firstdivision

It’s not even right, sadly. ??

Ha. Good point. Tonight’s performance has addled my brain.

Some good news: we won’t be in the bottom three for the World Cup break. Wigan play Blackpool on Saturday.

Glorious hat trick tonight of defensive incompetence: not closing down, defender robbed, set piece. Sums up the last two years.

Careful, Dave. Admitting LJ wasn't all bad will get you some negative emojis on here. LJ could drive me mad as well - which manager wouldn't from time to time? - but I've always disliked the polarised nature of the LJ (bad) and NP (obviously good) debate among some.

Three reasons, Graham: the tactics, the performance and the emotional nature of football (fans care and sometimes overact - I thought it was a very ordinary performance - and we're getting more of them. And when we play well, we've still not been winning. Good recipe for a relegation battle.)

That’s certainly possible. But depends on the quality of our recruitment. TBD. But we’ll most likely lose quite a few so have to rebuild. And that could bring with it more jeopardy not less. My main point is that NP did not inherit that bad a squad. Most of it was injured. That was the primary cause of the slump. We shed, it seems, most of the players NP wanted to get rid of (Pato, O’Dowda, Nagy, Palmer, Bakinson) and not many we didn’t (Diedhiou - well, for no fee anyway). And he’s added some solid players to an expensively-assembled squad (a squad that was in the top six before Covid struck, lest we forget, under the, er, clearly totally incompetent Lee Johnson - if I’m allowed to mention the name of someone so, er, rightfully reviled for taking us to a cup semi-final and giving us the best chance of promotion since his dad nearly did it ten years before). I find the Animal Farm-esque Johnson bad, Pearson good argument so lacking in nuance.

‘ City ruthless on the counter attack and solid at the back in a dominant first half…’ You can’t be serious, Ole. We were shambolic at the back in the first half and lucky not to be 4-1 down at the break. We were ruthless once on the break - a class goal - but Wells missed a great chance. Apart from that, I don’t remember us threatening. I actually thought we defended better in the second half but we did just about give up as an attacking force. All in all a pretty ordinary performance. Boro made us look like a relegation team.

Why would the squad have been decimated at the end of DH’s first season? Most of the players were under contract. Also, NP didn’t inherit a bad squad, Dave. He inherited an injury-hit squad - that was the problem in the 2020-21 season. He’s had a lot of decent to solid Championship players, who are now mostly fit, and benefited from some good youngsters. He’s also been able to sign the likes of James, Naismith and Atkinson. I accept he’s a bit short of numbers, which plays into your point about us being quite competitive if everyone is fit. Why did there have to be an inevitable downturn? I simply don’t accept that. The injury season killed us and seemed to help NP lower everyone’s expectations. Surely plenty of other clubs have had to tighten belts. If anything, the downturn would more likely come after all the expensive signings are out of contract next summer and we shed lots of players and have to rebuild with little transfer-fee money.

What an astonishing first half. Boro can probably hardly believe how much space they have. And how easily they get the ball back. And yet we are winning. Utter madness.

This is like watching a high-wire trapeze act without a safety net.

That reply was beyond the call of duty, Dave. Yes, when I wrote 'understanding' I meant it in its widest sense - trying to work out what stats are helpful, trying to ask the right question in the first place, trying to work out what the data means, trying to work out what the learning point is in the data etc. The things I've 'learnt'(had confirmed) are: there's a hell of a lot we don't know how to interpret (yet); wages are important; some players are undervalued - try to find them; a successful set piece strategy is important; no one quite knew why Busquets was such a good player but he was; and - this is me extrapolating - Antoine's misses against Swansea and Sheffield United were not all bad. At least he was there on the end of great chances. This plays into one of the ideas - that most decent strikers are quite similar in their ability to shoot where they want, but it's the quality of the chance, and being able to find the space to be there for it, that is most important.

The more of Net Gains I read, Dave, the more it becomes apparent that everyone’s understanding of football stats is still far from complete. We’re still fumbling around in the dark to some extent because of the nature of the game - its fluidity and scoring system. It seems the best use might be for uncovering undervalued talent.

