Stats - How bad is our defensive record & Are we in a relegation battle?

[Walt]

11 minutes ago, torres said:

 

That Millwall game was where I thought he shouldn’t be here. 

 

The little run we put together near the end of the season papered over huge cracks. We were fortunate in most of our wins in that run. 

This isn’t hindsight - most of us that go regularly have been saying all this for a while 

Not the case, the run was entirely as justified as we had a settled back 5, that was key. We also got Bannan back and playing well, Nuhiu in the form of his life, Joao on fire and FF back for the last few games playing like he did in his first season here. We'd swap between 352, 532, 343 with ease and with mainly the same players in the back 5 (apart from LWB). The cracks that were there at the end of last season like desperately needing a LWB, a new center back (our best one was a loan) and a possibly new RWB were bleeding huge chasms with the events of pre season! 

[torres]

22 minutes ago, Walt said:

Not the case, the run was entirely as justified as we had a settled back 5, that was key. We also got Bannan back and playing well, Nuhiu in the form of his life, Joao on fire and FF back for the last few games playing like he did in his first season here. We'd swap between 352, 532, 343 with ease and with mainly the same players in the back 5 (apart from LWB). The cracks that were there at the end of last season like desperately needing a LWB, a new center back (our best one was a loan) and a possibly new RWB were bleeding huge chasms with the events of pre season! 

 

Did you go to any of the games???

I came away from most of them thinking how the hell have we won that. 

 

[Walt]

33 minutes ago, torres said:

 

Did you go to any of the games???

I came away from most of them thinking how the hell have we won that. 

 

Just the homes ones mate. 4-1 Preston, 3-0 Reading, 5-1 Norwich spring to mind in the last ten or so games. I haven't looked it up but I don't think we ever conceded more than 1 goal in those last ten (ish?) matches apart from QPR when we shipped 4? Think you can get lucky for a few games but not that many. Quite obvious to my mind that we had a reliable back line and each player knew what he was supposed to be doing and just as importantly knew what his mate next to him was doing or attempting to be doing. All that has now gone.

[torres]

1 minute ago, Walt said:

Just the homes ones mate. 4-1 Preston, 3-0 Reading, 5-1 Norwich spring to mind in the last ten or so games. I haven't looked it up but I don't think we ever conceded more than 1 goal in those last ten (ish?) matches apart from QPR when we shipped 4? Think you can get lucky for a few games but not that many. Quite obvious to my mind that we had a reliable back line and each player knew what he was supposed to be doing and just as importantly knew what his mate next to him was doing or attempting to be doing. All that has now gone.

 

Preston hit the post twice in the first 20 minutes and missed 3 clear cut chances 

 

Norwich didn’t turn up and still could have had 3 or 4 

 

Reading was well deserved but they were the worst team I’ve seen for a long time and FF was on fire that day. Sandwiched in those games was Hull away who could have had double figures. 

 

Im not trying to slate them for the sake of it, I’m just saying a fair few of the supporters could see things were not as rosey as the scores suggested. 

 

I was hoping they could take the positives into pre season and build a foundation. 

 

They didn’t. 

[Owl Be Back]

Whether we fluked some results or not there's absolutely no doubt that a team is hard to break down when they have a settled defensive structure that doesn't swap and change every game. It benefits from being stable, well drilled and understanding the abilities and roles of each player within it. A great defensive line is always better than the sum of its parts for 99% of teams with few exceptions (clue: we aren't one of those). We definitely don't have anywhere near this stability as Jos is breaking this fundamental rule of football and changing things around at the back far too much even taking injuries into account - the only thing he's been consistent about is the keeper! Which is pretty weird, considering.

[Pale Rider]

3 hours ago, wilfsmith said:

Only two teams with a worse Goal Difference too so it's not that we're scoring freely at the other end to make up for it. Double whammy!

We don’t create enough, a large percentage of what have scored have been long shots. Whilst we all enjoy them, good teams break the opposition down. 

[Walt]

2 minutes ago, torres said:

 

Preston hit the post twice in the first 20 minutes and missed 3 clear cut chances 

 

Norwich didn’t turn up and still could have had 3 or 4 

 

Reading was well deserved but they were the worst team I’ve seen for a long time and FF was on fire that day. Sandwiched in those games was Hull away who could have had double figures. 

 

Im not trying to slate them for the sake of it, I’m just saying a fair few of the supporters could see things were not as rosey as the scores suggested. 

 

I was hoping they could take the positives into pre season and build a foundation. 

 

They didn’t. 

I’m sure we could all point to ifs and buts as there are fine lines in most games in this league but the results were what they were. I don’t think any of us were stupid enough to think things were all rosey. We could all see the issues. 

 

Pre season was an absolute mess.  I’m struggling to see how we could possibly build anything as we were under an embargo and the obvious short comings could not be addressed. The obvious short comings were then added to by the loss of eight players. The loss of 8 players may not have been a bad thing if the manager was allowed to replace at least 4 of them. He wasn’t allowed to replace one (until recently).

 

 

[Walt]

9 minutes ago, Owl Be Back said:

Whether we fluked some results or not there's absolutely no doubt that a team is hard to break down when they have a settled defensive structure that doesn't swap and change every game. It benefits from being stable, well drilled and understanding the abilities and roles of each player within it. A great defensive line is always better than the sum of its parts for 99% of teams with few exceptions (clue: we aren't one of those). We definitely don't have anywhere near this stability as Jos is breaking this fundamental rule of football and changing things around at the back far too much even taking injuries into account - the only thing he's been consistent about is the keeper! Which is pretty weird, considering.

Bingo.