Ball Possession

[GreenOnions]

Anyone looking for a thread about the true nature of masculinity should switch to another thread now.

I wanted to see what people thought about the extent to which we were able to keep the ball against St Johnstone on Saturday.

Yogi has been able to transform the squad and, IMHO, it was clear on Saturday that there is now a lot more ability at the club. However, we were unable to keep the ball to any great extent and had to hit longer passes directly to the strikers often resulting in lost possession.

The good news is that it looks like we have four, or hopefully even five, quality strikers who could get goals for us out of nothing. However, to make the most out of our improved quality in the middle (Miller, Wotherspoon, Zemmama, Galbraith etc) what should Yogi be doing to get these players more involved in our creative play?

[matty_f]

I thought there were spells where we held on to the ball ok, particularly in the second half. The only thing is that it was going from full back or centre half, into midfield and then back again.

However, it was noticeable that different players were coming short to make themselves available for the pass. This was taking the St Johnstone players out of position and creating a bit of space elsewhere.

We weren't overly effective with it, though, but we should see that improve over the season and the encouraging things are a) we are attempting it, and b) we have good enough players now to do it.

[Judas Iscariot]

If we have the ball, the other team can't score :agree:

Oh and..

The ball is round :cool2:

[ahibby]

I noticed that when StJ got everyone behind the ball we looked a bit lost at the back in deciding what to do with it.

McLeish's side usually encouraged the opponents to drop back in to their own half. I remember the ball being played many a time up to Latapy on the half way line anbd he always decided to put a foot on it until the opposition fell back. We were able then to play through them but have difficulty now. Although it doesn't matter that much when we score 3. We have options of playing through using it wide or simply just playing it long down the middle, so they can all fill midfield if they want.