MATCHWATCH : Mansfield Town (a)

[Brum Royal]

a couple of stats that I've been looking into;

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38. Now whilst this isn't a table we want to be top of, it does indicate that we don't get into many attacking situations. and certainly shows we don't play off the shoulder of the last defender.

then i looked into the number of crosses this season 539 - we are bottom of the league for the number of crosses this season.

So if we aren't going through the middle, and we aren't getting crosses into the box, then what the hell are we doing? its all very odd.

And on the defensive side we had to deal with 38 crosses from mansfield
28 against luton
24 against bradford
30 against port vale
43 against bolton
34 against wycombe
and so on and so on

Bolton are top of the crosses league table with an average of 23 crosses a game. we are conceding nearly double the number of crosses in some games than the best team in the league manages on crossing to average per game.

So we have no width, we don't go through the middle, we don't play off the shoulder of defenders, and we concede the most amount of crosses into our box than any team in the division.

Assuming that 539 includes Mansfield last night, then we're averaging 539/36 = 14.97 crosses per game. About 8 fewer than Bolton every match on average.

The flip is also interesting. If we are conceding up to 43 crosses per game, then how good are we at stopping these crosses at source? I appreciate you want to defend narrow without the ball, but some combination of midfielder/winger/fullback also need to be getting out to the opposing winger to try to stop that cross coming in in the first place. I'm not surprised at the figure of 38 crosses last night from Mansfield, it felt like we had a lot of headed clearances, especially second half.

[Maguire]

I don't see many games these days so was looking forward to settling down to watch last night.

Good lord is it always that bad? It did look quite windy so maybe not the easiest conditions to play football but it seemed like we haven't even mastered the basics. No control at all.

R Williams the only one who can take any credit from that, really. A deserved loss.

[tidus_mi2]

I don't see many games these days so was looking forward to settling down to watch last night.

Good lord is it always that bad? It did look quite windy so maybe not the easiest conditions to play football but it seemed like we haven't even mastered the basics. No control at all.

R Williams the only one who can take any credit from that, really. A deserved loss.

It's usually a pretty tough watch but it sounds like it was especially bad last night. We usually at least fashion some good chances but really struggled last night.

[stealthpapes]

a couple of stats that I've been looking into;

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38. Now whilst this isn't a table we want to be top of, it does indicate that we don't get into many attacking situations. and certainly shows we don't play off the shoulder of the last defender.

then i looked into the number of crosses this season 539 - we are bottom of the league for the number of crosses this season.

So if we aren't going through the middle, and we aren't getting crosses into the box, then what the hell are we doing? its all very odd.

And on the defensive side we had to deal with 38 crosses from mansfield
28 against luton
24 against bradford
30 against port vale
43 against bolton
34 against wycombe
and so on and so on

Bolton are top of the crosses league table with an average of 23 crosses a game. we are conceding nearly double the number of crosses in some games than the best team in the league manages on crossing to average per game.

So we have no width, we don't go through the middle, we don't play off the shoulder of defenders, and we concede the most amount of crosses into our box than any team in the division.

Assuming that 539 includes Mansfield last night, then we're averaging 539/36 = 14.97 crosses per game. About 8 fewer than Bolton every match on average.

The flip is also interesting. If we are conceding up to 43 crosses per game, then how good are we at stopping these crosses at source? I appreciate you want to defend narrow without the ball, but some combination of midfielder/winger/fullback also need to be getting out to the opposing winger to try to stop that cross coming in in the first place. I'm not surprised at the figure of 38 crosses last night from Mansfield, it felt like we had a lot of headed clearances, especially second half.

Couple of thoughts:

What’s the highest number of caught offsides. As GWL says, it’s likely a good number to score high on, as it proxies as putting the ball into dangerous areas.

If I have it right, we’re on an average of 15 attempted crosses a game. The highest team is on 23. Yet we have individual game totals of 30s and 40s which means that there must be games/teams with fewer than 10. That variance makes me wonder how useful the statistic is - either in terms of telling you anything or correlating with success. Just something worth thinking about.

The analysis of crosses could fall into the trap you get with mistakes. Is the mistake the one you see or what never happened because the player was five yards off the pace and nowhere near the ball…

Cheers for the stats though, appreciated.

[Brogue]

a couple of stats that I've been looking into;

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38. Now whilst this isn't a table we want to be top of, it does indicate that we don't get into many attacking situations. and certainly shows we don't play off the shoulder of the last defender.

then i looked into the number of crosses this season 539 - we are bottom of the league for the number of crosses this season.

