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These late goals then - how bad is it really?


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I blame it on tactics 

 

Except carlos first season in the last 20 years every manager has been defence first and try and hold onto a lead ,rather than have confidence in going for another goal 

 

Taking gregory off tuesday night was a example of that 

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If we took our chances in some of these matches then conceding goals late on wouldn’t matter

 

We should have been out of sight at Bolton

 

Ipswich away was a shocking mistake

 

Loosing a 2 goal lead at Wimbledon 

 

Then add in some questionable substitutions - Brown at Oxford as an example and you can see why we concede so many late goals

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About as grim as I expected. Although personally I no longer think of anything before about 85min as a ‘late goal’ in that sense, really - very unusual for matches now to have less than 4min added, and very often more. In real terms a goal on 81min is about the same distance from the final whistle as a goal after 14-15min was from kickoff.

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17 minutes ago, flo said:

Any team could pick a 10 minute window of a game and come up with a stat of how it cost them promotion


Probably very true, although I feel like we hardly ever concede between 20-30min or between 60-70. They always seem to be really consistent lull periods watching Wednesday for me. Is that total rubbish?

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At first I thought it was the defenders switching off towards the end of games, but I no longer think that is the case.

 

For me think it is down to the fact that we are quite an old team and the midfield and attack run out of legs in the last 15. They just can't close down like they do earlier and teams can run through midfield much easier than in the early part of the game putting our defence under a lot more pressure.

 

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17 minutes ago, Luke said:

I blame it on tactics 

 

Except carlos first season in the last 20 years every manager has been defence first and try and hold onto a lead ,rather than have confidence in going for another goal 

 

Taking gregory off tuesday night was a example of that 

What would you have posted if Gregory had stopped on and then got injured late on ruling him out for the rest of the season I bet I can guess

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22 minutes ago, Luke said:

I blame it on tactics 

 

Except carlos first season in the last 20 years every manager has been defence first and try and hold onto a lead ,rather than have confidence in going for another goal 

 

Taking gregory off tuesday night was a example of that 

 

 


Hasn't Darren Moore just broke records for goals scored in the last few months?

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Owlstalk Shop

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, bladeshater said:

What would you have posted if Gregory had stopped on and then got injured late on ruling him out for the rest of the season I bet I can guess

Could say that about any player on the pitch 

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Our game management when narrowly ahead has been wanting for a few years now. It's not something that has just manifested itself this season. 

 

Even against Crewe on Tuesday night, where we were by a distance the better team, we still kept giving the ball away late on and they got a last minute corner where I'm sure we were all fearing the worst. Thankfully, BPF caught it and it was game over. 

 

At this level, we are a very good team, arguably the best on our day, but we still have these Achilles heels that end up costing us now and then - conceding late goals and struggling to turn game around when going a goal down away from home. It's frustrating, cause it can so easily undercut all the good work we can do. 

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We just stop playing the dominating attacking football without any fear of the opposition scoring that we had done for the previous 80 minutes.

Sometimes this comes from nervy management substitutions and tactical changes to try to hold on to what we've got. 

Rather than just carrying on in the dominant manner of the rest of the game.

 

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2 hours ago, paulrs said:

Our habit of conceding late goals is well discussed, and has come particularly into focus now that we've got ourselves within touching distance of the automatic places. But just how bad a habit is it? And how do we compare to our promotion rivals?

(Spoiler alert: it's not good!)
 

I’ve classed ‘late goal’ as anything from the 80th minute onwards, and have only included ones that cost us points, i.e. an 89th minute consolation in a 4-1 win I’ve just ignored. Here's the detail:
 

Ipswich A 90th minute – 2pts dropped

Oxford H 90th minute – 1pt

Wimbledon A 84th minute – 2pts

Lincoln H 80th minute – 2pts

Cheltenham A 90th minute – 2pts

Oxford A 84th minute – 1pt

Accrington H 83rd minute – 2pts

Bolton A 90th minute – 2pts

Total points lost to late goals – 14 (from 8 goals)
 

Interesting that the first five instances happened within the space of five horrible weeks from 25 September to 30 October. Since then we’ve only conceded three meaningful late goals in 32 games.

I've always viewed the Sunderland home game as a turning point in terms of our formation leading to a more fluent attacking style and better point return. But it also seems that time at the end of October / start of November was the beginning of us reducing the amount of late goals conceded.
 

