Long passing

[africanspurs]

Having seen Hoddle live at the Spurs Show on Tuesday and watched the montage of clips from his career it struck me how many (successful) long passes he made. Now clearly he was in a league of his own but aside from Carrick, Redknapp and Huddlestone I cant recall many Spurs players who have had the ability to pass a ball over a distance. Daws has got the diagonal ball from right to left wing in his locker.

Come to think of it I wouldn't be able to name any of our existing midfield players who have that ability to change the direction of play or turn defence into attack and drop a ball in behind defences. Cant ever remember Sandro, Dembele, Paulinho, Bentaleb, Capoue, Holtby or Eriksen doing this - for this reason I think we really made a mistake letting Hudd go. Just putting it out there but do you think this is tactical thing or is that we just dont have any players with the ability to play that way?

Van der vaart

BAE

 

[the dza]

Scholes used to hit a lot of long passes too. Wasn't long ago that he came out of retirement and helped Utd win the league for the billionth time was it?

 

[SteveAWOL]

FWIW, here's the most prolific long passers (according to the Opta data on WhoScored.com) at Spurs over the past 5 seasons compared to some of the top midfielders in the Premier League.

How I miss watching Modric and van der Vaart switching play to create gaps in opponents' defences, as they did so gloriously back in 2011/12, in stark contrast to the sight of Dawson hoofing long diagonals. Capoue has shown a bit of promise during his rare appearances in midfield but Dembele' barely managed 3 accurate long passes per game, the rest of the Top 7 all have at least 1 central midfielder pinging 5+ accurate long passes per game to help outmanoeuvre those pesky parked buses.

Scholes used to hit a lot of long passes too. Wasn't long ago that he came out of retirement and helped Utd win the league for the billionth time was it?

Last season Scholes hit 127 accurate long passes (at a completion rate of 88%) over 763 minutes which is 1 every 6 minutes!

Over the previous 3 seasons he completed a long pass every 9 minutes with a completion rate of 80%.