A comparison between this season (League games only), with Gary Breen in his first full season as Defensive Coach, and our last season in League 1, clearly shows the effect he is having on the team and the results:- 2010/11 Played 11 Won 6 Drawn 1 Lost 4 GF 23 GA 18 Pts 19 (Our points per game average was 1.727, we maintained that ratio for the season finishing with 79 points). 2013/14 Played 11 Won 9 Drawn 1 Lost 1 GF 23 GA 8 Pts 28 (ppg ratio to date is 2.54, if we maintain that we will end up with 117 points - a difficult task!) We are still scoring just as freely but are much tighter Defensively. In 2010/11 we ended up scoring 101 League goals whilst conceding 75. To put that in perspective, Dagenham conceded 70, Swindon 72 and Plymouth 74 - all 3 teams were relegated. If the current trend continues we will exceed the 100 goal-per-season target but only concede around 35 goals. 2010/11 also saw us keep 3 clean sheets in the first 11 games compared to 6 this season. Of the games where we conceded goals the games ended as: 10/11 W3 D1 L4 13/14 W3 D1 L1 leading to an increased points total of 9. The 'Breen Effect' can therefore be roughly quantified as +0.8 points per game. Let us hope he continues to have this effect throughout the season.
I think that problem lay with Richards, the goal-keeping coach, Joe did not progress under him, Paul Jones started well and went backwards and Bobby had a sticky patch before improving under the new coach. It is the way that Gary Breen has assessed the opposition and then coached and organised our defence and midfield, to defend as a team, that makes the difference. When watching games you will notice if the fullbacks/wingbacks get forward one of the midfield players drops back when we are attacking, that way we still have 3 defending not 2 as we did in previous seasons and they are more able to deal with counter-attacks. Even Tyrone and Britt help out in defence.
