Back from the Preston game

[Schards#2]

Congratulations on finding a stat to support the argument that Kebe could play up front. The more relevent stat may be that Kebe has scored 1 goal. However, as usual, i'll back my own eyes over Snowball stats and they tell me Kebe is an absolutely dreadful finisher and when he's in with a chance of scoring or laying on a sitter, he goes to pieces.

I'd agree with possibility of trying N Hunt on the right wing and certainly playing Matejovsky. Our team is seriously lacking creativity at the moment, both full backs don't create a lot, neither centre half are comfortable on the ball, both wingers are our of form and both centre mids are defensive midfielders.

Whilst I agree that Matejovsky might weaken us defensively, we need to create chances and he created one within minutes of coming on with one intelligent pass. I'd be happy to trade the weakening of the defensive unit in return for some more creativity at the moment.

[PEARCEY]

Wolves lost at home to Preston (and also away to QPR).
Birmingham lost away at Preston (and also away to QPR).

Brum play Preston at home in the penultimate game of the season and they've still got Sheff Utd, Wolves and Us to come.

Wolves have still got Brum, Cardiff and QPR to play this season.

Cardiff have still got to play Wolves, Sheff Utd, QPR, Swansea and Preston and an FA cup tie against Arsenal.

Swansea still have to face QPR, Cardiff and Sheff Utd, plus a distracting FA cup tie against Premier League opposition.

We have got Sheff U and Birmingham to play at home.

Whilst the past two games have been dull and we need Coppell to freshen the side up (Harper and Kebe need a rest for a start), I'm not going to start looking for a rope and the nearest exposed beam just yet.

Really good post. I would just add a bit of caution though in that we still have to play the like of Bristol City and Doncaster. Both are slap bang in form....so the fact that neither are in the top 6 doesn't mean they are there for the taking as our results against Soton and Charlton clearly testify.

[LoyalRoyalFan]

Congratulations on finding a stat to support the argument that Kebe could play up front. The more relevent stat may be that Kebe has scored 1 goal. However, as usual, i'll back my own eyes over Snowball stats and they tell me Kebe is an absolutely dreadful finisher and when he's in with a chance of scoring or laying on a sitter, he goes to pieces.

I'd agree with possibility of trying N Hunt on the right wing and certainly playing Matejovsky. Our team is seriously lacking creativity at the moment, both full backs don't create a lot, neither centre half are comfortable on the ball, both wingers are our of form and both centre mids are defensive midfielders.

Whilst I agree that Matejovsky might weaken us defensively, we need to create chances and he created one within minutes of coming on with one intelligent pass. I'd be happy to trade the weakening of the defensive unit in return for some more creativity at the moment.

Tbh i would play Matejovsky and Cisse together.
Cisse has the defensive side to him and Matejovsky has the attacking side.

[bcubed]

I enjoyed the game today, but I enjoy most games as I can't get to many.

Thought Marek, Noel and Shane all looked pretty good when they came on, gave us some oomph that had been missing. Just a shame we couldn't find the net.
Though Pearce and Armstrong looked out best players out there today.

Excuse me Wizard but I think you'll find that even saying that Long looked "pretty good" is enough to have you removed from the forum.

Long is cr*p is far more acceptable

[LoyalRoyalFan]

I enjoyed the game today, but I enjoy most games as I can't get to many.

Thought Marek, Noel and Shane all looked pretty good when they came on, gave us some oomph that had been missing. Just a shame we couldn't find the net.
Though Pearce and Armstrong looked out best players out there today.

Excuse me Wizard but I think you'll find that even saying that Long looked "pretty good" is enough to have you removed from the forum.

Long is cr*p is far more acceptable

Long didn't play badly yesterday.

[brendywendy]

If we win our game in hand we go top ffs-what are you lot on about?! We dominated vs a good,in form team.just failed to score. Theres been alot more rotation this year so have no doubt cops learnt his lesson. Even the greatest teams have off games and periods they arent at their best.weve made a concious effort to shore up defensively and have lost a bit of flair as a result, but no ones scoring vs us either. Personally thought it was a decent nil nil.by far the better team, just no one could finish. You lot are gay.

[Man Friday]

Unlikely but so what?

[Snowball]

We've been here before with Coppell, 04/05 we had a string of poor performances and results that took us from looking good for automatic promotion to missing the play offs. Last year a similar run took us from mid table into relegation. In both instances, Coppell didn't seem to have an answer to how to stop the rot, he kept playing the same team and the same tactics and seemed to just hope that it would turn around. We are not in this scenario yet but, on average, performances have been dreadful since christmas though despite this, we have got 10 points from 7 games. Again, we see little change to the side other than through injury, despite these poor performances. We need to kick start after the 2 week break or we are in serious danger of the season petering out badly as those previous seasons did and some fresh blood in the form of Tabb, Henry and Matejovsky getting involved might freshen things up.

BUT WE'VE PLAYED A LOT OF VERY TOUGH GAMES!

This isn't rocket science. We have "only" got ten points from seven games, but do people not
remember Coppel saying that January would be extremely tough?

