URZZZZ Stranded URZZZZ As with last season, we don’t press high enough up the park. We let the opposition settle into every game as a result. Very few teams are able to successfully execute playing it out from the back so I’m not quite sure why we play so cautiously so often. I get we try and play with pressing “trigger points” but I don’t think it’s worked particularly well which goes with the amount of goals we concede
Similarly I’m not sure we have much of a plan attacking. We can’t string three passes together without it going back to Lumley. Must have one of the lowest possession stats in the league? We rarely create good chances for our strikers (four talented strikers on how many goals between them?). The movement in the team is too static. Said it many times before but this formation is so dependent on the wide players. Look how closely our form corresponds with Hoilett’s drop in form - almost from the exact same game (Norwich H game). Pace and directness hurts and to be fair to Ince, Azeez was a great choice as a sub at LWB on Saturday. The use of Rahman this season is baffling
Where we have improved tenfold this season is our ability to mix it up physically. Compare our performance at Luton this season to our home one last season back in January. Likewise winning at the Den is a fantastic result
16th is obviously a decent achievement given the pre-season predictions. But we’ve been on borderline relegation form since matchday 8 (that sounds familiar) and 4 wins in 18 is a concern. Calls for him to go are premature but the last thing we need is to be dragged down into a relegation fight with the fixtures we have coming up this month. And Ince has a history of starting well at jobs before dismantling
Whilst I agree with a lot above I do just get annoyed by the parroting of the 4 in 18 stat without context. We had a run of 9 games, mainly away against teams, who st the time were largely in form or at the top of the table. We picked up about as many points as people expected in that run. It's why the good start was key.
In the 9 games since then, we are a top 10 team.
If you take from the restart, we are 14th and taken more points than all the bottom 5 bar Huddersfield, who have taken the same from a much easier run.
Our form is fine.
Context? We lost 2-0 to a team that had been winless for 8 games. Twice we’ve thrown away 2 goal leads. Also threw away two more leads against QPR and Burnley (although of course Burnley was desperately unlucky). Gave away a three goal lead against Birmingham (their only home win in
, and lost 4-0 to a pretty woeful Stoke side
Course you can mitigate that with the 2-0 recovery on Saturday, winning from behind at Hull, and a decent point at Norwich but the bottom line is we should have more wins in that period. And that’s why we’ve dropped to being 1st in October (even if it was only for four minutes!) to being 16th
Sure, do think there is an every growing divide in the Championship that wasn’t so apparent before. The top six is all fairly predictable with West Brom, Watford, Boro, SU and Burnley all there. But do somewhat feel there’s been a missed opportunity given our start.
Yes context - there is no missed opportunity with our start.
We won 7 of the first 11 but let's look at who we actually beat -
We beat 4 of the current bottom 6 (whilst playing the other 2 as well, and losing). Of the other 3, Boro were awful before firing Wilder and were bottom 3 at the time, Blackburn was a great result and performance against the definition of a hot/cold side and Millwall was a great result.
So we started so well because we were "lucky" enough to play teams who we are better than.
After that first 11 games we had:
Norwich - who were flying at the time
QPR - who were flying at the time
West Brom - who had just got rid of Bruce
Swansea - poor result given the 2 goal lead but never somewhere we massively enjoy despite last years win.
Bristol C - won
Burnley - runaway leaders - should have won in retrospect
Luton - last years playoffs and looking good to at least come close again
Preston - Only the top 2 are better on the road than them
Watford - PL relegated side - we would not expect anything from there.
So in that run of 9, we had games where defeat was hardly a surprise but in some cases expected - there are very fews fans (and you can go back on here to around that time) who thought our form would continue and in some cases that we would be lucky to get the 5pts that we did.
Since then, we've played a mixed bag of sides and got a mixed bag of results.
In short, we are a lower mid-table side, who are better than 6-8 sides and will win most games against them but can slip up - are about the same as another 6-8, so can expect a mixed bag there. Then there are another 6-8 sides that are markedly better than us, who will beat us more often than not but we could beat on our best day.
The results this season completely back this up but our fixture list was front loaded with games against the first group, the middle 9 or s0 mainly against sides from the last and since then a decent mix and the spread of results back that up.