Quote Originally Posted by North Cardiff Blue View Post
The stats will be a bit odd as we have lost three quite good Championship clubs on their way back down and gained three Premier League clubs who are generally miles better than most of the rest bar Ipswich, who can sign players in January that we can't afford.


You can only complete the job with the tools at your disposal, 21st and saved on points deductions to 11th is a good achievement, especially when you consider he lost the most creative player, the best Striker we've had in a long time, and the best Centre half and had a transfer embargo.
The stats aren't odd due to the sides that have come down. They're odd in that we've only drawn 5 games this season. 8 is the lowest number of draws we've ever managed in a 46 game season and I fully expect that to be beaten this season, so we either win games or lose them.

We've won 17 games this season, 13 by a single goal. Our last 10 victories have been by 1 goal which, may not be the longest run of single-goal wins in our history, but it is the joint longest run in the same season since Richie Morgan was boss in 1981.


7 of our first 9 defeats this season were by a solitary goal, including narrow, perhaps unlucky defeats early on to Leicester and Ipswich. We, of course, drew at Leeds. Our last 9 league defeats have all been by at least 2 goals (10 if you include the cup tie at Hillsborough). To put that into context, our worst run of defeats at this by 2 or more goals game in 1957/58 when we lost 14 games all by more than one goal, so this is our second worst run in that regard in our history.

Since the win at Preston, when we were 7th top scorers in the division, we've scored 18 goals, one of the lowest across all 4 divisions and one of the lowest amounts over 23 games in our history.

I know you don't care in the slightest, but we've had half a season where our form has generally been poor. The amount of good performances could be counted on one hand. As I've said previously, our wins have generally been far more about grit and desire than footballing ability. There are stats I find concerning, that suggests that, over the season, we've got worse not better. I find it alarming that we've been relatively easy to beat, but then there are the odd game where we find something, often late on, to turn things around. Grit and determination will get you so far, I can't question ours this season, but if we're going to progress, we need more than that. We've shown we can play some decent football at times. We're in transition. We're not going up any time soon. Let's try and show more attacking intent. We did on Monday and look what it got us.