Swansea City v Newcastle United | Two different approaches to football

As a Newcastle fan I think Pardew got it 100% right tactically I think so late on in the season sacrificing guile for security is very important especially due to how unexpectedly close we are to a European place, I think Rodgers made the mistake of not starting two of their most important players Graham and Sinclair. The lack of invention in the final third was evident because of this, I love to watch Swansea play and I hope they can get Sigurdsson for next season such a quality player.

Thanks for a really interesting article, David. A Toon fan here, so you know where I’m coming from! All I would take issue with is the comment that Newcastle were outplayed: you can’t say that just because Swansea were CONCEDED so much possession, they outplayed Newcastle. They were certainly outthought by Newcastle, who took the view that Swansea could pass themselves to death rather than their opponents. I like Swansea and the way they try to play. I hope that PL survival will mean that they can invest in a striker or two who can actually put the ball in the net. The Toon knew they couldn’t, and so the Swans were suckered yesterday afternoon.

You said it yourself. 215/914 in the final third. Although i like them, all they do is pass it between defenders and keeper, which is boring. And like you said we were happy to sit back since we got the early goal. HATL

What you’re forgetting about all that passing in our half is….that we let you. And your fans realised it very early on, you ran out of ideas. No imagination. The pass was on and you kept going back to the keeper?! Boring.

I would guess out of your ‘astounding’ amount of passes, that your two centre halves had about 250-300 of them. About a third of your passes were more pointless than the rest. You notice they kept getting it off the keeper, running forward with the ball then passing it to a team mate then it would fizzle out? What’s the point in players like allen and britton just taking it off the centre half and passing it to a less creative full back. Yawn. I just don’t get the hype as you have no cutting edge. I felt the same when you came to St James Park. One of the most boring teams to come and you forgot to mention you had 0 shots on target that match, that is a zero.

And the fact you think that passing more than someone means you had a better game? Out of joe allen’s 96% accurate passes how many were assists? It must be loads considering he passed 100 more times than Yohan Cabaye, the french double winner who plays for france. Oh it was a big fat swans egg, and Cabaye completed double the amount of assists in one game that allen has FOR THE SEASON. Ooo that’s a stat right there. What good is wanking over someone’s passing percentage if he only has one assist? You know you would take Ben Arfa or Cabaye over allen or sigurdsson, who is the best thing to happen to you, since he came in you have a bit of a threat. Like cisse for us, without him you’d be struggling.

very fair….. i like how you judge players to there counter parts…. Also like how you have no idea about the nufc team that faced you due jonas played as a more defensive mid hence his different stats but yeah interesting read

Penetration…

As a Newcastle fan I’m delighted at the result and all I can say is that I’m surprised Swansea have had so much success this season. They can pass a ball 5 yards but don’t have the creativity, guile, or pace to really cause any problems. If we’d taken the game to them they would’ve had the space to exploit us which they couldn’t otherwise do. When we had the ball we created more than they did all game with Cabaye’s distribution and Ben Arfa’s running. We limited them to nothing but long range shots! They may play the passing game but all I can say is that the two games against the swans this season have been the most boring to watch and in 180 minutes of football they didn’t look like getting through us once. Football is about adapting to different games which we do. With our defensive frailties at present, Swansea should’ve taken a note of Norwich, who scored 4 set pieces or headers against us.

re. Jonas – it’s a question of formation and we’ve been employing a 4-3-3/4-5-1 for the last month or so (and for a few games in Jan). In this set-up, he has featured as an attacking midfielder, a holding mid or as a left back(!). In a 4-4-2, he’s nailed on to start wide left

I’d also argue that our version of the 4-3-3 is a more attacking configuration than our equivalent 4-4-2, seeing as it includes Ben Arfa, Cisse and Ba taking up positions high up the pitch.

