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Performances this season


RAD_Red

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After the Blackburn game on Saturday, while feeling quite pessimistic about City's hopes for the rest of the season, I thought back over the games so far and struggled to think of any in which City really dominated a game i.e. won the game, had more possession and more shots on target. I figured this may have been heavily influenced by the performance I'd just watched - so I thought I'd go through the stats and see how often City actually do 'dominate' a game (based on BBC Sport stats).

Over 38 games this season, City have:

  • Won the match, had more possession and more shots on target on one occasion (home to Charlton).
  • Lost the match, had less possession and less shots on target on six occasions (Leeds home, WBA away, Sheff Weds away, Brentford home, Leeds away and Huddersfield away).
  • Our average shots on target per game is 3.4 - we have had more shots on target than the opposition on 10 occasions (26% of games).
  • Our average possession this season is 46% - we have had more possession than the opposition on 13 occasions (34% of games).

I think it must be very rare for a team for these types of stats to be in the top half of a division, let alone pushing for play offs? Personally I think this suggests that City's midfield are not good enough in terms of allowing us to control possession and creating chances for our strikers. 

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Personally I think, having tracked similar stats through the season, the stats you show vindicate the suspicion that we have essentially been quite lucky. Saturday's game was actually a rare example of us getting a bit of bad luck. Blackburn had about as many shots as us, albeit they got 4 on target to our 2. Looking at xG their shots were even of a similar quality to ours. We had just over 50% possession. Compared to our "average" match this season we actually matched the opposition. The difference was in individual errors.

One thing I suggest you look at is long shots. We basically don't take them. Only Charlton take fewer shots from outside the box than we do. We've scored one goal from outside the box all season (Brownhill v Cardiff), that puts us right at the bottom of the table for that stat.. That is 1 out of 52, so less than 2% of league goals this season have come from outside the box.* The team in 23rd is Wigan with 4 goals from outside the box. The average is 6 or 7. It doesn't mean that if we start shooting from range we will suddenly win games, but it does help to show that one reason we don't have many shots each game is because the players have been told to only shoot from good positions - ie inside the box. That increases the number of runs and passes you need to make before you can shoot, so creating more opportunities to make mistakes. It also makes us predictable, and easy to manage when defending against. Opponents know we won't shoot from range so they can back off our midfielders and shepherd the ball out to the wings from where 98% of crosses can either be blocked or defended.

I think it also shackles the players and is part of the "over-coaching" that we see being thrown at LJ. Personally I think if the coaching team loosened the reins a little, and encouraged a more trigger happy shooting style, we might see some freedom show itself in midfield.

Someone picked out the word "safe" in another thread. What could be "safer" than not shooting?

*a moment of silence for Famara's wonder goal that wasn't 

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3 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

Personally I think, having tracked similar stats through the season, the stats you show vindicate the suspicion that we have essentially been quite lucky. Saturday's game was actually a rare example of us getting a bit of bad luck. Blackburn had about as many shots as us, albeit they got 4 on target to our 2. Looking at xG their shots were even of a similar quality to ours. We had just over 50% possession. Compared to our "average" match this season we actually matched the opposition. The difference was in individual errors.

One thing I suggest you look at is long shots. We basically don't take them. Only Charlton take fewer shots from outside the box than we do. We've scored one goal from outside the box all season (Brownhill v Cardiff), hat puts us right at the bottom of the table for that stat. the team in 23rd is Wigan with 4 goals from outside the box. The average is 6 or 7. It doesn't mean that if we start shooting from range we will suddenly win games, but it does help to show that one reason we don't have many shots each game is because the players have been told to only shoot from good positions - ie inside the box. That increases the number of runs and passes you need to make before you can shoot, so creating more opportunities to make mistakes. It also makes us predictable, and easy to manage when defending against. Opponents know we won;t shoot from range so they can back off our midfielders and shepherd the ball out to the wings from where 98% of crosses can either be blocked or defended.

I think it also shackles the players and is part of the "over-coaching" that we see being thrown at LJ. Personally I think if the coaching team loosened the reins a little, and encouraged a more trigger happy shooting style, we might see some freedom show itself in midfield.

Someone picked out the word "safe" in another thread. What could be "safer" than not shooting?

XG from Exp361.

image.png.afc222c730990f0ca0cda501eb51e36b.png

one thing that has stood out for me is how long we can go in a game without creating any chances.

0-29 minutes - no chances created.

34-55 minutes - one chance created

58-86 minutes - no chances created

There are plenty of other similar matches to this throughout the season.

It shows imho how we either (a) can’t string together anything of note for any prolonged period and / or (b) how other teams easily stifle us.  We don’t build momentum like the 17/18 team did late autumn / winter.  Often our goal threat comes from something a bit inspirational, magical.  Saturday was one good pass (Smith) and run (Diedhiou).  That didn’t happen again all game.

