Reply With QuoteWe had a better squad and were miles better at set pieces at both ends of the pitch.
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You won't get many bigger Erol Bulut critics than me and I'll never change my mind that his sacking was overdue. However, as we approch the halfway point in this season, the fact has to be faced that we're finding life much tougher this time around than we did with Bulut in charge last season and it seems very unlikely that we're going to exceed last year's twelfth placed finish and our points tally of sixty two.
So, why is that Bulut was able to take us through a season where relegation was never really a serious issue? Was he a better manager than people like me are prepared to acknowledge? I suppose the first thing to do when trying to answer questions like that is to look at players no longer at the club who haven't been adequately replaced. To be honest, only three come to mind for me, Mark McGuinness to an extent, an in form Ryan Wintle is a bit of a miss and definitely Karlan Grant.
Second, although we're still quite high in the table for set piece goals, there has been a big drop off in the number we're scoring.
A third reason why we were safely mid table through 23/24 for me is luck. The stats show there was a freakish eloment to our high, by recent standards, finishing position and, off the top of my head, I can think of Southampton at home and Sunbderland, Preston, Sheffield Wednesday, Watford and Coventry away where we had luck on our side in picking up the three points.
However, the fact that five of those games I mention were played away from.home points to something that cannot just be dismiissed as luck - especially when you contrast our away record this season with last time around. Those fifteen points were a big reason. why we were never in much danger and I feel they offer some evidence of where we have not replaced Bulut effectively.
At the back end of last season, I heard a podcasrt discussion somewhere about why Cardiff were so high in the table when they consistently played football of a standard that should place them in the bottom third? The answer they came up with was that we had a way of staying in games when the going got tough - so, was what I tend to write off as good fortune a bit more than that?
Nine games in and we're still looking for our first away win, yet I'd argue that we've played pretty well even at Burnley and Hull. we had our rough patches at Swansea, Bristol and West Brom, but did okay and we've played well at Coventry. I honestly don't see much of a difference in our performance level away from home compared to last year and yet results are clearly worse. Would we have conceded within two minutes of going 1-0 up, as we've done on our last two away games, under Bulut? Well, without checking it, I can't think of a single instance of us doing so.
I've written all of the above while being convinced that we'd be bottom with quite a few less points now if Bulut was till manager, but I don't think last season was just a case of making a good start and then hanging on, we still had something that would see us through away games that we don't have now.
We had a better squad and were miles better at set pieces at both ends of the pitch.
Lose McGuinness put in Chambers. Massive difference.
The biggest single factor was luck. He was very, very lucky to get so many results in games where his side was a distinct second best. It was a freak season in that respect. The table made Bulut look a lot better than he actually was.
Originally Posted by Hilts
He hasn’t actually excelled at Luton, has he
I can only comment on what I've seen. McGuinness for us was vastly superior to Chambers and McGuinness wasn't perfect.
I have no idea what he's doing now as apart from our game I haven't seen Luton.
No, I may be wrong but to my mind we started playing better and picked up more points after Nat Phillips came in January and McGuiness didn't play for several months.
Everyone was desperate for Laland to get fit after a decent showing in a couple of but didn't set the world alight when since he came in for Chambers.
We have been blessed with some decent load loan players in recent years to make the team seem better than it was. This year we have El Ghazi and the woeful Kanga, and that for me is the biggest reason we haven't picked up more points.
I can see Bulut's cheerleader-in-chief NCB chuckling away, but the situation wasn't funny. The delusion that Bulut was doing a decent job led to fans calling for him to stay and the board giving him a new contract.
And here we are as a result of that lunacy.
Luck, good fortune - only 3 teams had a worse goal difference than us last season yet we finished 12th. If that form continued into this season - and the latter part of last - you could possibly argue a case for Bulut, but it didn't, and the awful form up to his sacking was IMHO a truer reflection of his impact on the club. Losing McGuiness was also a big factor. Neither Goutas or Chambers are 'organisers' like McGuiness was. They don't shout, point, etc. and we've become sloppy and ill-disciplined at the back. I think McGuiness contributed to keeping the back line tight for 90+ minutes..
A lot of it was. Anyone who understands football could see that and the stats were just incredible.
Remember all those games after October 2023 in which Bulut's boys were genuinely better than the opposition?
No, nor me.
Yeah, a decent start to the season until he tried to put his stamp on the team, then some lucky wins and a lot of being outplayed.
Yes all luck
Pep last year so lucky, this year so unlucky
Set pieces.
If that was down to bulut I'd bring him back as coach.
Not just scoring from them either, which we were bloody brilliant at, but we defended them far better.
All adds up.
The league probably doesn't have the run away leaders this season but it feels like everyone else is on average a touch stronger.
We put in excellent performances against Plymouth and Pompey and on the day looked far better yet at this stage of the season we can't get any distance ahead of them.
Not all luck. Some of it was down to the managerial brilliance of the man you championed so boldly and loudly for so long.
That managerial brilliance is the reason why City started this season so well and why clubs all around Europe are now queuing up to employ Bulut the Great.
Oh, hang on a minute...
Your memory's playing tricks on you.
McGuinness started 29 league games in 23/24. The team's stats in those games was:
P 29, W12, D 4, L 13, GF 36, GA 39
Phillips started 17 league games. The team's stats in those games was:
P 17, W 7, D 1, L 9, GF 17, GA 31
The team scored an average of 1.2 goals a game and conceded an average of 1.3 goals a game with McGuinness in the side.
The averages with Phillips in the team was scored 1.0 goals a game and conceded 1.8 goals a game.
So, the team won a higher percentage of games, scored a higher percentage of goals and conceded a lower percentage of goals with McGuinness in the side as opposed to Phillips.
McGuiness sounds very lucky
Our defending got gradually worse after Phillips came in for McGuinness, but, as I remember it, Phillips didn’t play too badly, it was Goutas who was really struggling and it was more a case of him missing his old partner at the back.
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.
Thanks a lot for that Eric, good to see so many stats in one post which show how unusual the season was. - as I mentioned, I dont think were playing any worse this season, but, away from home in particular, theres something missing, maybe its a bit of belief?
The play isnt too bad but we cant pick out anyone in the box (even if there is someone there) and the finishing is poor. Its better to watch but it reminds me of Ole after Malky. Same result.
I certainly think he is a better manager than many give him credit. Last season he did a good job. The football was not brilliant but it was a much better result than the previous 2 seasons. My own feelings about the abysmal start to this season, admittedly I have no proof, may have been that allegedly Bulut had been assured of certain things but they were not subsequently forthcoming. I have no proof. What else would have caused the remarkable change?
StT.
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I disagree, you can at least see how we are trying to play under Riza.
To this day I could not begin to describe what our strategy was under Ole.
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