Read on Twitter that it may not be this season at all as op was success but needs time for shoulder to strengthen.
The Back Box is basically Football Manager, available on pc and on all good gaming consoles (and some poor ones). Fill your boots and come back and let us know....
I feel for Puel...he sets up a team that creates chances and limits the opposition, but he can't go out there and put the ball in the net himself. We are better than our results suggest, but lack that extra bit of skill that we've had in the past and/or have little luck. If it is the latter, it should even out, but, if mainly the former, it's going to be a long season. We have had some great seasons recently, so perhaps we were due a poor one (League Cup withstanding).
Just some information from Winchester I received flt,but as you say it's gone but just a shame that players are walking out the door on a regular basis.
I thought that we played superb against Liverpool but, again, the lack of finishing will probably mean we will be punished in the next round. Listening to the match on the radio yesterday, it seemed pretty dire and there were few attempts on goal. It seems obvious that we need someone who can finish and I don't believe that the comments in the media about not needing a striker are anything other than a smoke screen. If we playing the pressing game we employed on Wednesday and play at that tempo, I think we will stay mid-table. Luckily this season the likes of Swansea, Palace and Sunderland are woeful and I think they will all get relegated. There are plenty of teams worse than us in this league but there can't be many who score so few goals as we do. The thing I find fascinating is that the academy is always mooted as bringing along the next generation of talent yet this usually only relates to midfielders and full backs of late. The last truly decent forward the academy produced was Oxlade-Chamberlain and for all the talk on the terraces about Man City sending scouts in to watch Josh Sims, this doesn't ring true in the least.
Just saying what I was told. We offered him a new contract, which he didn't want to look at. So we sold him. Same goes for Fonte.
This is a brilliant post and Schad's response has effectively picked up the comments I wanted to raise. I think you need to be careful with statistics. Comments like "Shot accuracy" cover a multitude of sins and perhaps it would be more prudent to consider how many shots were denied by either saves, clearances from the line by defenders or the woodwork. It would also be fascinating to monitor how many attacking moves into the opposition half manifest themselves with a shot on target or a goal. Another stat that would be useful would be to see the position from where an assist at a shot was placed as this might show if the attempt was missed because of a premature pass for example. Another stat that would be useful would be to see how many defenders were behind the ball for the opposition before the shot was taken. The use of statistics is interesting but sometimes it is necessary to be more specific when asking the question in order to find any logic. I would think it would be interesting to see these stats multiplied across the cup games too as it may say something about Puel's tactics. There is an element of luck involved in goalscpring but think that a large enough sample would made the "luck factor" insignificant . Thanks to Omionman and Schad for posting some really thoughtful comments.
I like that shot chart a great deal. Towards the end of last season Long was popping them in for fun. His performance this season (and your analysis shows why) has been very disappointing. I agree with much of what you say and I concede it's a complex subject to analyse. However, the received wisdom (read up the thread) is that we're not generating any chances, which I don't feel to be true. I didn't feel it to be true watching recent games so I looked for numbers. I just don't think it's as dire as some would have it and we've definitely not been getting the rub of the green. Vin
This for me is easy,it is something a lazy,hopeless and unintelligent Journalist would write or you'd hear it on Mod from their (dopy) experts. A lot of nonsense is repeated as fact from those sources.
Another thing that comes to mind was when Pelle went through a period of hitting the woodwork. I seem to recall stats being bandied about that he had done it more by himself than any other club in total. Was it nine times in about fifteen games or something? I recall banging on on the Echo site about that definitely just being luck and being shouted down - there had to be a reason. Then, very suddenly, they started going in. He regressed to the mean. I'm hoping we will. Vin
You've stated that Wanyama had a meeting with Koeman that went terribly and that "Saints were offered Lamela and Townsend on loan" Craig, how can you be so sure? Where do you get your info? You always seem to know the facts Vin
Hadn't seen this when I posted above. I'm going to ask the horrible question I always ask when people complain about players going. What concrete steps can we take to force them to stay once they are down to the last two years* of their contract? Particularly people like Wanyama who had thrown his toys out of the pram when refused a move earlier. Vin *I mention this because since the meltdown summer we've not let anyone go with more than two years left.
The rub of the green might help, but I don't think that it's something we can count on to make a meaningful difference; a bit of regression to the mean might take us a shade above a goal a game, but it's not going to make us a good attacking side, IMO. We're built on half-chances under pressure and players who don't have the nous to regularly finish such...there will be games where three of them go in, but an awful lot more where none do.
Agreed with all, especially the highlighted, which IMO is having a significant affect on our front line personnel, who are not really equipped to play / function that way.
