“Let’s face it, we are horrible to play against,” Will Vaulks

[Rjk]

an interesting feature of our recent improvement is that it doesn't seem to be borne out in basic xG.
even while we were losing under Harris our xG was often decent, and on our recent winning run under McCarthy the xg suggests a lot of the games have been closer than the final results suggest.
this could mean that we've just been luckier under McCarthy than we ended up under Harris, but before I launch into the famous Napoleon quote about lucky generals - that doesn't seem to pass the eye-test in that we have definitely looked better to anyone watching the matches.
I think a lot of this is down to game-states. so often under Harris we conceded a soft goal early on and spent the rest of the game chasing. this obviously completely changes the pattern of the game. when we had good runs under Harris we also looked like a decent team. we've been a lot better at 0-0 under McCarthy, with so far those soft openers cut out.
the tactical change seems to have facilitated that, without significantly effecting our style of play going forward.
it just remains to be seen though if the tactical change has made us genuinely better at 0-0, or if we just happen to be on a good streak, just like we did at times under Harris - it feels like the former somehow, but it is difficult to say that with any real conviction.
I do think that Harris was perhaps a little unfortunate in that the run of 5 league games we lost, 3 of them were against Norwich and Brentford, but nobody is going to argue with the impact the change has made.

[the other bob wilson]

an interesting feature of our recent improvement is that it doesn't seem to be borne out in basic xG.
even while we were losing under Harris our xG was often decent, and on our recent winning run under McCarthy the xg suggests a lot of the games have been closer than the final results suggest.
this could mean that we've just been luckier under McCarthy than we ended up under Harris, but before I launch into the famous Napoleon quote about lucky generals - that doesn't seem to pass the eye-test in that we have definitely looked better to anyone watching the matches.
I think a lot of this is down to game-states. so often under Harris we conceded a soft goal early on and spent the rest of the game chasing. this obviously completely changes the pattern of the game. when we had good runs under Harris we also looked like a decent team. we've been a lot better at 0-0 under McCarthy, with so far those soft openers cut out.
the tactical change seems to have facilitated that, without significantly effecting our style of play going forward.
it just remains to be seen though if the tactical change has made us genuinely better at 0-0, or if we just happen to be on a good streak, just like we did at times under Harris - it feels like the former somehow, but it is difficult to say that with any real conviction.
I do think that Harris was perhaps a little unfortunate in that the run of 5 league games we lost, 3 of them were against Norwich and Brentford, but nobody is going to argue with the impact the change has made.

And Swansea, frankly, took the piss out of us two games before we played Norwich, so we faced three of the best four sides in the league in four games (four in six if you include the win at Watford). I think you’re point about conceding first is a good one though and goes a long towards explaining the anomaly you talk of.

[Rjk]

And Swansea, frankly, took the piss out of us two games before we played Norwich, so we faced three of the best four sides in the league in four games (four in six if you include the win at Watford). I think you’re point about conceding first is a good one though and goes a long towards explaining the anomaly you talk of.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/47831570

it would be interesting to see this kind of breakdown of our games before and after the manager change to see if there are any significant differences - although it is still a very small sample size