Some interesting stats from the game here http://www.chelseafc.com/news-article/article/3380377/title/the-data-day-chelsea-v-hull-city? The most telling is this one: "With our three behind the striker, Oscar, Kevin De Bruyne and Hazard interchanging positions and playing narrow, there is less emphasis on crossing from wide areas. We attempted only 12 in the 90 minutes, including five corners, while Hull peppered our area with 26, 23 of which found Chelsea defenders." 26 crosses 23 of which found Chelsea defenders!! Saw this happening a lot last year. We cant seem to get on the end of them. Would have thought that players running in would be able to time their runs and occupy the space to get to some of them.
You could say it was confident defending or you could say we are not attacking the ball. Judging by what I saw on Sunday, it was a bit of both.
The fact that 23 of the 26 crosses found Chelsea defenders would suggest we weren't committing many men forward and were being more defensive, which away at Stamford Bridge is expected. Sagbo and Graham are good in the air, so I can see us scoring a few headers this Season. Especially considering the quality of deliveries that Elmo can produce.
Most of the time there was only either Sagbo or Graham in the box so we were never going to get much joy crossing the ball, especially when Elmo's banging them out for throw ins!
All this stuff is great along with all the different opinions, reports, analysis etc. Last season the only decent stuff came out of Amber Nectar and Rick Skelton and also some good reports from City Independent. Slowing my progress down quite a bit, got to be careful the wife does not find out!!
There is only 1 statistic that matters amongst all this mumbo jumbo and that is the final score and we lost, finito. The rest doesn't mean a thing.
Yes in the final analysis but it tells you useful info. And generally those with the best stats win! Connect with half those crosses that went in and we could have scored 1 or 2 goals.
I am surprised no one else saw what I saw. Nevermind having the box packed to the rafters with attackers, 90% of the crosses were absolutely dire. We could have had 11 basketball players in the box and I'd bet 23 would still only have found Chelsea defenders. I think elmo put it over the entire box about 20 times himself.
The crosses definitely weren't as good as we're used to from Elmo who seemed to struggle because they gave him less time to think about his crosses, he was having to rush them a lot of the time. But a few of them were decent crosses and we didn't come close to winning the headers except for the Davies one which ended up being our best attempt at goal. Even in the second half when we had more players getting forward there was never anyone really in the box. It's a worry really because we've had this problem for years.
I wouldn't worry about not flooding the box away against Chelsea, its a risky thing to do, and they have so much threat it's difficult to have the bodies forward in the first place. If we're dominating at home against Palace and its happening, that's a bit more to worry about.
You would hope with the likes of Graham (great poacher) and Sagbo now on the books that should be too much of a problem. Them two as a flat front 2 would be good to see.
