of the opposing team. You can do this by keeping the ball and so the other team cannot have the ball and cannot score.  This is the way that Arsenal is doing it.  But to do this you need players with some skill and technical ability.  Like we have. You need to train your players to do this. Like we do. You must have a manager who believes in bringing something for the people who pay a lot of money to see the games. Like we do.

Now Blackburn has a manager who doesn’t believe in that fancy playing stuff. And we can have a laugh with his approach but in fact he is just doing what Cruijff has said. How can you prevent Arsenal scoring a lot of goals? You just use some tactics like they do.

You have the towel tactic. Which is copied from Stoke but I think Allardyce isn’t going to claim it as his invention. By using the towel tactic he can take away some 15 minutes from the clock. So we can introduce the first statistic: Towel possession: 17%. And this means that for 17 % of the time Arsenal cannot score. Just brilliant isn’t it?

Next you have the corner tactic. Where you take all your time and waste at least one minute before taking it because you have to put some man in front of the goalkeeper who has to come from your own defence. But as they only got 3 corners it only got them 3 minutes.  So the second statistic is: Corner possession: 3 %. Not much this time but you can’t have it all.

But now we come to the most brilliant plan from Allardyce. This is where the grandmaster Cruijff, our Lord Wenger and many more must take a bow for Big Sam and admit that he just is a genius in disguise. Remember you must take care that the other team (Arsenal) is not in possession of the ball. So you just must keep the ball out of reach. And how does Big Sam does this? He lets his team hoof the ball as high in the air as possible. So when the ball is travelling in the atmosphere Arsenal cannot have the ball and cannot score.

At times it reminded me of American Football where Robinson was the punter of the team and he was doing all day long just putting the ball up field and kick it as high as possible so his attackers could attack the ball. I have seen some American Football in my life so I know what I am talking about. It is a very simple tactic and you only need a goalkeeper who can kick the ball high and far. I think Robinson would be a sensation in American football. So the comparison that Wenger made with rugby (as American football is some kind of rugby) was not that far-fetched.

And the main thing about this is the fact that  when the ball is flying in the atmosphere is not in the feet of the Arsenal players. If we have to believe the official statistics of possession Blackburn had some 42% of the ball in this game. But of that 42% if I make an estimation the ball was somewhere between 100 and 10.000 feet in the air for some 99% of the time. So this gives us as statistic: Air travel possession: 41 %.

If we add this means that the ball was out of play or out of reach for some 61% of the game. I think this is utterly brilliant from Blackburn and Allardyce. We were all thinking that we were watching a game of football but for almost 60 % of the time we played without the ball anywhere near the football field.

So one can only be amazed by the fact that Sam Allardyce just is doing what Johan Cruijff once said you should do to prevent the opposition to score: keep the ball away from their feet. I’m sure Cruijff had other things in mind on and I really would like to hear his spicy comments if he ever sees such a game plan with his own eyes.

But to know Cruijff and if he would be sitting in the tv studio and would have to give his opinion at half time he just would tell the guys from TV that he thought he had been invited to see a game of football.  But what he found himself looking at was one team that was attempting to play football and another team that was doing some sport he has never seen before but that should be called: kicking high and far. And then he would get up from his chair and tell them he would come back if they had a real game of football on show with two teams trying to  play the game.

At the end of the game we won as in the 39 % of the time that the ball was on the ground we were the better team. And if Allardyce is feeling hard done by, well that is a nice chance to hear. I think it is great to know that he feels hard done by. It only adds to the fun that I get from winning this game.

Untold Arsenal, not exactly the place for facts, but still, you can’t have it all.

Arsenal Worldwide, a completely different experience

Making the Arsenal, the greatest book on Arsenal ever written

Your first time with Arsenal, live – we want your story.

Blog of the week: How Inter are totally and utterly bust – the Swiss Ramble