That was horrible to watch, dribbling out of defence & giving away possession or hoofing forward giving away possession.
Positives Rowe scored again We didn't lose Ended the 4 game loss streak away Negatives Can't string 4 passes together Failed to hang on to the win Conceded another terrible goal Both strikers look ****e No attacking threat
We look completely hopeless in midfield and toothless up top. Oh and fragile defensively… Always awful to concede an own goal, but we can’t say it wasn’t coming and we were lucky not to lose in the end frankly.
Gibson is basically a decent defender, especially at this level, but when the ball is passed across the back line to him he ALWAYS puts his foot on is, drags it back a bit, looks around, plays a negative pass. A good defender, or any other position, should know options before receiving the ball. He patently does not.
Too harsh Rob, Coventry did enough for a draw but created little threat until the OG. We are going to struggle up front until at least Barnes is fit again. Gibbs offered little in his place today and Sara's uncharacteristic low key performance made things difficult in midfield. WhoScored had us edging it 6.8 to 6.5 with Rowe as the MotM:
Idah is ****e Gibbs is ****e Gibson is ****e How DW can't see this is beyond words! Idah, should have had 2 easy(ish) goals but failed to commit to the cause. Gibbs can't keep the ball for toffee The less said about Gibson, the better. You can get through a game with one poor player, but three is never going to end with a win. Need some investment in Jan and desperate for (dare I say it?) Sargent back, up top!
Is the HWang lad on loan for season or until end of year? Any out of contract players available and worth having?
Really? I saw it differently. Both before and after the own goal I remember several very decent chances from Coventry, including one very lucky ricochet where Gunn saved another own goal.
Don’t get me wrong, I think xG should be taken with a heavy punch of salt as a “statistic”, but if nothing else it’s an interesting opinion of the game - and the xG report I have found suggests Coventry 1.91 v 0.34 Norwich, which means at least one analysis agrees that Coventry could have done better with their chances. WhoScored said they were poor at finishing, which also matches what I saw (though I think Gunn did pretty well too)
I'll have another look at the highlights, Rob, but I'm surprised at those xG ratings for Rowe's goal and Idah's two chances. Obviously creating chances is not the same as scoring goals. I thought Coventry's build up play was good but their finishing was weak. Simms was in a good position for a header in front of goal, but Gibson prevented him from threatening the goal. According to the BBC, they had 3 shots on target from 21 attempts - that hardly seems a big threat to me. The same for us, but we did score a good goal whereas Coventry only got the OG. Had Idah converted either of his chances though, I think we could have won fairly comfortably.
FBref publish xG data for all Championship matches here. The data itself comes from Opta. For yesterday the figures (2.0 / 0.4) look like rounded up versions of Rob's 1.91 / 0.34. And like Rob, I think those pretty much portray what I saw watching a stream of the game. Rowe's low value goal resulted from the unexpected timing of his shot, which meant the ball got through the legs of the blocking defender and wrongfooted the keeper. Re. the Idah chances, here is a Soccerment analysis of crossing as a strategy; they assign an xG value of just 0.16 to the type of cross Idah failed to convert, which again is pretty much in line with our Opta xG of 0.4 against Coventry.
