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The tactics of the long ball game | Case Study Stoke v Man City

Stoke 1 Man City 1 Analysis

The battle between Stoke and Manchester City was certainly one of two different tactical halves.

First Half Summary

The first half showed Stoke sitting deep, aggressively pressing only in their defensive third and traits appropriate to the long-ball game. Man City found it extremely difficult to break beyond the final 35m and were reduced to a long shot or long high pass forward to the forwards on eight occasions, this is certainly not the method used by Manchester City on a normal basis.

Stoke hit 7 balls forward that were not won by the desired target man (Crouch) but successfully found the second man as Crouch’s challenge was enough to prevent the defender from accurately aiming the header elsewhere. Stoke entered into the optimum assist zone on four occasions – three corners were won (one resulted in the goal) and one attempt to dive to win an advanced free kick took place. Man City however, entered the zone on 4 occasions. On all 4 occasions Man City were forced to play back around Stoke City’s disciplined 35m blocking zone. It is worth noting that Stoke’s back line and single unit did not progress forward as quickly as diagram 2 demonstrated, instead those nearest the attack would push on forward and quickly return to their defensive duties after the attack.

Second Half Summary

The second half however, represented change in tactics by Tony Pullis’ well disciplined side. While in the first half Stoke aggressively pressed only in their own defensive third, between the 45th and 80th minute Stoke used a mixed pressing approach: one that simply went by the rules of ‘men behind the ball’ and therefore, given that Man City like to play the ball out from the back – this meant that Stoke were able to successfully press the whole pitch at time and win the ball back high up field.

Between the 45th and 60th minute the ball was kept high up field and Stoke hit ZERO long balls in a way to gain momentum higher up the field. It wasn’t until the 67th minute that the first ‘speculative’ long ball was hit forward by Stoke.

So in short the pressing approach from Stoke can be put into three parts: 0-45’ <35m pressing; 46-80’ full pitch; 81-90’ <35m pressing. Often however, on hounding Man City away from the danger zones, Stoke city would employ a single ‘nearest man’ press to effectively chase Man City back to their defenders with the ball.

The second half was also one where Stoke’s back-line played higher up the field and therefore were particularly prone to Man City’s counter attack; which was perhaps the most effective way to score against Stoke. To enable Stoke possession higher up the field in your own half, means that you could win the ball back and break beyond the defensive unit. Some of Man City’s best opportunities were a result of just this: Dzeko for example, in the dying seconds of the game managed to do just this.

The substitution of Tevez for Barry offered insight into Mancini’s thinking and duplicates the above point. Carlos Tevez is excellent in small spaces in finding space to score; Yaya Toure is one of the world’s best on sprinting forward over a vast space. Therefore by bringing on a playing midfielder for a striker this in theory enables two things to happen. (1) the Stoke back line are now only marking one man and therefore maybe inclined to get further forward and (2) on winning the ball back in the Man City half, Man City were able to use Yaya Toure’s ability to break forward (as he now has less responsibility to defend) and counter attack effectively. It should be noted that Stoke’s inability to compact the pressing high up field was what enabled Yaya Toure to break into vast open space; By moving the defensive line ten yards further forward this space vanishes. However, in doing this you are then vulnerable to the ball over the top to the speedy striker to latch on to – Stoke did not make the decision as to which strategy they were going to employ and instead were stuck in two minds pressing high and protecting the defensive third – leaving the middle third of the field available for Yaya Toure to race out on to. It could be suggested that Man City were instructed in the second half to play deeper, to entice the Stoke pressing players higher up field and then allow the field to be stretched to successfully counter attack without the compact unit being in the way – a stroke of genius from Mancini if this was the case as it nearly paid off on a number of occasions.

Next Page: Video analysis examples of the points above…

TPiMBW
TPiMBWhttp://www.jeddavies.com
Assistant Manager of Oxford University Centaurs and Head of Analysis. The Tiki-Taka Handbook can be ordered from: http://shop.soccertutor.com/Coaching-the-Tiki-Taka-Style-of-Play-p/st-b019.htm Director of inspire football events | Football writer & youth academy coach - jeddavies.com | Writer on several websites as well as Liverpoolfc.tv and many more | Please follow me on Twitter - @TPiMBW or www.Facebook.com/JedDaviesFootballCoaching | Always open for a reasoned debate so please leave a comment
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