Reply With QuoteGreat stat. Unfortunately I can think of at least one team who went better with a 5-0 win!
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There were only 3 4-0 wins throughout the entire Championship season, all managed by us. No other side won a game 4-0.
Great stat. Unfortunately I can think of at least one team who went better with a 5-0 win!
the Preston one was a strange one, didn't seem like we were that dominant.
Derby were significantly weakened too, but they all count.
Sorry Eric,but weren’t there four?Originally Posted by Eric the Half a Bee
Cardiff 4 Luton 0
Cardiff 4 Preston 0
Cardiff 4 Derby 0
Birmingham 0 Cardiff 4
So basically if Mark Harris scores, we win 4-0
I blame the Soccerstats website.....
That’s bizarre, on our day when we got it right we won.
But shows how inconsistent we were too.
There were also 3-0s against Barnsley and Huddersfield and a 3-1 against Coventry with all of our big wins apart from the Birmingham one coming at home, yet we lost nine times at Cardiff City Stadium, it was one of the weirdest seasons I can remember.
Yeah that goes some way to explain how we won only 4 more games than we lost over the course of the season, but ended up with a goal difference of +17 which is kinda weird.
Swansea won 11 more games than they lost and also had a goal difference of +17.
The mirror image of it is in the premier league this season where Brighton lost quite a few more games than they won but ended up with a far better goal difference than the teams around them.
Not sure you can gleam much from it though, just a statistical oddity.
As a blessing if ever there was a season to sit out in lockdown it was this one.
But then again that but if home support may got us a few more points at home, but my the same token we may not have collected as many away as we did.
Looking at this a bit more, Reading and especially Barnsley have lower goal difference than you'd expect from their table position, only managing +8.
Spurs are similar to us in that they have a fairly large GD of +23 but only 6 more wins than losses.
I can remember a Norwich side of the early 90s that came 3rd in the premier league, with a negative goal difference
Man City got relegated in 97/98 with a goal difference of just minus 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997%E...First_Division
that's insane, they lost 22 games, won 12 and had a goal difference of -1
In 2016/17 Huddersfield finished 5th in the Championship, winning 25 games, losing 15. They were promoted via the playoffs.
They finished the season with a goal difference of minus 2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016...L_Championship
I think it's worth looking at our season in a bit more detail.
We won 10 games away from home. 6 were by a solitary goal, 3 by a 2 goal margin and 1 was 4-0.
At home we only won 8. Two were by a single goal (2-1 and 3-2) while one was by two goals (3-1). Two were by a 3 goal margin and three were by a four goal margin. From 18 wins in the league our goal difference is +38. Norwich won 29 games and the goal difference from those wins is +49, clearly lower on average.
In those 8 wins we scored 26 goals. In our remaining 15 games we scored only 11 goals. We kept only 6 clean sheets at home. One was a 0-0 draw, the others were in big home wins. We failed to score in 6 home games, losing 5 of them. Of the games at home where we conceded 1, we drew 4 and lost 3.
42.4% of our goals scored increased our lead in games, the highest in the division. However, only 9 sides scored less equalising goals as a percentage than we did and only 3 sides scored less lead taking goals as a percentage than us. That makes me thing of TOBW's phrase from years ago of us being flat track bullies - great when ahead and could steam roller sides when on form, but in tough, gritty games (particularly at home) where we needed to break down teams when things were tight, we weren't good enough. We were average when it came to gaining points after scoring first and the same when conceding first.
One of the improvements we saw under McCarthy was that we stopped conceding so many early goals. Teams were able to score against us and defend well enough to keep us out, unless we found some magic from a set piece.
I can’t begin to explain the sort of team we were over the last nine months. Away from home, we were not far short of a promotion team with the ability to grind out the narrow wins which are so necessary for a top two or top six finish - our “in your face” style which has been so much of the way we’ve played in recent seasons worked away from home. However, the wins we got at home were mainly down to our attacking players having a good day when they showed there was the potential to play with the style and ability of sides that were thought to be “footballing” outfits. Where we failed st home is that we were unable to outpower teams in tight games to gain those low scoring wins that we saw away from home - why should that be when there were no fans in the ground?
I think the stat of away teams generally getting better results (and home teams generally worse results) since lockdown is in play here, to some effect. It doesn't explain it fully, though.
I think there has still been the onus on home teams to take the game to the opposition. We were better at this under McCarthy than we were under Harris and we were better defensively, but we still struggled with this all too often. These are their respective home records:
Harris P 13 W 4 D 2 L 7 F 19 A 17
McCarthy P 10 W 4 D 4 L 2 F 18 A 9
Even under McCarthy, that's still quite average home form, though under Harris it was pretty shocking.
Away from home our form was average under Harris, but 2nd best in the division under McCarthy. The 5 conceded at Hillsborough denting what would have been a very impressive defensive display away from home, though we were better at home with McCarthy as well.
If we continue our defensive discipline next season there's no reason why we couldn't finish top 6, but we need the creativity to break down teams in tight games.
Stop, stop my head will explode
We scored a decent amount of goals. We didn't defend well though. Especially after we lost Morrison. It seems our form was as patchy under MM as it was under Harris. It wasn't a terrible season in that I consider every club above us to actually be better teams. I don't know where we go from here. But with MM getting a two-year deal and the transfer rumors I've seen, I can't say I am optimistic. We have really failed to capitalize on having a rich owner. I wonder what's next for us. It's hard to imagine us just fading away. We're not a sleeping giant anymore. We've proved our potential. Not exactly giants. But big enough.
If you had a league table from games played after we beat Derby 4-0 we'd have been 15th. It wasn't a great run of form. Defensively we were ok, even with a 5-0 reverse, but we didn't score enough goals over the last 12 games. In fact, after the Derby victory we scored twice in 6 games.
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