England manager Roy Hodgson has reportedly blasted his critics by insisting that their claims about ball possession statistics are 'nonsense'.
Hodgson said that if his squad had scored in the 117th minute in their Euro Cup 2012 clash against Italy, for which England has been criticised for having the ball for only 37 percent of the time, it would have been seen as a great defensive performance.
Hodgson added that England lost on penalties in the end and everyone talked about how much possession the Italians had, the Mirror reported.
However, the England boss said that he is really happy that in the last few weeks the nonsense of -statistics is being proven once and for all, given Chelsea's win over Liverpool and Real Madrid's Champions League thrashing of Bayern Munich, despite both teams dominating the passing statistics.
Hodgson said that the players know what he thinks about statistics, adding that no player is ever going to hear from him that their 'passing percentage rate' was not high enough.
He further added that the players are more likely to hear that they are not passing the ball 'forwards enough' and they are passing it backwards and square too much instead.
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Hodgson said that passing and possession statistics are a complete nonsense and possession of the ball means nothing.
Hodgson added that there are two truisms in football, first is the one important stat is that who has won the game, and the second there is no one way to play football.
The England coach said that one does not play a certain type of football, but one plays the football that enables them to win with the players at their disposal.