We played away to Cardiff, down to ten men for 60 minutes, and got 2-2

We played home to Cardiff, THE form side in the last twelve games and got 1-1

Cardiff are the top side over their last 11 games, (excluding the two Reading games) and averaging 2.33 points a game

W 2-1 Ipswich
W 2-0 Sheffield Wednesday
W 1-0 Plymouth
W 2-0 Coventry
W 2-0 Forest
W 2-0 Preston
D 2-2 Swansea
D 2-2 Burnley
D 1-1 Birmingham

W 6 D 3 16-5 = 21 points from 9 games = 2.33 points per game = 107 point season


Yet against US they only managed a point a game and in one of those we played with ten men for an hour


But the point is, in this so-called "bad-run" we've played a lot of very tough games. We've beaten 1st, 3rd, drawn with fourth twice, with sixth, with 9th






Away to Swansea we were outplayed but this is a side unbeaten since NOVEMBER 21st
(15 games now, including an away win at Pompey) That defeat BTW was 2-3 versus Birmingham

We played the top side, Wolves beat them 1-0 and deserved to beat them

We drew 0-0 at QPR, a big money club who were 9 games undefeated, had just won 3-0 away
and had beaten both Wolves and Birmingham 1-0 on their own patch

OK, maybe we should have done better at Southampton (still an away draw)
and we did what we had to versus Watford and improved our GD by 4.

[papereyes]

Long clearly has potential - he's still fairly young, he's got the athletism and power, he has an eye for goal and he's good in the air.

However, its still a case where he has potential. At what point do we say "You have to be producing now"

I am also slightly amused and bemused by Lita coming back for, what, the Watford game, scoring and then seemingly restarting what is now a three year old debate. Since the Watford game, we seem to have been gripped by a bit of an attacking funk. Sounds like the same inexplicable lack of creativity we had at the very start of the season, when Doyle has to do too much donkey work to get the ball to Lita.

We needed a plan B in attack the moment Kitson left. Doyle, Long, Lita and Hunt all offer very similar packages, imo, and defenders aren't thrown by one replacing the other. Look at the difficulty we had dealing with Parkin at the away match and I've heard him mentioned in this thread. Someone big and strong that could knock a few defenders out of the way might have been an option. Certainly, Beattie, who should have been a target in the summer, imo, has shown his worth for Stoke.

A strikeforce of Doyle, Hunt, Phillips and Beattie, partially funded by the sales of Long and Lita in the summer, would have given us plenty of options in the short term. We'd have had to replace Phillips at the end of the season, but ... he's somehow singlehandedly keeping Birmingham up there. How likely could this have been? We were offered Phillips and rejected him. Beattie went for £3.5 million, which isn't much more than our transfer record and lower than some bids made, while spending that sort of money would not have put the club at any risk. His record for Sheffield United was over 30 goals in under 60 games, so he'd have resale value back to the Championship had it not worked out.

Just ideas.

weve made a concious effort to shore up defensively and have lost a bit of flair as a result, but no ones scoring vs us either.

Didn't we do that last season, to great success, after Christmas?

[Schards#2]

Snowball, no amount of stats will alter the fact that we have been playing poorly since Christmas.

The fact that we beat Wolves whilst playing poorly does not alter the fact that we played poorly. You can just deny the fact and carry on doing what you're doing or you can try and address the problem, personally, i'd rather we try and address it now rather than waiting for the drop off in performance to be demonstrated indisputably by statistics.

[Snowball]

Congratulations on finding a stat to support the argument that Kebe could play up front. The more relevent stat may be that Kebe has scored 1 goal. However, as usual, i'll back my own eyes over Snowball stats and they tell me Kebe is an absolutely dreadful finisher and when he's in with a chance of scoring or laying on a sitter, he goes to pieces.

What else could we expect than a knee-jerk?

In case you missed it, it was option 3, a tentative one.

Hunt has played 4 more games than Kebe and Kebe out-shoots him.

SHUNT (32) is a winger and has had LESS shots than Kebe (38) (includes 5 penalties, one missed)

SHUNT (15) is a winger and has been on target less than Kebe (18) (10 on target excluding penalities)

SHUNT has scored 2 goals in open play versus Kebe's 1. Kebe was denied a goal yesterday by a handball.

I'd agree with possibility of trying N Hunt on the right wing and certainly playing Matejovsky. Our team is seriously lacking creativity at the moment, both full backs don't create a lot, neither centre half are comfortable on the ball, both wingers are our of form and both centre mids are defensive midfielders. Whilst I agree that Matejovsky might weaken us defensively, we need to create chances and he created one within minutes of coming on with one intelligent pass. I'd be happy to trade the weakening of the defensive unit in return for some more creativity at the moment.

Will Coppell consciously weaken the side defensively though?

If I'm right and Cops won't, one way is to bring in Hunt RW for Kebs.

But that means another striker in (I don't think Lita works) or Matty as a very attacking (goal-scoring?) MFr

[Schards#2]

Snowball, in what way is that a kneejerk reaction? It's a reaction to having seen Kebe over the season.

