Opta statistics, produced in conjunction with Castrol, show that over the past two seasons in the Premier League in only around a third of games did one side have 60% of possession or more, and when they did they won 52% of the time, and lost 25%. If a side had 70% possession or over (which happened in 4.7% of games), they won 67% of the time and lost 17%. Only once in the past two seasons did one side have over 80 per cent possession – Liverpool, in their 3-2 win at Bolton last August.
In the closer games, having 50-59.9% possession meant a side won 43% of the time and lost 31%. So there is a clear correlation between dominating possession and winning matches.
"We are quite close in our philosophies and I believe it is time England adapted a more direct approach. That's my opinion. I am a more direct manager.
"If you have strengths, you should play to them. In Norway it is a big difference between me and other coaches. They don't agree with me.''
data showing that ball possession is important:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/may/12/the-question-important-possession
but there is also a stat that show that 90% of the goals are scored less than 7 seconds after you won possession
so the 2 way of play seem to work (the english way and the barcelona way, to make it simple)
the best thing would be to be able to do both with the same team, or a mix of the two
here is an article that seems to indicate that hodgson will not change the way england plays - very direct :
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/s...y-hodgson-is-a-football-revolutionary?cc=5739
it's great, but i hope that it won't hurt skilled players like wilshere