Not sure there is much mystery to the sacking - the home form and not getting the team in the playoffs after the increased investment and losing the owner's confidence are the fairly obvious reasons - whether it was the right thing to do, was LR going to learn from this and improve or had he hit his limitations as a manager, will divide the opinions of those of us that still care to think about it. The next month will determine whether Walter was a disastrous replacement or if the 'brain team' ****ed up, or both. Supposedly Bundesliga 2 managers are paid far less than Championship ones, so might have to wait two years, or whatever the pay-off determined, to see Walter back in action.
There was an interesting discussion on 5Live yesterday about the comparative value of shot stopping versus good distribution in teams that rely heavily on passing out from the back. They raised the point that pass completion statistics for goalkeepers needed to be beyond excellent for goalkeepers to do well - they pointed out that 95% pass completion for an outfield player would be considered excellent but would ring alarm bells for a goalkeeper and a percentage falling just below this would probably result in as much as a 20% increase in goals conceded. I haven't seen this stat for Allsop but note that Pandur's pass completion is below 90%. Interestingly though, Allsop's save percentage over the last season was 70.5% and Pandur's so far for this season is 67.8%. Clean sheets for Allsop - 27%, Pandur <5% do seem consistent with this. I think that Pandur has done well this season and there's no criticism intended in this however I think it does indicate how a coach who is determined to base his game plan on passing out from the back might well place distribution above shot stopping. The 5Live conclusion was that the game is changing and goalkeepers who are comfortable with distribution are now a more valuable asset to such teams - one of the system weaknesses they pointed out was that very few teams could actually find/afford two passing goalkeepers and, if their first choice is injured they do have problems. The trigger for the discussion was the performance of Forster (brilliant shot stopper but uncomfortable with the ball at his feet) for Spurs against Man.Utd. during the week. Bottom line here is that Allsop was more effective in Rosenior's chosen system than Pandur and that future trends in goalkeeper development will see an increasing emphasis on good distribution.
I think Pandur was the pawn in a power battle, which may have cost Rosenior his job. Rosenior saying I’m not been told who to play. Can’t think of any other reason why he would replace him with Ingram on the bench out of the blue.
Nope, I'm a fan of possession football when done right, but I'm also a huge fan of a Goalkeeper being able to stop the ball going in the back of the net
I think after the disasters of Southampton and spurs and Man City going backwards the obsession of playing it across your goal line is coming to an end. Great line from the guardian about spurs “A team who sting like a butterfly and press like one too.”
Harsh on Spurs. Imagine us having to start with Andy Smith and Paul Iggulden (sp.) due to injury crisis.
it is i didnt watch the game so no idea how spurs played but their defenders yesterday all have 10+ league apps apart from spence who has 6, but hes played in serie a etc smith and iggulden have almost never played any pro football
right, but they didnt use players whove never played spurs defence last night, they paid around 100m in the last 18 months for porro cost 40m, dragushit cost 25m, gray, 40m, spence cost 14m 2 years ago so ridiculous to compare to andy smith and iggulden(whoever that is)
This is somewhere where xG really comes in useful, Allsop had a goals conceded vs xG faced of about -12 or something. Pandur is on 0. Viktor Johanssen who I thought we really Should have gone for is on +11 leading the way by a country mile. He’ll be in the premier league next year no doubt.
