Okay - you can prove (almost) anything with statistics. But I still find them fascinating. There is a Premier League midway review in the Guardian today. These are Swansea's statistics compared to the other teams. Goals scored =8th Goals conceded 13th Possession 1st Pass accuracy 1st Shots per game =8th Conversion rate 13th Tackles per game 20th Whoscored.com rating 11th Top rated player is Chico Flores
So we need to maintain or possession and up our quality. Possession + Improved Quality = Better Results.
so add them up and divide gives us 9th or 10th in the league....happy days (and strangley enough uncannily close to my forecast of 10th)
Also interesting are Cardiff's statistics: Goals scored 17th Goals conceded 17th Possession 16th Pass accuracy 18th Shots per game 20th Conversion rate 16th Tackles per game 19th Whoscored.com rating 20th 6 out of 8 of these placings put Cardiff in the relegation zone. No wonder Tan pulled the trigger!
Interesting for me is the conversion rate that puts us 13th. Yet if you look at our strikers they have a conversion rate of 60% which is 2nd in the League. The moral of the story appears to be give it to Bony.
Tells a story this that we are 13th and have two categories in first place and two in 8th place which one of them is shots per game. We are concentrating on far to much needless passing that will never win you games. Last place for tackling is shocking but the main concern is we have two firsts and we are only 4 points away from relegation.....not impressed at all....
We have the majority of the ball in games Dai, therefore will be doing less tackling. Would still like Gareth Barry type midfielder though.
Was going to say the tackling stat is a bit harsh, as when you are top in possession, it means the opposition have the ball less than when playing any other team in the league, so will result in less tackles being needed to win the ball back.
Yes ok but last place is bad. there are plenty of opportunities to tackle during a match but all we do is shadow them until they pass the ball, we should be getting stuck in not backing away...
But needless passing is what you prescribe to aka Brendan, ,if we have the ball then when do we tackle ?, tactically like teams against us do , we allow the opposition procession in areas where they can't hurt us .and please don't reply with a .
Well said project it's common sense that you will make less tackles in a match with the possession we get. If we have 65% possession then we are only tackling 35% of the game, therefore the opposition are tackling 65% of the time. Not rocket science really.
we have two firsts but are only 4pts away from a relegation spot so explain that? Leighton James is spot on when he says in tonight's post that we are in a relegation battle and those who say we are in 13th place are not living in the reality as it gives a false sense of security and we are way off that...Its exactly what i have been saying and he has played in the game at the very top so i totally agree with his views.
Less possession I would guess , they're continually on the back foot and lose the ball more frequently therefore have to work harder to get it back
Its not all bad as there is mostly positives but the ones that are bad are the ones that are costing us games. you never see us getting hammered by anyone do you, We have given everyone a game and we look good when we have the ball but the minute we lose it we are not that good and teams have got use to us having the majority of the play as they know we dont do that much to create anything when we do have the ball and teams just bide their time waiting for an opening where we are rubbish at tackling and they eventually get more shots on target than we do. ..It is this that ML has to rectify or it wont matter if we are the top of the league with possession as we will be bottom of the win games and like leighton james says fighting a relegation battle..
