We’re still working on things like triangles and positioning, but within those drills, really emphasising that the first option we should consider is a return pass back to where it came from. I think this type of play can provide us with a few benefits:

Firstly, we’ve always talked about keeping possession, and tried to play that way most of last season. However starting the season learning to first consider a return pass will hopefully give us a better understanding of how we should play to achieve that goal.

Another thing that’s always spoken about, at all levels that I’ve played at, is playing the way that you’re facing. We all know that’s what we should be doing, but somehow we often make bad decisions and turn into defenders. This focus on a return pass as a first option, from our couple of sessions doing this, seems to have improved this aspect of our game for many players.

Another thing that our coach pointed out was forcing the opposition to make a decision, which I’ll explore further later on. Basically every pass we make, whether it’s a killer pass behind the defence, or a simple return ball, means that every defender nearby needs to make a decision. Do I close down the player with the ball, do I track this player’s run, do I hold the space here? Eventually, and more often than not at the lower levels of the game, the defender is going to make a poor decision. At this point, assuming we’ve kept possession, we should have an advantage, probably putting one of our players into a space where they can begin an attacking move.

However we don’t want to be too robotic in our play. If 90% of our options is a return pass, then we’re not going to go any where, and the opposition will work out our system fairly quickly.

I think it’s about teaching us to more often choose a safe option than a risky one. A safe option may not be the best option in terms of setting up a goal scoring opportunity, but it’s rarely ever a bad option. If our main goal is to keep possession, than a 95% pass is going to be much better than a 50% one. While a 20% flick over the top might look good if it comes off, chances are we’ll give the ball away, so we don’t want to take that risk.

For two sessions now our team has worked mainly on this concept, and I can see it starting to work. Especially in our first session, there were times where we were able to keep the ball almost effortlessly against the opposition. Many of the times that we gave the ball away were due to poor touch, or strong closing down by the opposition.

I can see this evolving throughout the season into a system that involves rotating positions. This will hopefully work well in our attacking third, where we’ve traditionally rushed forward, and as a result had less options and less time on the ball.

I hope to see something like a midfielder playing a pass to a striker, then making a foward run. Instead of the striker playing a return pass to the midfielder, a third player would move into the space created by the midfielder’s run, and receve the return pass. Now we’ve got a player on the ball, looking forward, with a bit of time, and a midfielder making an attacking run. From here we’ve now got an option to keep the ball, back to the striker, or we can make a more attacking play involving the midfielder. As an aspiring creative midfielder, one of my favourite passes to play in this situation would be a ball through the channel between 2 defenders. The attacking midfielder will already be moving forward at pace, so good weight on the ball will hopefully result in a 1 on 1 situation with the keeper.

It will be interesting to see how our style of play will evolve throughout the season once we properly internalise this concept. It’s definitely something that I’ll be taking to the team that I will be coaching.