Malky's "Percentage Football" Breakdown

This isn't my work, It's just a copy and paste from my research into Malky's Philosophy of Play.


It should probably be more accurately called "Odds Football" or "Probability Football".

For example, playing the ball into the channels, long, high and wide.

The possibilities (at a basic level, all you math nuts ):

The ball won by your team
The ball is won by the other team
The ball is put out for a throw by the other team
The ball is put out for a throw by your team
The second ball is won by your team
The second ball is won by the other team
The ball is forced out for a corner

The percentage game would suggest that playing the ball high and long into the channels favors your team if you can organize things according to the outcomes -

The ball won by your team - Continue attack
The ball is won by the other team - Immediate pressure to force a turnover close to their goal
The ball is put out for a throw by the other team - Use throw in to continue attack
The ball is put out for a throw by your team - Immediate pressure to force turnover in opponents attacking 3rd
The second ball is won by your team - Immediate Counter attack
The second ball is won by the other team - Immediate pressure to force a turnover
The ball is forced out for a corner - Try to score from set piece

So as you can see, the probability of gaining an advantage in this one piece of play is quite high for the team who plays the long ball into the channels.

Compare this to the opposition's percentages, if, for example, they play a possession game:

Gain possession from long ball - under immediate pressure in defensive 3rd
Lose possession from long ball - under immediate attack in defensive 3rd
Lose throw in - under immediate attack in defensive 3rd
Win throw in - under immediate pressure in defensive 3rd
Win second ball - under immediate pressure, but probably in middle 3rd
Lose second ball - under immediate attack in middle 3rd
Lose corner - Under threat of conceding from set piece

So the percentages favour the long ball, to a degree, in this instance. There are other factors involved. However, this is what the percentages game is. The problem is that it's a style issue as much as anything else - if one team plays percentages and the other doesn't, it makes for an interesting game. If both teams play percentages, though, it is literally just booting the ball into the corners and rushing up to pressure the space the ball lands in. Ugly, and a war of attrition as to who will win.

At a basic level, and the level with which I work with the percentages, it can be as simple as recognizing that the probability of conceding a goal is greater when the ball is in your defensive 3rd than it is when the ball is in your attacking 3rd. So with my teams, I have a simple three-level system of decision making, which is basically long balls at all times from our defensive 3rd, mixed passing in the middle 3rd, and whatever's needed (creativity) in the attacking 3rd to manufacture a shot at goal (dribbling, shooting, crossing, short passing, movement). This gives players the comfort of knowing their jobs at the back, having license to read the game in midfield but also having a fallback option, and having license to be creative in the attacking 3rd. But percentage wise, and I've proven this to myself over the years, playing the long ball and clearances out of the back 3rd reduces the amount of goals scored against you to virtually zero. However, only playing the long ball in the middle also, and in the top 3rd (constant crossing) similarly reduces your scoring to virtually zero. So it's a matter of doing the percentage things right in each of the 3rd's of the field.

There are too many variables for any of that to be valiable. Everything doesnt have an equal probability.

Its like saying if there is a loose ball with gareth bale and mark hudson then its 50:50 when in reality bale would be on it before hudson even knew it was there.

In the premier league hoofballers are destroyed because they give up posession too easilly and teams in the orem certainly know what to do when they get the ball and punish you more often than not. They are prize racehorses.

Stoke were the best at it although they have a bad rep, they actually play pretty good football.

Its like saying if there is a loose ball with gareth bale and mark hudson then its 50:50 when in reality bale would be on it before hudson even knew it was there.

That would be where a players individual ability would come into play, pace, anticipation etc. The percentage football philosophy just gives an overall framework for the team to adhere to.

Malky's philosophy seems to be that controlling possession is how you win games. So we prefer not to break quickly instead choosing to keep the ball and move it round quite slowly. It also results in us quite frequently getting into positions where we could put a cross in but choosing to pass the ball back through the team to the keeper.

When we don't have the ball we press the opposition without actually going in for lots of tackles and therefore not making many fouls.

This worked well enough in the championship but Saturday showed the premier league opposition don't need a lot of possession if they can score easily when they do have it.

I thought that keeping possession and trying to score from set pieces would be what we go for this year but I don't think it will work that often away from home or against the big teams. We barely got a set piece in the first half on Saturday and gunnarson's long throws will be missed.

There are still enough bad teams especially at home to pick up points from though.

Malky's philosophy seems to be that controlling possession is how you win games. and gunnarson's long throws will be missed.

You won't control any possession lumping it forward to the opposition Centre Backs like Turner kept doing Saturday.