Furthermore, in what way does detailing the amount of shots he's had in any way make the argument that he's a good finisher? Indeed, given he's only scored once, doesn't it demonstrate the opposite?

[Snowball]

If we play exactly as poorly for the rest of the season we will finish in the top two almost certainly.

Against equivalent sides (1st, 3rd, 4th, 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th) we should expect (based on the recent 10 from 7) 21-22 points from 15 games giving us 80 points

But we are NOT playing equivalent sides, we have just three of the top 9 left to play, all at home.

And while the others are gaining points they are killing each other, Cardiff v Wolves, Cardiff v Swansea etc

[Schards#2]

If we play exactly as poorly for the rest of the season we will finish in the top two almost certainly.Against equivalent sides (1st, 3rd, 4th, 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th) we should expect (based on the recent 10 from 7) 21-22 points from 15 games giving us 80 points

But we are NOT playing equivalent sides, we have just three of the top 9 left to play, all at home.

And while the others are gaining points they are killing each other, Cardiff v Wolves, Cardiff v Swansea etc

No we won't!!!!!!

If we achieve the same sort of results, we probably will, however, if we keep playing this poorly we are unlikely to achieve the results.

This is why exclusive reliance on statistics is fundamentally flawed.

[Snowball]

Snowball, in what way is that a kneejerk reaction? It's a reaction to having seen Kebe over the season.

Furthermore, in what way does detailing the amount of shots he's had in any way make the argument that he's a good finisher? Indeed, given he's only scored once, doesn't it demonstrate the opposite?

The knee-jerk was instant denial of the CLUB's stats, as expected.



Indeed, given he's only scored once, doesn't it demonstrate the opposite?

Absolutely NOT. We expect the majority of our goals to come from the two main strikers plus the 3rd striker. That's bog-standard stuff.

BECAUSE they get more chances IN BETTER POSITIONS

Normally, wingers, especially how we play our wingers, trying to get to the byline, are almost always too-wide and too-deep to get shots on target
and to be TAKING shots from in front of goal around the penalty spot. That is, a lot of SHunt's shots and Kebe's shots are narrow angle-shots cutting in.

These have a far worse conversion rate than shots from IN FRONT of goal. AS EXPECTED

Try to think where Kebe has been right in the middle of the goal for a chance. See?


That's why Simon Cox this year is so valued.. all those goals for a winger is quite rare. Ask Ronaldo

[Snowball]

If we play exactly as poorly for the rest of the season we will finish in the top two almost certainly.Against equivalent sides (1st, 3rd, 4th, 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th) we should expect (based on the recent 10 from 7) 21-22 points from 15 games giving us 80 points

But we are NOT playing equivalent sides, we have just three of the top 9 left to play, all at home.

And while the others are gaining points they are killing each other, Cardiff v Wolves, Cardiff v Swansea etc

No we won't!!!!!!

If we achieve the same sort of results, we probably will, however, if we keep playing this poorly we are unlikely to achieve the results.

This is why exclusive reliance on statistics is fundamentally flawed.

Keep ignoring the fact that in this "bad run" there was another side on the pitch.


One side, TOP FORM SIDE IN THE LEAGUE

Cardiff, in a run of 13 games undefeated, 2.2 points a game (and we played them twice, once with ten men for an hour)

and they drew with Arsenal!



ALMOST TOP FORM SIDE IN THE LEAGUE

One side, Swansea, on a run of FIFTEEN games undefeated (and they beat Portsmouth away)



One side, QPR in the middle of a TEN game undefeated run, a side that have beaten Wolves 1-0, Birmingham 1-0, and had won their previous 3-0 away

The side at the top of the table (and we beat them)
The side that was second in the table when we played them (and we beat them too)

Preston three defeats in seventeen league games (against Swansea, Cardiff and QPR) and won 3-1 away at Wolves!!



and when we played a poor side we walloped them 4-0

the only genuinely "off" result was the 1-1 at Saints...

[Schards#2]

"the knee jerk was to deny the club's stats"



That's just garbage as well you know. I don't deny any of your stats, I just don't put as much weight on them as you do and disagree with your interpretation of them.

[Platypuss]

If we win our game in hand we go top ffs-what are you lot on about?!

[Wizard]

I enjoyed the game today, but I enjoy most games as I can't get to many.

Thought Marek, Noel and Shane all looked pretty good when they came on, gave us some oomph that had been missing. Just a shame we couldn't find the net.
Though Pearce and Armstrong looked out best players out there today.

Excuse me Wizard but I think you'll find that even saying that Long looked "pretty good" is enough to have you removed from the forum.

Long is cr*p is far more acceptable

I thought he played fairly well once he (and Hunt and Marek) came on. We certainly stepped up a gear when the 3 came on.

[brendywendy]

weve made a concious effort to shore up defensively and have lost a bit of flair as a result, but no ones scoring vs us either.

Didn't we do that last season, to great success, after Christmas?

that sir is a great point to which i have no answert whatsever, other than to mumble something and walk sheepishly away