As for Friday’s ‘tactics’… I strongly doubt that we intended to be completely dominated possession wise, certainly not to that extent. A combination of factors caused this – an early goal, Swansea’s natural style of course, poor and lethargic performances from a number of NUFC players and…. a tactical plan to suck in as many Swansea players to attacks as possible and to then strike quickly on the break

As a Newcastle fan I was delighted with the win and the three points. But I agree with you that Newcastles way of playing against Swansea was not worthy of a Euro-games contender

Hi Dave.
Sorry, although I agree with some of your points, I have to agree with some of the Newcastle comments here. It’s nice to have high passing stats, but passing the ball around a lot at the back or into midfield then back again doesn’t get many goals.
Yes, Swansea had more attempts than Newcastle, but were any of them likely to beat the keeper? The closest I thought that Swansea came to scoring was when Joe Allen had a shot from about 20 yards that Tim Krul palmed away to his left while diving to the right. Apart from that, Gylfi had a shot from the edge of the box early on, and Scott Sinclair had a few shots from 20 or so yards late on, but I didn’t see any chance where I thought “he should have scored that”. Cisse had the best chance of the match early on, and scored, and scored a superb goal in the second half.
Perhaps if Newcastle hadn’t scored early on it may have been a different game, but “if” is a big word!
You could say that Pardew got his tactics right, but for me, apart from the second goal, it was a very underwhelming, flat game, with Newcastle playing in a similar negative way to the way that Sunderland played against Spurs the day after! Wasn’t football also meant to be about entertainment?
Can I also say that I thought the Newcastle fans were superb. I was also at the Spurs and Man City games, and the Newcastle fans were a different class to the other teams’ supporters.

Ofcourse we weren’t going to come out and try and outpass you on your home pitch and let you do to us what you’ve done to many other teams this year. We simply let you have the ball and play in the knowledge we were comfortable with you having it due to the way we were set up. The reason we’ve been so successful this season is the versatility in our play. We can play all different styles. We can pass it if we need too, we can mix it up and on Friday we showed we could simply stick to a gameplan of not letting you in behind us which thoroughly worked. I don’t think Swansea penetrated our back line once in the match and got in behind us. We did it twice through 2 fantastic balls and scored 2 good goals. Ultimately we did to Swansea what they tried to do to us at SJP just a hell of a lot better. Was the dullest game of the season!

Andy’s right about our ability to mix it up. We’ve played better football, but walked away with less, but on Friday, Pardew got his tactics sport on.

Although Swansea play nice possession football, there must be a frustration where you’re 2 goals down and still play the same way ie no plan B.

You mention statistics about Swansea’s possession, but in fact nearly 60% of passes were sideways, compared to Newcastle’s 35%. Newcastle’s more direct approach meant that nearly half our passes were played forward, but only a quarter of Swansea’s were.

Also, I think you’re harsh in your criticism of Cabaye and Gutierrez.

Cabaye may have made fewer passes than Allen, however, 39% of his passes were forward (Allen only 14%). Allen is a link up man, who keeps the ball moving – Cabaye is more attacking, as proven by his two assists for Cisse.

We’ve got a few injuries in the centre of midfield, hence Gutierrez playing there. A very able and willing playing who will happily play anywhere for the good of the team. And of course from the centre of midfield, he won’t attempt as many crosses as he did paying left wing in the previous encounter.

A good article, but I think your assessment of the game is slightly biased. I don’t think it was a smash and grab, but a good display of tactical awareness. Like I said, we’ve played better and more open football, but we changed things to cater for the opposition.

Hi Dave sorry anout the abuse from some Toon fans. Some of my colleagues do seem to be incapable of making their point without resorting to stereotypical banalities.

In defence of Pardwho and his management team, I think the “Swansealona” reputation has made a lot of teams think twice about how to play Swansea especially at the Liberty. Arsenal and Citeh to name but two The fact that Swansea are now creating so much interest also shows how, since that December game at SJP, they’ve grown into their role as a solid, mid table Premiership side.

So Pardwho had to come up with some plan and at least he kept the recently adopted 4-3-3 alive even if HBA was sometimes left behind in a midfield 4. Although he’s not the tactical genius that the media seem to think he is, we did have one eye on the Bolton game on Monday, so running around like headless chickens chasing the ball was probably not the best idea.

Taking your Trveino analogy one stage further, when asked about an undeserved victory in a USA basketball match, the coach said “Great teams don’t play great every night, but great teams find different ways (to win),”

Not suggesting Toon are “great” just yet but 3 points at this stage of the season is something we’d take for sure and so, I suspect, would our ‘Arry