No. Bristol are a bad team apparently too. Like I say, it’s all to suit a narrative. Defensively we’ve conceded 1.8 xG this season, last season we conceded 2.7 xG alone to Norwich opening day, but it’s this season, where we have much lesser quality and players who’ve been here long term, who are hopeless defensively
Im pretty sure you were telling everyone how lucky we were to have Oscar, how he should be at a premier league team, and how he should have been getting wages of £100k a week. Quite frankly, it’s impossible to judge the manager and the team, he had an absolutely ****e, tiny squad all the way through pre season and into the first competitive game. You’re just a waffler.
It’s not spot on, last season we got players into dangerous areas from where we should have been creating good chances, we didn’t create a glut of good chances that were getting missed.
Not that I've seen on here or on Twitter for that matter. (There are more people on Twitter still complaining about last seasons playing style...) I can't judge Walters style until he's got his squad finalised and settled in for a bit. It it was it is in terms of the speed of recruitment we just have to get on with it.
We've posted superior xG to both Bristol City and Plymouth which I must say surprises me somewhat, but is a good sign. What I would say though is that a lot of the time the defence is making a clearance/tackle to stop an opposition shot before it happens. Which of course is what you want, but means we aren't seeing the full story about the number of loose passes at the back leading to dangerous situations. I think I did hear on NTT20 or another podcast we had the most passes in our defensive third in the league last weekend..
There really isn’t any point in judging Walterball right now. He said he wasn’t happy about the backward passes in his last post-match interview so we are clearly nowhere near where it should be.
David Burns was hinting at this on the 1904 podcast yesterday, I was saying it to my friends at Plymouth on Saturday - I don’t think Walter minds so much about the occasional misguided pass out of the back four or goalkeeper (maybe not the sheer number of occasions in the first half, mind). Firstly, I think he sees it as an occupational hazard of playing his aggressive attacking style. And secondly, if we can quickly close down the player that receives the wayward pass and retrieve the ball, that gives us an even better chance to break into the opposition half with superior numbers. It’s a crazy way of playing in one sense, because it’s genuinely high risk high reward, but it might work once the team gets used to it (we are nowhere near that moment yet). Walter is far unhappier with passive back passes from midfielders to the keeper, than dodgy passes from goalkeeper to midfielders. Says it all.
We also had 11 shots from inside their box and about 28 touches in their box. We’re getting into much better areas just the quality right now isn’t there
It's two games in and he's scored 50% of our goals. To be fair to him, most of those box touches and shots haven't come from him, so it's not like his shooting instinct isn't there, if anything this more likely questions his movement. He's come close to getting on the end of a couple of good crosses and had that gilt edge chance against Bristol which he should have buried to be fair.
The chances he isn’t getting The players need to be feeding Oscar but they aren’t That’s what he’s there for
Bar one cross that he should have scored from (or you could say great block from their keeper) and one cross that he was inches from reaching, the 'feeding' to him has been poor so far. It was doing my head in these past games so much that I commented on it during the games.
I don't get this over analysis of our performances. It's mainly bollox. Last season & Rosenior has been done to death. This season, the simple fact is, we've been pretty poor all over the park so far. That includes keeper, defence, midfield, attack - all over. Yes, there's been some promising signs (Millar's performances for example) and I still think things will come good, but to date we've been nowhere near, and will continue to be nowhere near until players a) get the hang of Walter's system (i.e. get 'reprogrammed') or get dropped, and b) partly linked with a), a number of better quality players start across the park (defence, midfield and attack). Hopefully we see clear signs of both starting from this Saturday.
How much of that is his fault and how much of that is poor service though. We can't just be relying on him solely as a poacher/finisher he's got to contribute in other areas of the game.
