The evidence suggesting that what Duff is trying to achieve is a revolution, i.e. a ditching of the Swansea Way, is mounting.
First of all you have Duff's credentials. As a player he only represented two teams, Cheltenham and Burnley, neither of which were associated with possession football. Dyche's Burnley in particular was very much the epitome of pragmatic, functional football. Effective but definitely not pretty.
Secondly you have Duff's record as a manager. Impressive for sure, but his Barnsley team last season only managed 48.7% possession per game on average, the only team in the top six to fail to achieve a lion's share of possession. The pass completion of 67.5% was way below what you would expect of a possession-based side.
Thirdly you have Duff's pronouncements. Not once has he name checked "The Swansea Way" or expressed a desire to dominate the ball. Yes, he's talked about playing "good" and "attractive" football, but to be honest those words are so subjective as to be meaningless. Instead, all of his comments have been about how he wants us to be different to how we were under Martin, saying recently: “We want to play up-tempo, in-your-face football. That does not always have to be without the ball, that can be with the ball,”. Nothing wrong with this per se, but there's a considerable danger that with that philosophy we treat the ball as a hot potato, and we no longer dominate the ball. The pre-season friendlies bear this out, apart from the last 30 minutes or so of the Reading game, when we stroked the ball around - but then we were 4-0 up.
Another reason for suspecting we may be abandoning the possession game is when you look at the stats of the players we've acquired and we're being linked with. With the likes of Key, Ginnelly and Ashby there are precious few stats out there on which to make a judgement. But we're being linked with Kristian Pedersen, Auston Trusty and Cameron Humphreys. All three have played for Championship long-ball outfits and their stats reflect that. Humphreys is only at the 3rd percentile for Championship centre backs for both pass completion (69.4%) and passes attempted (33.3). Trusty is at only 1% for pass completion (64.9%), but does have some impressive defensive stats and goal contribution stats. Pedersen's pass completion of 69.9% last season for Koln and 66.3% average for his time at Birmingham is nothing to write home about. So, on the face of it we are actively looking to recruit players who have the exact opposite credentials to those of a Swansea Way player.
Duff himself has used the word "evolve" to describe his approach to changing things at Swansea. If he's true to his word then we will remain a side that dominates the ball, but less so than under Martin. However there's very little so far (that last 30 minutes of Saturday) to suggest that Duff cares very much about dominating possession. To be fair, it may just be that at the moment we're looking at balancing things away from the very possession heavy approach of Martin. So, having one centre back with very good defensive stats (and to be fair Cabango, Wood and Darling all have poor defensive stats) could give us a bit more solidity without necessarily compromising our ball playing. If this balancing is the aim then fair enough, but I would be a lot more reassured if Duff made comments suggesting that he's aiming to pass through the thirds and look after the ball, at least some of the time.
In the coming weeks I'll be looking at the stats to see where we stand. We need to be exceeding 55% possession and have pass completion figures in excess of 75% to be considered a possession-based team. There is also the more subjective evaluation of how we look to progress the ball, Is there always an unholy haste to get the ball back to front, or do we mix things up with a more measured approach?
Time will tell what Duff will deliver. One thing's for sure is that if he does abandon the Swansea Way the long term prognosis is poor. Our best moments as a club have consistently come under managers who treasure the ball - and it's when we've deviated from the Swansea Way that things have gone south.