Now briefly compare that to how many points we’ve won with late goals
 

Cambridge A 80th minute – 1pt won

MK Dons H 83rd & 90th minute – 3pts

Doncaster A 80th & 83rd minute – 2pts

Wimbledon H 90th minute – 2pts

Total points won with late goals – 8 (from 6 goals)
 

So 8 points won versus 14 points lost – not a huge discrepancy although for a team with such an experienced squad gunning for automatic promotion you’d probably expect that to be the other way round.
 

What about our rivals then. Strap yourselves in cos just like the formatting of the table it ain’t pretty.

 

Team               Points won        Points lost

Wigan              12                        6

Rotherham      0                          6

MK Dons         7                          8

SHEFF WED    8                          14

Plymouth        4                           7

Sunderland    13                          7

Wycombe       11                         2

Oxford            15                         3


Some obvious stand-outs from this, namely that Wednesday have thrown away about double the number of points of any of our near rivals. We also don't compare particularly well at scoring late goals - although rather better than Rotherham!

Sunderland's record is boosted by their phenomenal recent run, while it's worth noting that Wycombe have only conceded one meaningful goal beyond the 80th minute all season - Alfie May's 81st minute equaliser in the recent 5-5 game. Let's hope we're not behind going into the last ten minutes on Saturday then.

 

But best of all is Oxford - 15 points won with late goals and only 3 lost, including late winners against us in both fixtures this season.

Just for fun - or is it sadomasochism - here's what the league table would look like if games ended at 80 minutes:

Rotherham - 89
SHEFF WED - 85
MK Dons - 84
Wigan - 82
Plymouth - 82
Sunderland - 71
Wycombe - 68
Oxford - 63

So to answer the question - will these late goals end up costing us automatic promotion? It's not unreasonable to say yes, they will.

If we can take a positive it's that our lamentable record is driven by that bed spell in the autumn where we threw away 9 points in five weeks. But with three - or potentially six - critical games to go you get the feeling late goals will play a part somewhere.

 

Great Post mate.

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1 hour ago, Asio otus said:

I think it was  the fans  who were panicking on Tuesday. Crewe didn't look remotely like scoring.

 


I think this is based on hindsight AO. No way did we know where those last couple of Crewe corners or that long free-kick would end up, at the time. It was nerve wracking. Especially when the latest scores were up on the scoreboard, all going for us, if we won! 
Must be a new thing that, showing scores, now we’re proper in the mix. 👀

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59 minutes ago, Mr. Tom said:

Probably very true, although I feel like we hardly ever concede between 20-30min or between 60-70. They always seem to be really consistent lull periods watching Wednesday for me. Is that total rubbish?

 

Did you not see the brightly-coloured charts I posted on page 1 of this thread?

 

:duntmatter:

 

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1 hour ago, Animis said:

The Bolton away goal was particularly disappointing. We'd controlled the game, then half the team gets into an argument with Kachunga deep in their half; we lose shape and they go up field win a corner, and we switch off. It was entirely avoidable, but sadly predictable. The game management at the end of games needs to improve - you watch PL/Champions League and they run the clock down really well.

Yes , Chelsea & Bayern Munich did particularly well in the CL last week 

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1 hour ago, bladeshater said:

Every team in league could whinge about IFS and BUTS we are where we are on merit get over it

 

I don't think the OP is doing an "If's and but's" post, more of a "statistically, this is what is happening" post. Yes, he has said this is where could have been, more to emphasise the data provided than anything else IMHO.

 

I've said in another thread that all teams can say the same thing: "if only" - just like you have - but this fred is more about the hard cold data, which I am sure our own management team are already aware of. We can't turn back time and like you said, we are where we are, but it is something that needs to be addressed going forward. 

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You also need to work out goals in the first ten minutes. No point just looking at last 10 blaming game management and Concentration. Same applies to first ten.

For me the Ipswich one was the worst with BDPs mistake. Probably could be 2 points better off.

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2 hours ago, ChapSmurf said:

 

I don't think the OP is doing an "If's and but's" post, more of a "statistically, this is what is happening" post. Yes, he has said this is where could have been, more to emphasise the data provided than anything else IMHO.

 

I've said in another thread that all teams can say the same thing: "if only" - just like you have - but this fred is more about the hard cold data, which I am sure our own management team are already aware of. We can't turn back time and like you said, we are where we are, but it is something that needs to be addressed going forward. 

Every team could produce stats where they can improve for next season

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