So if we aren't going through the middle, and we aren't getting crosses into the box, then what the hell are we doing? its all very odd.

And on the defensive side we had to deal with 38 crosses from mansfield
28 against luton
24 against bradford
30 against port vale
43 against bolton
34 against wycombe
and so on and so on

Bolton are top of the crosses league table with an average of 23 crosses a game. we are conceding nearly double the number of crosses in some games than the best team in the league manages on crossing to average per game.

So we have no width, we don't go through the middle, we don't play off the shoulder of defenders, and we concede the most amount of crosses into our box than any team in the division.

Assuming that 539 includes Mansfield last night, then we're averaging 539/36 = 14.97 crosses per game. About 8 fewer than Bolton every match on average.

The flip is also interesting. If we are conceding up to 43 crosses per game, then how good are we at stopping these crosses at source? I appreciate you want to defend narrow without the ball, but some combination of midfielder/winger/fullback also need to be getting out to the opposing winger to try to stop that cross coming in in the first place. I'm not surprised at the figure of 38 crosses last night from Mansfield, it felt like we had a lot of headed clearances, especially second half.

Couple of thoughts:

What’s the highest number of caught offsides. As GWL says, it’s likely a good number to score high on, as it proxies as putting the ball into dangerous areas.

If I have it right, we’re on an average of 15 attempted crosses a game. The highest team is on 23. Yet we have individual game totals of 30s and 40s which means that there must be games/teams with fewer than 10. That variance makes me wonder how useful the statistic is - either in terms of telling you anything or correlating with success. Just something worth thinking about.

The analysis of crosses could fall into the trap you get with mistakes. Is the mistake the one you see or what never happened because the player was five yards off the pace and nowhere near the ball…

Cheers for the stats though, appreciated.

stats here https://playerstats.football/league-one/stats/offsides

Exeter are massive outliers in first place with 103. next team Lincoln, are on 84. Jayden Wareham tops the charts individually, with 40. next player 23

crosses here https://playerstats.football/league-one/stats/crosses bolton way out in front 851 23.64 per game Reading bottom on 539 - 14.97 per game. Mansfield are 14th in the table for crosses averaging 20 per game, until Reading rock up giving them the freedom of the flanks allowing them to double their average

[leon]

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38

You do actually want to be at the top of caught offside table.

We're second bottom.

We certainly are.

[Snowflake Royal]

I pointed out after the Luton game that we had to defend 29 crosses, tonight it was 38 so obviously haven't learned any lessons, that's aside of the 17 shots Mansfield had, 7 on target.

Leam said they had the quantity but we had the quality shot-wise. And the one they did get was yet another sodding deflection.

Trying to work out how, even though we had the quality shot -wise, we managed to lose 1-0!
Think we had one shot on target FFS.
These are the sort of comments that make me dislike the bloke.

It's not really hard, we created 3 great opportunities first half, but didn’t take any.

[Greatwesternline]

a couple of stats that I've been looking into;

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38. Now whilst this isn't a table we want to be top of, it does indicate that we don't get into many attacking situations. and certainly shows we don't play off the shoulder of the last defender.

then i looked into the number of crosses this season 539 - we are bottom of the league for the number of crosses this season.

So if we aren't going through the middle, and we aren't getting crosses into the box, then what the hell are we doing? its all very odd.

And on the defensive side we had to deal with 38 crosses from mansfield
28 against luton
24 against bradford
30 against port vale
43 against bolton
34 against wycombe
and so on and so on

Bolton are top of the crosses league table with an average of 23 crosses a game. we are conceding nearly double the number of crosses in some games than the best team in the league manages on crossing to average per game.

So we have no width, we don't go through the middle, we don't play off the shoulder of defenders, and we concede the most amount of crosses into our box than any team in the division.

Assuming that 539 includes Mansfield last night, then we're averaging 539/36 = 14.97 crosses per game. About 8 fewer than Bolton every match on average.

The flip is also interesting. If we are conceding up to 43 crosses per game, then how good are we at stopping these crosses at source? I appreciate you want to defend narrow without the ball, but some combination of midfielder/winger/fullback also need to be getting out to the opposing winger to try to stop that cross coming in in the first place. I'm not surprised at the figure of 38 crosses last night from Mansfield, it felt like we had a lot of headed clearances, especially second half.

Couple of thoughts:

What’s the highest number of caught offsides. As GWL says, it’s likely a good number to score high on, as it proxies as putting the ball into dangerous areas.

