28 out of the 37 goals we've scored have been in the second half. Meanwhile 15 of the 27 goals we've conceded have been in the first half. We've conceded first in 12 out of 19 games. It's beyond a joke.
Passmap time ...oh god, why haven't Between the Lines provided one, the format is awful please log in to view this image Okay, after rotating my monitor 90 degrees, I have worked out which player is which, but that is all the data that you can glean. For example, Between the Lines has arrows between Player A and Player B so you can see who is passing to who, but on this? I genuinely cannot tell you if that thick line from our right flank is Doherty to Hojbjerg or Hojbjerg to Doherty, it's just saying there's a lot of passes between the two. Same for the almost identical Dier/Lenglet/Sarr and Dier/Lenglet/Hojbjerg triangles (which in itself is an issue, as it indicates both CMs are playing identical patterns, albeit I cannot state that with any authority as the map is missing key data) just as anybody looking at this could just as feasibly state that Kane is spraying the ball out to Son and Deki regularly as it can be said that Kane is receiving the ball form both of them What can be said with certainty,. though, is the positioning of our forwards is clearly a matter of concern because look where they are. Alternatively, look at the space 10-15 yards further up the pitch where they aren't but realistically should be, that says how flat our play was Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to drop a couple of paracetamol and find some eye drops...
Arguably we did, but only in a 2nd half when they were already 2-0 up and probably psychologically shutting their own game down. As the previously quoted stats reveal, this team cannot seem to compete for at least 45 minutes in 75% of games, which is just totally unacceptable. The big question is why!
Just on probability with those goal outcomes you would expect that we concede first in 8 games and to concede 13 or 14 goals in the first half. Doing it in 12 games isn't actually very unlikely. It's quite important to understand whether a problem is real or the result of random events before fixing it. And it is quite possible to imagine a tactic which involves having more stamina than the opposition which results in scoring more goals towards the end of matches.
We are genuinely in a unique position. We've got much less money than three of our major competitors and much less historical success than the other two. Compared to the rest of the Premier League we are in exactly the opposite position. Doing what West Ham and Leicester have done in finding bargains leads to inconsistent outcomes which are not desirable but we simply can't sign the very best players because they will always prefer one of the other bigger clubs. Even with an unlimited transfer budget I can't see the likes of Haaland or Van Dyck choosing us ahead of Man City or Liverpool although being able to withstand the inevitable transfer failures better by signing someone else more quickly would help. It remains the case that on all the objective measures I can find we have the 5th or 6th best squad for the past few years yet we finish higher than 5th on average. I can't see why this is considered any sort of failure or evidence of major problems with the club decision making process.
I will see how easy it is to do a "scrape" of media match reports (so I can do an ETL for data analytics on this - no promises I will though) . My gut feeling is that the above are traits of a PL team performing at a certain level (ie not top 4) , and analytics would confirm it.
I don't agree with this. Our global reach and financial clout/wage structure has shifted a gear in the last few years to the extent that going head to head with those types of club, we really shouldn't struggle finding the best bargains out there. Yves Bissouma is an excellent case in point. Widely praised as the best CM outside of the top 5, a player within the reach financially of almost the entire league yet none of them stood a chance against us. Second major difference is that if/when those bargains come good and show strong development, we are in a significantly healthier position than the likes of Leicester or West Ham in terms of holding onto those players longer than expected and fending off interest from bigger clubs. The fact we were able to hold on to Harry Kane last season is probably the strongest indication of this. I've said many times, our transfer strategy is pretty solid and for once seems to have been thought out properly ahead of time rather than the usual panicked mess. The single biggest problem as far as I see it is that our manager isn't getting the most out of the tools at his disposal. The collapse in form suffered by Son, Royal, Romero and even Kane to a lesser extent confirms this.
I'd like to start off on a positive note and praise the performance of Sarr. Really put a shift in and was happy to get involved all over the pitch. Couldn't really see why he was subbed off, but perhaps his yellow explains it. Was one of four booking, none of which were remotely appropriate. That leads me to one of the negatives that we couldn't address, Craig Pawson. Just openly biased and incompetent from start to finish. No consistency and no control. Partey's handball escaping a booking summed him up. The filth's Man City impression to prevent any breaks only worked because of him. I'd go onto the rest, but it's nothing that we haven't seen before. Conte's not getting it right. Every first half is appalling and the subs are late and weird. Our system didn't work, but we appeared to abandon it for no system at all. He doesn't appear to know what he's doing, but he's doing it again and again.
That seems mostly correct. The point I was trying to make was that the signing bargains strategy is keeping us slightly above our expected outcome of 5th to 7th but isn't enabling us to bridge the gap to 1st to 3rd.
Why wasn't the challenge on Hojbjerg at the end of the first half a penalty? He got clattered after he shot but before the ball left the pitch.
He dived, in my opinion. Exactly the same thing that Arsenal were doing all game. Minimal contact and went down holding his ankle and rolling around. Now, if Pawson had any consistency then it would've been a penalty and a booking, but...
Sorry to go back to my yellow card crusade again, but I will say it again. Yellows are far more important than they appear. If the rapey one had got a yellow at that point it might have changed the game - probably wouldn't have - but the point is that he *should* have got a card and then things are a bit different, and that might have had a knock on effect. But we'll never know if yellows are inconsistently dished out. And they are bound to have affected our players that did get yellows.
One thing I've seen mentioned (can't recall if it was Cartilage Free Captain, someone credible on Twitter, or on r/coys) but the Frankenstein nature of our squad can best be summed up by how, if you cut our front line in half down the centre of the pitch, each side is a different Conte system The left flank is like Conte's Inter side, where the LWB hugs the touchline so left-sided forward drifts inside The right flank is like his Chelsea side, where the CF drifts to the right to interplay with the RW Now, before I say anything else, it does need saying that having asymmetrical flanks is hardly an issue in itself, for example under Poch and Redknapp our left and right flanks were asymmetrical at various points and that worked, and there's countless other examples throughout club football of asymmetrical flanks that work, so saying the left and right flanks don't mesh isn't an issue Where the issue does rear its head is that, realistically, the asymmetry should be the other way around with the interplay between Kane and Son with H drifting wide, while on the right we should have Deki cutting in with the RWB hugging the touchline I mean, I can't be the only one seeing this, right...?
Yeah, I saw that on r/coys. I don't think that there's an issue on the right when Kulusevski and Doherty are both fit. They're both happy to cut in, go to the byline or interchange. The left was also working last season. I do see your point, though.
The obvious point last season was the left flank operated more like it did under Poch, with an interchange of short passes between the LB and the pivot before the ball was worked to Son to send him on his way That hasn't really been the case this season, as the interplay between the LCB and the pivot is to get Perisic on his way and Son has to fit into that, and...well, isn't
Our goalie's goal for Arsenal reminds me of that 15 second penalty v Liverpool..Both disasters we couldn't recover from.Are City rubbing their hands awaiting another mess?
