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Post by dennisrofe on Oct 3, 2024 15:02:08 GMT
And no more is the much maligned Ruel at the club to bang in the half chances. Also your favourite Jordan Graham is nowhere near yet up to speed. I’m cutting Jordan Graham a lot of slack at the moment, just back after injury. But he has been poor. I just hope that his injury won’t affect his game long term. Some are never quite the same after injury. We really need him to be good and Theo to come back strong. Well I will be surprised to see Theo back until a time nearer end of season and if he does then will still need to take time to get match fit. Some players are never the same after this ACL operation that Theo has had, Dean Cox to mention just one player. Speaking from personal experience with two busted knees including a torn ACL on my right knee incurred playing football when I was around 21 years old ! |
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Post by buffalobill on Oct 3, 2024 15:16:11 GMT
Fair assessment Thor. I don’t get too excited about off target chances, some decent many still orbiting the moon. The James type stunner is the exception, most are in reality very poor efforts. We need to create on target chances and accept that even then the keeper will deal with most. It’s their job. Watched Spurs against Man U. They should have got 6 or 7. 10 shots on target, 24 in total. The three they got was a decent conversion rate. Our 4 goals from 5 on target chances at Stockport, exceptional. To score, we simply need to create more on target shots. We don’t. It matters absolutely zilch if we play well but don’t create on target chances. That just leads to delusion. Believing we are better than we really are. We are not. We will not be good until we create on target chances and score goals. The whole point of the game. Winning, not pretty football. Wrexham a great example, for 70 minutes we played well yet created 1 chance on target. Not good enough. All that good football counted for not much in today’s league table. Include posh in that. 2 points not 6. Not good enough. We need to start winning. To do that we need to score. To do that we need to create on-target chances. We don’t. We are not playing winning football. The rest is window dressing. You do bang on about on target shots and whilst you need to hit the onion bag, 10 long range shots that keeper saves comfortably might look good in the stats, but you can have zero shots on goal, but quite reasonably have scored 5 if only the finishing was slightly better. Guy skies it over from 5 yards, misses the ball completely when a touch would have been a goal, falls over because he kicks his own heel, hits the inside of the post, underside of the bar and so on. I prefer to use the expected goal stats, I’m sure like everything it’s not perfect, but they do tell a story that we are one of the hardest teams to score against, but one of the lowest teams for creating chances in this league, which is a worry. At least we score nearly as many goals as we are expected to get, so perhaps a positive there, but creating more decent opportunities is what we need to do to improve. footystats.org/england/efl-league-one/xg |
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Post by dohnut on Oct 3, 2024 20:02:03 GMT
Fair assessment Thor. I don’t get too excited about off target chances, some decent many still orbiting the moon. The James type stunner is the exception, most are in reality very poor efforts. We need to create on target chances and accept that even then the keeper will deal with most. It’s their job. Watched Spurs against Man U. They should have got 6 or 7. 10 shots on target, 24 in total. The three they got was a decent conversion rate. Our 4 goals from 5 on target chances at Stockport, exceptional. To score, we simply need to create more on target shots. We don’t. It matters absolutely zilch if we play well but don’t create on target chances. That just leads to delusion. Believing we are better than we really are. We are not. We will not be good until we create on target chances and score goals. The whole point of the game. Winning, not pretty football. Wrexham a great example, for 70 minutes we played well yet created 1 chance on target. Not good enough. All that good football counted for not much in today’s league table. Include posh in that. 2 points not 6. Not good enough. We need to start winning. To do that we need to score. To do that we need to create on-target chances. We don’t. We are not playing winning football. The rest is window dressing. You do bang on about on target shots and whilst you need to hit the onion bag, 10 long range shots that keeper saves comfortably might look good in the stats, but you can have zero shots on goal, but quite reasonably have scored 5 if only the finishing was slightly better. Guy skies it over from 5 yards, misses the ball completely when a touch would have been a goal, falls over because he kicks his own heel, hits the inside of the post, underside of the bar and so on. I prefer to use the expected goal stats, I’m sure like everything it’s not perfect, but they do tell a story that we are one of the hardest teams to score against, but one of the lowest teams for creating chances in this league, which is a worry. At least we score nearly as many goals as we are expected to get, so perhaps a positive there, but creating more decent opportunities is what we need to do to improve. footystats.org/england/efl-league-one/xgI actually like the Xg analysis. It makes a complex area a little more meaningful, as best as you can. And fun. It’s not a perfect science but little ever will be. It has its place. But there is one simple fact. Accepting deflections, own goals etc the one perfect scientific fact is you need shots on target to score. We need more shots on target. |
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Post by Thor on Oct 3, 2024 21:09:16 GMT
I’m sure they are working on shots on target dohnut. After Saturday to see what we had as shots on and off was a massive improvement, it’s still a work in progress I’m sure.
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Post by dohnut on Oct 3, 2024 23:23:55 GMT
I’ve always felt that when we are positive, when we go for it, move the ball quickly we are actually quite good. Some good passing movements especially when we have our better players in roles that suit their skills. Sometimes a pleasure to watch.
But we don’t play that way nearly enough. Nor do we in the final third hardly ever. Seems there is a prerequisite to switch the ball left to right and back again, a fear of actually putting the ball in the box, a fear of putting players in the box. So many attacks come to nothing. We lose the ball or send a hopeful shot into orbit. Occasionally we will get a scorcher. When teams attack us they just do that, attack. Great possession figures, little end result. A familiar story for us.
Just for fun sometimes I count our passes that go nowhere, achieve nothing. I understand the probing for an opening but there needs to be an attacking end product and for us that is not often enough.we just waste time and energy. We make life easy for well organised defences to nullify any threats we pose. Why are we always looking to go backwards from decent positions? Beats me.
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Post by tommydark on Oct 3, 2024 23:32:57 GMT
The Declan Rice syndrome has really caught on with our players
Teams have so much time to park the bus with us more concerned with possession stats than scoring goals when playing at home.
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