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When looking at things like xG and other stats, it is often far better to look at the longer term. Individual games are affected by flukes, dodgy decisions, red cards, things that your xG model isn't good at picking up (as there are many different ways that people use to calculate it). Over a longer period though if you are generating more xG than you're conceding you're usually in a pretty good place, and vice versa.
Here is a chart showing our rolling 10 game xG for and against for every game at this level since the start of our promotion season under Warnock.
10game.jpg
Blue line is xG for and Red is xG against and the vertical lines represent when we have changed managers.
The gaps between seasons (and our premier league seasons) are just horizontal ish lines at the moment, so I'll try to improve that.
SO what does it show us? probably not much we don't already know unless you start to try to read TOO much into it, but there you go.
Start of the promotion season we really were excellent, massive gap between for and against. That had closed up considerably as the season went on, but we had enough about us to grind out enough results to keep the pack at bay.
By the time we were back at this level we were getting gradually worse until we changed manager.
In fairness to Harris, he did seem to have things going in roughly the right direction for most of his time here, our defence was getting better and so was our attack - especially after the summer transfer window when we got the likes of Wilson etc. Things were going better - until they weren't and he had to go. Possibly a little unfortunate as we weren't much different in losing all those games than we had been when we were winning plenty under him, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
Mick comes in and tightens up the defence initially and we improve slightly at first, but after the next transfer window - when in fairness we have had to cut costs massively we are really bad. As bad as we have been.
Then under Morison we've probably had the best improvement in the underlying numbers from a new manager out of any of these. Attack was greatly improved compared to Micks centre back fetish, with the likes of Drameh etc and the defence was also tightened up.
Then this season we've tightened up the defence, but the attack is also similarly stifled.
So where do we go from here?
If we can continue to restrict the amount of xG against and be a bit more productive in attack then we could be a pretty good side, even if we continue to be vulnerable to set pieces.
We've just improved our strikeforce, with a pretty good player at this level, and hopefully as the team get to know each other a bit more things will become a bit more fluid in attack, and there is also Davies still to come back and Etete to come through as well.
On the other hand, if we remain as toothless in attack as we currently are and teams begin to work out how to score against us more frequently then we could be in trouble.
Here is a chart showing our rolling 10 game xG for and against for every game at this level since the start of our promotion season under Warnock.
10game.jpg
Blue line is xG for and Red is xG against and the vertical lines represent when we have changed managers.
The gaps between seasons (and our premier league seasons) are just horizontal ish lines at the moment, so I'll try to improve that.
SO what does it show us? probably not much we don't already know unless you start to try to read TOO much into it, but there you go.
Start of the promotion season we really were excellent, massive gap between for and against. That had closed up considerably as the season went on, but we had enough about us to grind out enough results to keep the pack at bay.
By the time we were back at this level we were getting gradually worse until we changed manager.
In fairness to Harris, he did seem to have things going in roughly the right direction for most of his time here, our defence was getting better and so was our attack - especially after the summer transfer window when we got the likes of Wilson etc. Things were going better - until they weren't and he had to go. Possibly a little unfortunate as we weren't much different in losing all those games than we had been when we were winning plenty under him, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
Mick comes in and tightens up the defence initially and we improve slightly at first, but after the next transfer window - when in fairness we have had to cut costs massively we are really bad. As bad as we have been.
Then under Morison we've probably had the best improvement in the underlying numbers from a new manager out of any of these. Attack was greatly improved compared to Micks centre back fetish, with the likes of Drameh etc and the defence was also tightened up.
Then this season we've tightened up the defence, but the attack is also similarly stifled.
So where do we go from here?
If we can continue to restrict the amount of xG against and be a bit more productive in attack then we could be a pretty good side, even if we continue to be vulnerable to set pieces.
We've just improved our strikeforce, with a pretty good player at this level, and hopefully as the team get to know each other a bit more things will become a bit more fluid in attack, and there is also Davies still to come back and Etete to come through as well.
On the other hand, if we remain as toothless in attack as we currently are and teams begin to work out how to score against us more frequently then we could be in trouble.