If I have it right, we’re on an average of 15 attempted crosses a game. The highest team is on 23. Yet we have individual game totals of 30s and 40s which means that there must be games/teams with fewer than 10. That variance makes me wonder how useful the statistic is - either in terms of telling you anything or correlating with success. Just something worth thinking about.

The analysis of crosses could fall into the trap you get with mistakes. Is the mistake the one you see or what never happened because the player was five yards off the pace and nowhere near the ball…

Cheers for the stats though, appreciated.

My hazy recollection was, fans cheer a corner, but in footballing terms there is no correlation with corners and winning. Corners are statistically a low chance of a goal.

A corner should be seen as a good chance at goal where defence was disorganised as having been cut out and avoided by the defence at the expense of a low risk corner.

Whereas fans get angry about an offside, but offsides do have a positive correlation with winning, and are a sign that your team is winning the midfield battle and is attempting through balls into dangerous places from which goals are often scored.

[Sutekh]

Assuming that 539 includes Mansfield last night, then we're averaging 539/36 = 14.97 crosses per game. About 8 fewer than Bolton every match on average.

The flip is also interesting. If we are conceding up to 43 crosses per game, then how good are we at stopping these crosses at source? I appreciate you want to defend narrow without the ball, but some combination of midfielder/winger/fullback also need to be getting out to the opposing winger to try to stop that cross coming in in the first place. I'm not surprised at the figure of 38 crosses last night from Mansfield, it felt like we had a lot of headed clearances, especially second half.

Couple of thoughts:

What’s the highest number of caught offsides. As GWL says, it’s likely a good number to score high on, as it proxies as putting the ball into dangerous areas.

If I have it right, we’re on an average of 15 attempted crosses a game. The highest team is on 23. Yet we have individual game totals of 30s and 40s which means that there must be games/teams with fewer than 10. That variance makes me wonder how useful the statistic is - either in terms of telling you anything or correlating with success. Just something worth thinking about.

The analysis of crosses could fall into the trap you get with mistakes. Is the mistake the one you see or what never happened because the player was five yards off the pace and nowhere near the ball…

Cheers for the stats though, appreciated.

My hazy recollection was, fans cheer a corner, but in footballing terms there is no correlation with corners and winning. Corners are statistically a low chance of a goal.

A corner should be seen as a good chance at goal where defence was disorganised as having been cut out and avoided by the defence at the expense of a low risk corner.

Whereas fans get angry about an offside, but offsides do have a positive correlation with winning, and are a sign that your team is winning the midfield battle and is attempting through balls into dangerous places from which goals are often scored.

It’s only really frustrating if you have the problem of lots of offsides but a low goalscoring ratio.

[stealthpapes]

Whereas fans get angry about an offside, but offsides do have a positive correlation with winning, and are a sign that your team is winning the midfield battle and is attempting through balls into dangerous places from which goals are often scored.

yeah, as you and Sutekh allude, they likely have a very, very strong correlation with passes played into areas where someone going to create a chance. There's a whole Drake Equation going on there, through shots, through goals and onto winning.

But 100%, agree, at the team level, more offsides is a symptom of good team play. I'd be worrying if an individual player was racking up a high number without subsequent shots etc.

Started having a look at the stats - feels that, without signing up, I'd have to go through match by match. Look at the variance, though.

[leon]

Whereas fans get angry about an offside, but offsides do have a positive correlation with winning, and are a sign that your team is winning the midfield battle and is attempting through balls into dangerous places from which goals are often scored.

Started having a look at the stats - feels that, without signing up, I'd have to go through match by match. Look at the variance, though.

christ, that sounds bleak

[Clyde1998]

It was incredibly disappointing last night, but this is the sort of game we've dropped plenty of points in this season. We struggle when sides press our defence (especially Pereira), which is what Mansfield did well last night. Leyton Orient did it to great effect too.

Had we scored that Ehibhatiomhan/Doyle chance in the first couple of minutes, it would've been a very different game. Aside from that though, I can't think of us challenging their defence too often. Mansfield, on the other hand, forced Pereira into multiple good saves throughout the game.

Completely deserved to lose last night.

It's games like this which will prevent us from getting into the play-offs. Burton away next week is a similar one. They beat us 3-2 at their place last season and have already beaten Bolton (3-0); Stockport (3-0) and Huddersfield (3-1) at home. They've won ten all season and half of them have come against sides currently in the top six.