Adarma has 21 goals & 13 assists and he still missed some sitters, and I suspect he'd have more assists if his esteemed colleagues hadn't missed a few too Hard to criticise him though as he's No1 in both It also feels like Che had a bit of an average season and yet he's scored 16 We'd probably feel different if the others had banged in a few more
I still think our defence is a far bigger issue. We've scored plenty of goals this season but have also let far too many in due to our inability to see out a game.
Yeah this. The biggest underperformers in terms of XG versus goals scored were Daka, Rutter, Godden and Roberts. Adams and Armstrong weren’t even in the top 10. I know using your eyes is better than stats and XG etc but shows that teams like Leicester and Leeds missed chances as well (especially those 2 players, Rutter was top in case anyone was interested) The reason we finished behind both was the fact we conceded 20+ more goals than both of them
Yeah while there's a common theme of us missing chances we have one of the leagues top scorers and it's not realistic to score 3-4 every game. And when those wasteful days come you have to be capable of seeing the game out and winning 1-0 and that's what we failed at miserably this season. The combination of poor game management and letting in silly goals is a fatal one for any automatic promotion chances and our lack of clean sheets against decent opposition is very telling imo.
The silly goals was down to poor game management and not reverting away from our only way of playing. If I could be bothered to go and look back at every goal we conceded this season I’d wager that at least half of them were down to terrible errors that would be pretty easily avoided if we weren’t playing out from the back (yes I know for virtually every goal there is a mistake made somewhere)
I think it's more than that tbh, I just don't think we're a very good team without the ball. The style is obviously heavily focussed on dominating possession (and the opposition) and we're excellent with the ball at times, but we're far too easy to play against when out of possession.
Maybe, I think it’s more where we lose the ball gives us very little time to get into some sort of defensive shape as we are set up to control possession as we have the ball. Lose the ball in our own half and it’s very easy for the oppo to create a good chance quickly as we are all over the place defensively
Yeah for sure, that was obvious from as early as the Norwich home game. Only time we really looked better in transition was the run upto Christmas when we had a fairly settled defence.
Yeah and tbf to the people who are in the “well if we’d scored more then it wouldn’t matter” camp we were also blowing teams away fairly regularly then. We fall apart when we are only a goal up and the oppo start pressing us in the last third of the game. I think we should’ve been mixing it up and not playing it out from the back constantly allowing the oppo to press relentlessly. We wouldn’t be in that situation in a game if we had taken chances earlier in a game and were 2 or 3 up as the oppo would’ve basically given up, but when we were our game management should’ve been way better
But anyway all that is irrelevant now. Playing West Brom tomorrow, think we will draw or lose by a goal. Still be confident of going through as long as we haven’t got a 2+ goal margin to overcome in the second leg
I can't decide how I feel about a draw tomorrow. I've got one internal voice telling me that it would be a satisfactory, acceptable outcome. And I've got another internal voice telling me that it would be a dangerous, pressure-building outcome.
