PPDA flatters the team that is losing

The standard pressing metric is shaped by the scoreline as much as by intent, and it gets quoted as though it were a coaching philosophy.

Passes allowed per defensive action. It is a decent idea: count how many passes the opposition strings together before you try to take the ball, and a low number means you press hard. Simple, available, and quoted constantly.

It also has a scoreline problem that almost nobody adjusts for.

A team that is a goal down with twenty minutes left presses like its contract depends on it, because it does. A team a goal up drops off and lets the opposition have the ball in front of them, deliberately, because that is the correct decision. Their pressing numbers over the ninety minutes will therefore look like the numbers of a team with the opposite philosophy, and the metric has no way to tell you that both were choices.

Aggregate this over a season and the sides that spend the most time losing look like the most aggressive pressing teams in the division. Which they are, in a sense. Just not on purpose.

The other distortion is opponent-driven and worse. PPDA counts passes, so a team that faces opponents who play long is credited with pressing well without doing anything, because the opposition never strings together the passes that would raise the denominator. Play against a direct side and your pressing metric improves while your press is entirely untested. Play against a possession side that plays around you calmly and the number rises even if your structure is excellent.

So the honest use of it is narrow. Restrict the sample to periods when the game is level, split it by which third the defensive action happened in, and compare it against the same opponent's numbers rather than against a league average. That takes ten minutes with the underlying data and almost nobody bothers, because the single season-long figure fits in a graphic.

I would go further and say the number tells you less than watching the first ten minutes of any match with the sound off. Pressing intent is visible. Where the forward stands relative to the centre back, whether the far side winger tucks in, whether the midfield jumps or holds.

None of that is measured by counting passes, and all of it is what a manager actually decided.

The metric is not wrong. It is just answering a question about the scoreboard while people quote it as an answer about the coach.