As fans, it means there are rare moments to get excited about.  How often do we work the opposition keeper?  Not enough.  Historically we’ve had those games where the opposition keeper is the MOTM.  Jack Butland must’ve been the last to keep his side in a game....over a season ago.

We are quite dull.  I don’t agree with taking shots from 30 yards for the same of it, but by the same token, we don’t create enough chances of any description.

Results are not sustainable playing like this.

 

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This was done back at the end of Feb, first two charts in the first tweet represent the comparison of goal difference per game vs shot difference per game and xG difference per game. In 2nd tweet there's a chart with shot difference per game, green (win), blue (draw), red (loss) at this point we'd only had 8 games with more shots than our opponents then tracking the goal difference and shot difference over the course of the season

 

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13 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

XG from Exp361.

image.png.afc222c730990f0ca0cda501eb51e36b.png

one thing that has stood out for me is how long we can go in a game without creating any chances.

0-29 minutes - no chances created.

34-55 minutes - one chance created

58-86 minutes - no chances created

There are plenty of other similar matches to this throughout the season.

It shows imho how we either (a) can’t string together anything of note for any prolonged period and / or (b) how other teams easily stifle us.  We don’t build momentum like the 17/18 team did late autumn / winter.  Often our goal threat comes from something a bit inspirational, magical.  Saturday was one good pass (Smith) and run (Diedhiou).  That didn’t happen again all game.

As fans, it means there are rare moments to get excited about.  How often do we work the opposition keeper?  Not enough.  Historically we’ve had those games where the opposition keeper is the MOTM.  Jack Butland must’ve been the last to keep his side in a game....over a season ago.

We are quite dull.  I don’t agree with taking shots from 30 yards for the same of it, but by the same token, we don’t create enough chances of any description.

Results are not sustainable playing like this.

 

Absolutely we shouldn't just shoot from range for the sake of jacking up the stats. Hence I said that where we lie in that regard is only an indicator of the broader issue rather than a hole to patch and immediately solve the problem. We are dull. Was it @hodge who mentioned being "gung ho" on another thread. The team now is not even an echo of the swashbuckling side that tore it's way through the Carling Cup in the autumn of 2017. The players have changed and the style has too. 

Your last line could be the tagline for the season.

Finally, this is Infogol's xG plot. A little different to E361's but broadly the same. Averaging the two gives you about 0.7 for both teams. I agree about the goal on Saturday. Stan said on the podcast that it came from nothing.

image.thumb.png.088c63374382173882de21295d3817ca.png

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1 hour ago, Davefevs said:

XG from Exp361.

image.png.afc222c730990f0ca0cda501eb51e36b.png

one thing that has stood out for me is how long we can go in a game without creating any chances.

0-29 minutes - no chances created.

34-55 minutes - one chance created

58-86 minutes - no chances created

There are plenty of other similar matches to this throughout the season.

It shows imho how we either (a) can’t string together anything of note for any prolonged period and / or (b) how other teams easily stifle us.  We don’t build momentum like the 17/18 team did late autumn / winter.  Often our goal threat comes from something a bit inspirational, magical.  Saturday was one good pass (Smith) and run (Diedhiou).  That didn’t happen again all game.

As fans, it means there are rare moments to get excited about.  How often do we work the opposition keeper?  Not enough.  Historically we’ve had those games where the opposition keeper is the MOTM.  Jack Butland must’ve been the last to keep his side in a game....over a season ago.

We are quite dull.  I don’t agree with taking shots from 30 yards for the same of it, but by the same token, we don’t create enough chances of any description.

Results are not sustainable playing like this.

 

Agree with all of this, we don't create enough, easy to stifle, we don't control enough and yet somehow despite that approach we allow quite a lot of shots- though this is largely about our attacking shortcomings. 

Especially agree with your last line- not sustainable at all. I don't think it has been for some while but definitely not sustainable. Quite possibly getting worse over time though even in our great spell back from Birmingham away to Reading at home, the underlying numbers were not superb quite often. Our 2nd wind if you like through late October ie Charlton at home to Fulham away, results seemed fine but how sustainable?

As for our third wind, it felt like more of a breeze really despite the results! Though I enjoyed the Derby home game.

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How is see it based on the OP observations, any team with poor players performing like that are relegation fodder. As were are placed where we are, that tells me we have good players that are but they are be coached/guided incorrectly and it’s only the ability of our players that give us a chance currently.

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1 hour ago, Roadrunner said:

WE don't need stats to tell us. We can all tell by the way he selects the sides. By the way that side plays. Its their for all to see.

You're correct. In this case the stats support the argument (and they don't always do that) so they add value. They also show that this has been an issue all season, even when we were getting results back in the autumn we had similar underlying statistics. Thus you can begin to see that we've had luck on our side at times.

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