Opposition

Emigrated with his parents from Norway at the age of five, half-yank


From wiki:
"He is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame calls him "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." A Norwegian American, he was educated as a chemist at the University of Notre Dame. He popularized the forward pass and made Notre Dame a major factor in collegiate football.

President Herbert Hoover called Rockne's death "a national loss." A personal envoy represented King Haakon VII of Norway at Rockne's funeral."

 

Great work Raj. Very interesting.

Although stats can't show the full picture, they can remove a level of emotion from "analysis" but can also be subject to conjecture (usually due to emotional bias remaining).

Then comes the ultimate contradiction "the only stat that matters is the league table" - it's the most important but not the only one.

It doesn't say who we've played and what form the opposition was on leading up to playing us.

Then there's the "ten games is enough to judge" rule. Why 10? That's mixing gut feeling with pure stats and will be primarily based on having 10 fingers (Norwich excepted) at a subconscious level.

This forum is full of blanket statements:-
"we're ****"
"when was the last time we played well?"
"the players don't try"
etc. etc.

Stats, positive emotion and detached reason will disprove this to a degree.

We played very well at Spurs and home to Chelsea. Admittedly, disastrously for the second half against Swansea and first halves against West Ham and Brom.

Bookies, pundits and many others (gracious opposition included) seem to think there's something there but we're all too angry at 4 points to think clearly.

"But the performances aren't there" - well there's been more good halves of football played by us than in the whole of last season and statistically it is a matter of time before we string two halves together.

If we had points then the performances wouldn't matter but, whoever you are, you play well (about half the time in our case) with no results and will, reasonably, be under pressure.

I'm not for one second suggesting everything is right but I also don't quite hold the idea that everything is wrong.

I think RTID has a good balance and is rightfully doubtful about the uncertainty of changing managers right now.

 

Good post Matt. I think we would have all been feeling a lot brighter if one of those had gone in in the last ten minutes on Sunday. Sadly, (as we saw last night with Southampton) when you are down there things do not go your way.

 

I think what I was trying to get across Matt was that in the last three games the teams we will be facing next have had a dip in form, after a positive start to the season. Now granted that ours hasn't really started but I just thought it was interesting that we've played some of the stronger teams this season and opening game aside we have only lost by a goal (except City) to all of them ie we havn't really been hammered.

Just stressing if ever we were going to pick up points and improve our away form now would be the best time..who says we can't beat Stoke...we did it last season.

Fully take on board that Stats are either your thing or not, just trying to create and alternative take on the fourum...so here's another one....Everyone has said the Granero is our best player this season so far....well he's played the most amount of minutes out of the whole squad...and he missed the first couple of games...so is that a 'Stat' backing up a 'fact'

 

We dont have a chance IF we dont START the matches better. Against WHU ,WBA and Reading we were totally in deep **** during the first 20 min or so.......

 

Don't worry, I'm a stats fan too but just trying to put into context of recent feeling on here while addressing a couple of Queens' points.

Keep the stats coming I say!

 

...and Swansea and Norwich.

Agree completely and if I could hold my breath for 20 minutes after kick off I would do. As it stands I just clock watch.

 

This is all way too statistically anal for my liking. In order to stay up we need to beat other teams. Thus far we have beaten no one. Simples.

 

Afternoon 9s. Guess you've been pretty busy the last few nights.

I agree though - life's too hectic (and not that great at the moment) so I prefer to try not to let my escape (football) bring me down.

Rarely works though but I'll keep trying....

 

That's an opinion backed by a fact of minutes on the pitch.