To be fair to Robbie there is an element of truth in what he says. If we have a couple of players out injured that is the excuse for losing but if the boot is on the other foot - that is no excuse - they should have a better squad and cope. Win a few games the Manager is brilliant. Lose a few games and we want him sacked. Not just us. Last year when West Ham won in Europe they wanted Moyes given a Knighthood - after a good run this season they have lost a few games and now they want him sacked. Roy Hodgson is another example. As for players we are all guilty of picking and choosing. I never could say a good word about Trevor Howard or Greg Downes. If either of them did 9 good things and 1 bad I would only ever go on about the 1 bad. Guilty as charged Robbie!!
Some posters are just miserable old gits & only post when things are going badly , an upturn in results & they come on here to chastise us for not being miserable doom goblins like them .
That's clearly your view Rick. My point is that, if you factor in our injuries when you assess our performances and results, you should factor in other teams' injuries too. Here's a question for you. Is the recent improvement in our goals conceded (2 goals a game up to Cardiff away, 1 goal a game since then, anything to do with which players we have or haven't had available?
It's not about routine injuries; Sargent and Sørensen were out for around 24 games, Hanley even longer and he's still out. Gunn was out for much of that bad run, as were Gibson and Barnes. Of course all of those injuries impacted heavily on the first half of the season and the difference in recent games is related to key players returning. We're a different team when Sargent is up front and Gibson was outstanding on Saturday. Other teams do have injuries, but not many have the number of matches missed through injury that we have had.
None of the players you mention played in the first 8 league games of the twelve we've played since Cardiff, yet over those 8 games we halved the rate of goals conceded per game. That difference is clearly NOT related to these "key players" returning. Over those same 8 games, we accumulated points at a rate of 1.75 per game, while over the four most recent games, in which these "key players" have, to a limited extent, contributed, the rate has been ... 1.75 points per game. In the first 16 games i.e. up to and including Cardiff, we conceded twice the rate of goals and averaged 1.25 points per game. 1.75 is a big difference compared to 1.25, but -- again -- the presence or absence of these "key players" doesn't account for it. The truth is, in those first 16 games, we were handicapped far more by poor structure and an ill-conceived tactical approach than by the absence of "key" players. Changes were made after Cardiff, long before any of these "key players" returned, and hey presto! we started accumulating points at the rate of a team destined for a top six finish (1.75 x 46 = 80.5).
Even if we removed just Gunn & Sargent for the rest of the season we would nose dive again . At the point when we had the worst defense in the league McLean was put into CB & hey presto we didn't concede as many games . Making Kenny our best player for most of the season Robbie is clumsily attempting to say
With Sargent in the squad we average 2.125 points per game and, if you go for a blanketed average of minutes he’s played on the pitch (i.e. 14 minutes for a win is worth 3x14 = 42) our run rate is a whopping 2.39 points per 90 minutes of Sargent playing. Funny things you can do with statistics eh
As unlikely as it would seem I think you will find that the results were quite good in the league games when Gunn was injured.
Could Rick or Robbie help me out on this please. I looked into this when the discussion on injuries was ongoing by using a match programme my son had sent me - now gone to the recycling centre - and am certain that, to my surprise, I found that the results did not dip when Gunn was out.
