I would have taken an away score draw at the start of the day, particularly when it involved someone other than Sergeant scoring.
How long can we have the excuse we’ve got new players? Why are they new at this stage of the season? How many players did Coventry buy? I’m not having a go at you and I’m not saying you should answer those - they are rhetorical. The point is I’m struggling to see how we get improvement from here to compete. Farke’s weak starts to seasons always had glimmers of hope, flashes of brilliance. This has nothing like that. The goal from Kvistgaarden was OK - poor defending and a tidy finish. We had maybe two quality chances and both were hashed by the player who should have assisted. Multiple poor through balls. In midfield we were totally outplayed. Frankly, we got incredibly lucky today - I’m no fan of the xG stat, but when it’s 4 v 0 there’s something going on.
I know Bure. I was just making the point that we beat them twice last season while playing -- to quote Rick -- "Thorup's style of defending".
You're asking very fair questions, but if we are going to play good passing football the players need to build partnerships. Last season we started slowly and were told to be patient, better play would come as the new players settled in and adjusted. Things did improve for a while, but then fell apart completely in the last months. I don't know where it will go from here, but I hope we do improve our passing and stop giving the ball away so much. I do feel we've improved a lot in defence and that Darling and Medić are forming a good partnership but they were the first outfield players to come in early in the preseason. We lost time on Topić and Mattsson for whatever reasons but the former seems to be adjusting now. Diallo is also adjusting and he has the technical skills to do well in this league, as he showed with some excellent touches and take downs in high pressure situations. Unfortunately Kvistgaarden lacked fitness when he arrived and only now is able to start games, but I think he's started to show a good understanding with Sargent up front, which took far longer with Crnac and Sargent. We'll have to see how serious the knee injury today turns out to be. Makama was another who arrived late and I was dubious about him at first, but he's looked better every time I see him in his late cameos. As for Mattsson, he's also arrived late but at least he's fully fit and ready to go. So, to answer at the 'how long' question, I'd say about 10 games in, with increasing improvement between now and then.
To put things in perspective, if we had held our lead today and won, we'd be in the top 6 now at the expense of the Sky Blues.
All fair comments RER, but has there been improvement in the first five matches? I’m not sure there has. If anything we were worse today than in previous matches. Sargent was totally isolated - that he even managed to carve out two chances was almost entirely down to his own good movement. You say Topic is improving - maybe on a personal skill/fitness level, but to my eyes he was completely dominated due to our rigid structure and ended up giving away the ball loads because he had no options or he misplaced the pass. Fisher, our best fullback, was exposed and overloaded defensively. We got incredibly lucky that Coventry players put in poor crosses and couldn’t hit a barn door from five yards when they got the ball in our box. Practically the only positive today was Darling, but he was IMO obviously a good signing in match one. Arguably Kovacevic was good, but I think if you’re saying that about a keeper it suggests the defence weren’t doing their job. And Kvistgaarden getting his first goal was a huge plus and he is looking fitter, but it was pretty fortunate. And that’s it. I’m sorry that sounds so miserable, but I don’t see the positives. Man for man we have a stronger squad than Coventry and yet we were comprehensively outplayed - 9/10 performances like that we would have lost, most of them hammered. We got very very lucky. That we could have been top six by being even luckier doesn’t change much for me.
We certainly do need to improve overall, but IMO we're much better defensively than we were last year with a better keeper as well. We have a good attack, though I've been disappointed by Crnac I'm who I hoped would kick on. He didn't give Fisher much help today. As you say, midfield is the area we need to improve, but Wright is available again and now there's Mattsson as well. Wrexham at home should tell us more.
We didn't and were throughly outplayed by the team in the top six. If we are being honest we should really only be on 4 points based on what the performances have deserved. 7 games played and 1 clean sheet. I dont really see any difference in the defence other than it is far more under the cosh than the previous regime so we are not really gaining anything. I think this gives the impression it is better but in reality there seems to be little difference. We've been built to play like this, all the nonsense about being flexible is bullshit because the players are now so very limited in what they can do. This team is done I'm afraid, we have one asset left and the money generated by others good work has been wasted.
I knew what you were saying, Robbie, I caught the irony. I thought it was ironic that we were rated 0.54 higher than Coventry at the time. Just because a team has 0-1 lead doesn't mean they've been playing better. I'm really not interested in overall "pass success" because it includes backward passes in our own half.
What's the point of the defence being better if it's at the expense of the attack getting worse? Last season we scored and conceded lots of goals. If we score less and concede less this season, the overall effect is that we're back where we started, except for the fact that the games are much less easy on the eye. I agree, though, about the Wrexham game. If we struggle there, I'll start to get worried about this season, because Manning is going nowhere irrespective of his performance since his future is now bound up with Knapper's, who can't afford to sack him and will have to pretend that things are progressing no matter how bad they get. But I know that's deeply negative, so let's hope Wrexham shows us something we haven't seen so far at Carrow Road.
A high rate of pass completion (including back passes) is related to keeping possession, and both are related to high levels of "progessive distance" (i.e. how far completed passes travel towards the opposition goal). Taking last season for example, these were the top six for completed passes, possession, and progressive distance: (a) Completed passes: Leeds, Norwich, 'Boro, Burnley, WBA, Swansea (Sheffield Utd and Coventry 8th and 11th respectively) (b) Possession: Leeds, Norwich, Swansea, Burnley, 'Boro, Coventry (WBA and Sheffield Utd 7th and 9th respectively) (c) Progressive distance: Leeds, Norwich, 'Boro, Swansea, Sheffield Utd, WBA (Burnley and Coventry 7th and 8th respectively) Leeds, Norwich, 'Boro and Swansea feature in all three; Burnley and WBA in two, Coventry and Sheffield Utd one each. After 5 games this season, we are currently 11th, 12th and 11th respectively. Like carrabuh, I'm inclined to attribute the drop from 2nd to 11th/12th to the increased frequency of long passes under Manning, as opposed to Thorup. Last season we were second only to Leeds in terms of eschewing long passes (i.e. passes > 30 yards); so far this season, we have dropped to 9th.
This tells a profound story. And the irony is it’s actually worse for our best players, like Sargent - and I’m sure it’s hindering the likes of Crnac’s development
The point of the defence being better is to not concede first. Time and time again last season we went behind early in the game, often by more than one goal and then had to play catch-up and usually failed. We only won four away games last season under Thorup out of 22 played. This year we've won two and drawn the other out of 3 games in all of which we've scored first. I don't think the attack has got worse, it's just that we've had to make changes due to the injury to Forson, who was replaced by Marcondes, who was then replaced by Kvistgaarden. Now he's injured and Crisene as well and we'll have to make further changes. Coventry by comparison have had a settled team from last season and throughout this one and that showed.
It is perhaps unfair for me to comment as I did not see the game as I was watching Nice make hard work of beating Nantes but I have read all the reports and spoken to a couple of people who did watch it. The general opinion is that we were crap, getting worse game by game and extremely lucky not to be heavily beaten. How long will it take the optimists to accept that the appointments of Knapper and Manning were mistakes and we are in for a long hard season?
Yes, the data for that post came from FBref, CS. All but the "Progressive Distance" data is also readily accessible via the Team Statistics on WhoScored. "All roads lead to Opta" as they say!