Meanwhile, at Birmingham City, new manager John Eustace has been able to find a solution to a problem (his comments after last night’s 0-0 draw with Birmingham): "It was always going to be a difficult night for us and I'm delighted with another clean sheet and another point on the board. I know we weren't as fluid as we want to be on the ball but we've defended our box with our lives. "Our defensive record is the best in the league which is very pleasing and that's coming from a collective, from the whole squad, starting from the strikers back to John Ruddy. "We conceded 75 goals last season which I think was the third or fourth worst in the league so when we came in that was something we wanted to improve on, and up to now we've done OK."

Thank you. I suppose where I was going is…if we are mid-table payers, should we not expect to be mid-table finishers? If we are top ten payers, then should we expect to be closer to the top ten?

I am reading Ryan O'Hanlon's book, Net Gains, about football stats. There's so much to discuss but his main argument (one that seems to be uncontested) is that player wages are the biggest single factor governing success on the field. Here's my question: how do our wages compare with other Championship clubs? My ears pricked up when I heard Richard Gould say we are in the top ten payers in the Championship at the forum the other evening (one of the most interesting things said at the event). You know where I'm going with this, Dave... Also, Dave, football is an emotional game. You know that. This is a forum. Not everyone is as rational as you. Of course, people like to whinge. But we could be facing another relegation battle. Unlucky teams, teams who play well and lose, teams who play badly and lose, teams who give away soft goals - you don't find many that regularly display those characteristics doing well. And a half-decent team, or two, or three will most probably go down this season. Little has surprised me about where we are. I did notice a few/some talking about the play-offs (hard to know exactly how many) earlier in the season, though. I, of course, laughed to myself. I would much rather be wrong but this is stating to feel worrying. Now, about those wages...

What I meant was that I couldn’t see us winning a game in the way Sheffield United won last night. Play poorly, nick a goal, dog it out. We’re too nervous and too soft defensively. I think you need to be able to do that in this league to be reasonably successful. (I didn’t make myself clear enough in my original post.)

Billy, I think you’ve answered your own question in the last sentence.

Play well and lose. Play badly and lose. Be unlucky and lose. Make lots of defensive errors. That recipe often makes a relegation cake. Not that long ago that we stunk place out at Birmingham and Reading. We don’t look an obvious relegation team but who does in this league?

Thoroughly frustrating night. But can you see us winning a game like that? I can’t. And that’s why we are where we are - where I feared we would be going into the World Cup break. Just above the relegation zone. The alarm bell might not be ringing in the houses of many of Nige’s loyal army, but I can hear them in mine. Let’s hope I’m wrong and they’re right.

Fact or supposition? NP, in his pre-match media conference, said three players had been suffering - a striker, a midfield player and a defender. That doesn’t quite tally with both Wells and Semenyo having suffered from flu. I think it’s reasonable to assume that Weimann and Klose were two of them. I agree that if Wells and Semenyo had been suffering, taking them off was understandable (albeit frustrating from a tactical point of view considering how the game was set up, and what the changes meant: Martin and Bell unlikely to cause too many problems). But does anyone on here know for certain?

I don’t know. But play the game in front of you, especially when it’s in the balance. I appreciate that the front three had done a lot of hard work - that’s why I would have swapped Bell for Conway - but I think we could have delayed taking off Wells and Semenyo for a bit longer.

I agree, Dave. Quite a tedious team to watch. Nice passing with the possibility of scoring the perfect goal. But very predictable. Any opponent that gets its tactics right against them and is prepared to reign in its ego can have success against them. It’s why I’m desperately disappointed we didn’t win. We did a lot right today.

I totally agree that Swansea were the perfect opponents for our defence today. Any team that is prepared to be disciplined, not worry about not having the ball and has a threat in attack is going to make it hard for them. Our tactics worked and it was so disappointing they equalised with a shot through a forest of bodies - they rarely threatened despite all their possession. I’d be concerned if we have to play the same defence on Tuesday, well though the back three played.

Sad to say this is true. I despaired when he came on - the obvious sub was Bell for the tiring Conway. Wells didn’t want to come off. Antoine should have stayed on. Couldn’t see the point of CM coming on.