Long throw-ins, loads of corners and VAR ruining the “beautiful game”. Everyone seems to think football is sh*t. But is football actually worse than it used to be, or have we all got our Barclaysmen tinted glasses on?
Adam Clery digs through the archives of previous seasons and breaks down the numbers behind this claim.
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Written, Produced, and Additional Editing by Adam Clery
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44 Comments
Get rid of 5 subs
So so true, I was thinking about this the other day… There is just too much football on TV! It's like having christmas every day, it wouldn't feel as special then right.
Good news, Adam, Newcastle United scored two goals today!
I thought the analysis of the tactical changes pretty much got to the cause. It has nothing to do with the amount of games on TV. I only watch, and have only ever watched the so called big games, champions league and my team. Football is falling year on year (on the eye), and again, you touched on this in the video. The mavericks are being lost from the game. In previous generations you could name countless great forwards, wingers, centre mids and even centre backs. Now you’d struggle with a handful of each. I’m sure this isn’t down to reduced quality, but rather the tactics no longer allowing the freedom and the lessor players all now being athletes and well drilled. After all that being said, the CL was very good tonight!
12:52 😂😂😂😂😂
The rest of the league crying while they get their shit pushed in.
For me, it is the approach that has changed. In the yester years, bottom of the league clubs were the ones who were playing for free kicks and corners. Nowadays, the top of the league team is the one playing for set pieces. Our minds are tuned to think that less competitive teams will use dark arts to win matches. Well, seems like a majority of teams have become shit that they're choosing to play for set pieces. That's what's boring. Like, why would I sit in front of a tv set only to wish for corners? You rarely sit at the edge of your seat while watching football matches. Everything is slow, pass, slow, keeper, slow, sideways, slow. Even Pep has defaulted to this 😮. Anyway, nothing interesting, this season especially, about EPL. Imagine a team winning the EPL using corners. 😂😂😂😂. Diabolical.
42 years old and a qualified coach and while I do think the current style of football played is less exciting than the end to end action of the 90’s football is massively better than it was then. Which sounds odd I know. From a pure spectacle it’s less enjoyable it’s patterns of play it’s predictable outcomes and risk averse instead of whacking a shot from 30 yards it’s take 4 more pass’s to work a higher percentage opportunity this doesn’t make for a great spectacle when every other team is playing to limit the percentage chance of opportunities given. Is this shit football tho? Absolutely not the technical needs to play so quickly in such small areas to constantly rotate positions and also remain solid defensively the understanding of tactic and stuff it’s on an entire other level to the past as far as actual football perfection goes. I don’t see any team pre the pep revolution at Barca been able to remotely compete in today’s game not the 99 treble winners not the great Milan sides of the 90’s or puskas Madrid whatever era from pre 2010ish would be absolutely baffled by today’s tactics and would be torn to bits. Football is less enjoyable to watch but it’s much much better football technically. As a fan this makes me a bit sad as a coach this makes me happy lol two sides of the same coin
The EPL is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side
This is why the offside rule needs to change. Clear daylight should be tested by var. it will lead to more goal chances or would every other team park the bus
I think I agree with you as well. I see a lot of the complaining on social media and I love taking part in a bit of Arsenal slander but I only watch one game a week regularly. I try to watch every Man United match and then sometimes I catch a Champions League fixture as well. I'm entertained by it and maybe watch some analysis, then I move on and pick out the day on the calendar when Man United play next and look forward to it all week.
Sure but Arsenal's haram-ball corners and refs/VAR allowing wrestling & two hand shoves but not toenail offsides are actively making it worse. And I'd think that even if i was only watching 1 match per gameweek.
What an amazing twist right at the end
Bang on. Only thing that I think deserves a more detailed mention is the time taken for set pieces, and playing the likes of Arsenal or Everton can feel dire because the game has no flow to it. But it's in the press and public mind particularly because Arsenal are the worst at it. They are properly boring as league leaders. Whereas 2002 Bolton working on set pieces doesn't matter as much because they aren't holding the flagpole for the league.
So Man Utd are the most entertaining club this season then?
liverpool and city dropping is the reason why this season is so "boring"
Sorry Adam, but you aren’t right. I am one of the season ticket holders for years and this is the worst season of football for decades. There have been other awful times such as the Arsenal teams scoring 1 and doing f all for the rest of the game. However this is old division 4 garbage. Long ball was bad but this corner/long throw is like watching rugby union – tedious as f. The eye test supports the stats – it’s been an awful season to watch football
Also on your last point, it's easy to think it used to be exciting because we know the results. We know arsenal went invincible so the season was incredible, but I bet watching a 0-0 on week 4 of the season felt very different 😂
Wow, life is CRAZY! Glad to see you back man
The only thing thats shyt is the two tiered system of punishment. Oh your bottom of the table? Points deduction. Oh your top of the table and cheated for nearly a decade? Ummmm small fine k? Oh you dont want a small fine? Oh so sorry how bout you dont pay and we steal it from a charity? Okay cool. Thats the only story right now that matters
Great watch. Great video. Great analysis. Top man
It is shite. Arsenal being the best in the league, potentially even the best in Europe demonstrates this. Liverpool were good but not incredible last season, yet they were infinitely better than this Arsenal. The only reason Arsenal are top is because they're the best shit in the bowl, the best of the worst, the least smelly shit.
That said, all of Europe are pretty shit right now. Bayern and PSG are rivals for best in Europe right now, Bayern have an aging (but great) Harry Kane and the "meh" Luis Diaz leading their forward line and got battered by Arsenal "not as bad as the rest" FC. PSG are pretty good but very hit n miss, nothing on good sides of the past.
