Originally Posted by
Eric the Half a Bee
Even Bulut's biggest fans on here have agreed that he deserved to be sacked. The only difference with them is that they appear to be surprised by how badly we started this season, yet this came as absolutely no surprise to others of us.
Moving away from the players concerned for a moment, it's worth noting that, after 14 games, we'd made our 18th best start in our history, which shows how well things went for the first 3 months. Of our 17 historical better opening 14 games, we won promotion 9 times. 23 points from our opening 14 games wasn't quite enough of a rate to finish in the playoffs, but it wasn't far away. Quite simply, we never managed to keep that form going.
From game 15 onwards, we lost 17 matches, the third highest figure from that game onwards in our history. Our defensive record from that moment was our 9th worst in our history. Our goals scored was the 15th worst in our history. Oddly, despite so many stats from this period being pretty woeful, we still won 12 games. The next highest number of wins from a side losing so many fixtures from game 15 onwards was 8, while the second highest number of defeats for a team winning 12 was 13. Make no bones about it, to have won so many games despite the other stats being so generally poor was highly unusual.
In fairness, we had a conversion rate from set pieces that was so ridiculously high that it was never sustainable. No matter how good it was, teams were going to learn how to defend against them. It wasn't as if lots of our set piece goals were delivery - finish, but delivery - confusion - score of the 2nd or 3rd ball. We gave everything to make sure the opportunity wasn't lost, rather than it being about excellent deliveries or great movement to get on the end of them. We scrapped at them and made it difficult for defenders. The drop off in conversion rate was no surprise, but as we became more reliant on winning set pieces thinking that was the best way to score, we lost whatever minimal attacking threat we had originally.
We had a way of turning games around if we were a goal down. A knack. We'd do piss all for 70 minutes then suddenly develop an urgency if we were only a goal down. The problem was that we were 2 down or more far too often.
Going back to stats from game 15 onwards, we won 7 of our last 16 away fixtures but only 5 of our last 16 home fixtures, picking up 5 more points away than at home. Our away form is ranked 10th best in our history over that period, our home form 13th worst. So whatever we had that gave us some good away form was tempered by the garbage generally served up at home.
I'm not sure about this. We started far too many games slowly in the hope of staying in them and pinching goals late on. We opened the scoring 9 times in Bulut's last 38 games, which is a dreadful figure. In total we scored first on 19 occasions under Bulut, winning 14. We also kept 10 clean sheets. It wasn't a brilliant record, but one that was more than decent. In total we conceded first on 34 occasions, losing 26, winning 6. In that context, our bouncebackability was ok. However, we were 3 times more likely to lose a game by 2 or more goals after conceding the first than to turn the game around and win, so I'd suggest we didn't have as much of a way of staying in games as some claim. In some of those games it can certainly be claimed that we were fortune the opposition hadn't scored more and grew frustrated in not having been further ahead when we struck.
There probably isn't an instance of it, but it's also worth mentioning that under Riza we've scored first in 4 of his 6 away matches, and only 11 times out of 29 when Bulut was manager.
When we scored first in the league under Bulut we won 6 out of 10, conceding only once in those 6 games. We did have a good knack of keeping the opposition out if we had a lead. Under Riza we had those appalling substitutions at Bristol City and a very debateable penalty that cost us. However, under Riza we've lost a lead away from home on 5 occasions and have yet to recover a losing position. In fact, Norwich is the only game under Riza where we've scored after we've conceded a goal. So, yes I think we've lost a little of the competitiveness under Riza but that's tempered with us starting games better than we did under Bulut.
