Quarter season review

TBH the way you have put that,to my mind it doesn’t seem to much better than last year? I think the frightening thing is the emergence of some surprise teams such as Harrogate and Sutton plus the ones we already now about such as Bradford and FGR. Think they need to turn these draws into wins otherwise?🙈

For sure.  I’m much more optimistic than last season.  And enjoying football (well most of the time) much more.  Vast move in the right direction and I’m confident the gap between this and last season will get wider.

For sure personnel is better.  But I believe that to be the case in League 2 in general.  The measure is not how good we are compared to last seasons team, but how we compare to other teams in League 2.  I’m not too sure that gap differs much more than it did last term.  The bar has generally gone up overall.

But for some, and I suspect Kent Teague fit this profile, the reality is what you see on the spreadsheet and the league table.  I see the first quarter as the honeymoon period.  We really need to push on.  Players coming back, the squad bedded in.  I fully expect the figures to be vastly better at the half way mark.

If that’s your opinion then fine, but it certainly isn’t mine.  A quarter of a season is good enough to set a benchmark.  I have absolutely no doubt the Board also take that view.  if we were bottom of the table on zero points they would certainly be looking at the stats rather than looking to see if we’ve played all other teams yet before taking a view.

Also of course taking many other things into consideration.  We all know the picture is much wider that stats alone.  They will take many of the softer factors into consideration not simple hard numbers.  

But come the end of the season only 1 thing matters, the stats.  The league table is a statistic.

To a point, we have got what we wanted and it has worked out not as much as we wanted.However I think we are optimistic about a top three finish,if not then a play off place.
The football at times is good to watch if not the result.

It's an interesting point you make - that this is a stronger league than last year.

I don't know what to think. Playing in front of fans this season is always going to produce "better" football. More urgency, more competitive etc. But I really don't know whether I think this season's league is stronger.

Playing devil's advocate (to provoke a response!) the fact that Harrogate are second and Sutton go third if they win their game in hand doesn't support your assertion.....

I feel we are much more competitive this season, but in purely football terms we are hardly exciting (based on the streamed games I have seen, which is about half). I thought we were great in the QPR game, and I'm not sure that being an attractive watch means anything at all. Above all, I want to get out of this division.

This ^ spot on.

Are all the other clubs thinking the same thing? If so, it will all cancel out and just standing still will be an achievement. Perhaps avoiding those lengthy pointless runs of last year will maintain a playoffs position.

There are of course two sides to any appraisal. I call it the hard and soft areas. The hard areas are the stats - these are the facts. Then there are the softer issues, the human aspect. Both are needed to make a judgement. Heart and head stuff. When I was working we called this stuff the KPIs or key performance indicators and to a degree they ruled our lives. Hard facts and you stand and fall by them. You hit them or you don’t.

The data reported are the simple facts and are frankly beyond dispute. A cold, hard look at where we are compared to last season. Pure facts, we haven’t moved forward very much. KJ is two points better that Ross at this stage. That is a fact. But as we don’t know his targets we have no way of knowing if he is ahead or behind this season’s objectives. He may well be doing better than his KPIs. Only the Board know that. His targets may be back-end loaded, slower in the building with the expectation of a very strong run in. So any comparison with last season is little more than casual interest. Or disinterest.  But is valid none the less.

But of course the softer stuff comes into play and the picture changes quite dramatically. We are playing better, we have an experienced manager and assistant and with players to come back into the squad there is every reason to believe that come the end of the season, the stats will reflect that belief, that we will exceed last seasons performance by some way.. That is my opinion.

But for those who think statistics, data, is perhaps not important, read up on what our very own Russell Slade is getting involved with. The volume of data available on players, even lower league, shared between organisations and (which is where Russell is coming from) the players having no say about how that data is used not getting any compensation for it. Data, analytics stuff is growing in importance and playing a major part in football. Rightly so in my opinion.