This is the type of content that makes me love this channel😅
Its just the natural trend. We had almost a decade of teams scoring 100 goals, getting 90+ points without a sweat, the only way for teams to be competitive was to force teams to break down a solid defensive structure. And then the counter to get goals against that was to get better at set pieces, corners, and become more physical. The next trend is going to be getting players who can break down these 4-4-2 type blocks by dribbling past their man markers and shot takers. And then we will cycle back to where we were in late 00s and early 2010s.
Good year for defenders in fpl
Adam, I usually watch and love your videos. You use analytics sensibly to explain things us regular folk do not, and you do it without being condescending; In this video, you do the exact opposite. You spend 14 minutes showing us all the reasons why televised or not, the totality of games in this season, compared statistically (not perceptually) against historical data, shows a worse product for fans. And then you expect us to go along with "it's because you're seeing every game now and you didn't in 2003/04".
You can have an aesthetic preference for planned corners or long throws, fine. You can't tell us that record set piece reliance + rotation-caused tactical incoherence + more games where one team doesn't score + more games with a smaller margin of victory is not boring. That's not nostalgia talking. It's not pig-headed Internet blabber that's trying to downplay cool tactical evolution. It's just worse football. That's not an indictment on all of modern football btw, just this season. If you let the stats you cited in the first 14 minutes do the talking this time like you usually do (even for small, insignificant seeming differences in numbers like xG or PPDA), you'd have to admit that this season is more boring too. Instead it looks like you were out to defend against some crowd of nostalgic old farts who wish for the good ol' days, and when you couldn't find the defense in the numbers, you decided your hypothesis mattered more.
interesting takr
This is all fine, except you didn't mention the biggest contribution to the premier league being a chore to watch. . . The referees.
the biggest turn off i see more of this season is the time taken to re-start. not just the Premiership, but also saw at Spurs v atletico last night – referee gives a corner, spends 30 seconds watching the box jostling, then European refereee walks into the box for a chat and consultation, and starts pointing here and there, eventually Spurs take the corner, but one second later the game stops for 2 minutes while Atletico player fakes an injury that 20 years ago everyone would have dribbled around, giving him recovery time i.e. 'help is not coming, you are play-acting'. Then at some point the ball goes out for a throw, and it's a 40 second period before the throw comes into the box. and then the Ateltico goalkeeper is truly wasting time every goal kick and when the ball is in his hands. so the tempo and slickness gets drained out of the game. every set piece there is at least a 30-40 second delay (like a prayer or meditation break) where everyone thinks hard about the next boot of the ball upfield. just restarting within 10 seconds or 15 seconds would bring pace, mistakes, drama back to the game.
Brilliant video as ever. It feels like that football is happening Mitchell and Webb sketch predicted the future.
Who would have thought that when you manipulate results with VAR it makes football crap
You want to blame constant flank football with drop ins into the box? Blame Pep and his "playing through the lines" style that just automated everyone to play like prime Barca 15 years ago. Jose parked the bus, but you could feel his shithousery type of game and you could see that he was challenging every team and manager.That Gerrard slip and Chelsea scoring would never happen today because the backline would be full of players waiting to cut off passes, like soldiers. Today we have Pep slowly fading away while his protege cocooned out in Arsenal who discovered a loophole of rugby huddles against goalies for corners. So sometimes its not even that we want too much football to only complain about it later, its that we praise BS that we have today too much. I dont care how many goals he scores but dont compare Haaland to Drogba, Rooney, Shearer, Bergkamp etc. Salah may be the closest player we have today who resembles the classic football we used to love to replicate on EA Fifa games. Once Ronaldo, Messi and the rest of today's unicorns stop playing, I cant name ONE player who can really take over and we can cheer for another decade. Mbappe was somehow in that conversation, but he dropped off completely. Football's story is changing and not in a good way.
BRUUUUUUUUUH
nah the prem is gettier shittier, both as a spectacle and against other leagues
I’m an American, and I constantly get the crap about low scoring games. If you only enjoy the scoring in your sport, then maybe your sport (American “football” in this case) is a boring sport. I enjoy the low scoring games too.
Great video and Big thanks for the effort, certainly done so much better than main stream media.
I think two things are the most influential reasons for this, 1)The technology (e.g. amount of cameras and digital data) provides both player and viewer with so much data overload and the human nature part (including mainstream media) is to cherry pick to remove the vast amount of the more mundane part of the game.
2) Social media and streaming services allow for a plethora of communication that has created a theatre for the dissection of the game.
It's shit cos they pay average players top whack and they pay too much for average players
It’s almost like Jurgen Klopp might have had a point when he said, in terms, that more football doesn’t mean better football
SOCCER (FOOTBALL) IS GETTING WORSE. PREPARE ACCORDINGLY
What about introducing some sort of bonus points system? For example, if you score three goals in a match, then you get an extra league point (win or lose) and a hand shake from Adam.
AT LEAST THIS SPORT IS PRACTICALLY THE MOST SKILLFUL REQUIRED ON THIS PLANET YA?
There are way too many games now and they can't all be amazingly exciting.
I honestly can't believe how can some players play every single game all season … impressive, not boring.
If they've ALREADY PLAYED 58 games SO FAR, would the Toons not have a 71 game season if they made it to the Champs league final?
Think you forgot the 8 EPL games still to come in yr total their Adz. or you'd already included them even they they have not ALREADY been actually played?? Confused.