Not being churlish, but aside from maybe Bristol and the Norwich game, even when on our winning run I never remember us being at all convincing in any of the games in our last promotion season. We had things like that awful Masina free kick somehow go on in the last minute go for us, but otherwise look ordinary. I think it was just a combination of Sarr being far more of a threat than he now is making our defence stronger, and it itself being better, plus the championship being the weakest it has ever been due to covid. People will say it’s now a piddly league and I know they also like to trot out the covid excuse for ourselves, but the numbers don’t lie. The championship TV deal back then was £5m per club, so existing Championship clubs lost the vast majority of their income through no gate receipts, whereas even in our peak revenue season in the PL out gate recents were only £9m, whereas we still had £55m in parachute money to fall back on. Relatively speaking we still had far more resources than the other championship clubs that we would’ve this season.
Why does our luck need to change? We're in the middle of winning our next 6 games and cementing ourselves in the playoffs! Made your sudden vehement 'Bilic out!' Shoutbox declaration on Saturday a little hard to understand, but the heart wants what it wants!
Didn't really seem like luck to me to be honest. A lack of commitment, a lack of decisiveness and a lack of confidence caused most of the chances we had not to go in. Weak headers, poor shot selection etc. Something unexpected going in might help improve confidence but then arguably the West Brom game was won because we scored a succession of unlikely goals from deflections and that had naff all impact on what came afterwards.
Agreed. It’s quite funny that fans want to provide excuses in areas where even the vastly-underperforming manager won’t give them.
We are where we deserve to be in the league, luck doesn’t come into it, or referees. As fans we’re biased towards what goes against us, but tend to ignore everything that goes for us. A whole team collectively missing chances is not why we’re 9th though. It can happen in one game and be put down to bad luck, but across 35 games it’s a consequence of coaching, player ability and recruitment for those players. If we now go on an 11 game winning run we’ll of course have fully deserved to, it won’t be down to luck in the same way luck hasn’t got us to 9th. It just seems highly improbable at this stage based on what we’ve seen up to now.
We had better chances than Preston - 0.77 xG from 12 shots (or 0.064 xG per shot) vs their 0.53 xG from 11 shots (0.048 xG per shot). But as you pointed out, we lack an aerial presence across most of the team and our shot selections are awful. On the left below is our shot map from Preston, on the right is the same shot map without headers and it's pretty grim viewing. The 1 vs 1 that Davis had that he tripped over his own feet and hit straight at the keeper was the biggest xG chance of the game
Essentially we’ve recruited three completely dud strikers this season, which is now a recurring theme and nothing to do with luck.
Pretty much, but I'd also say the recruitment of the rest of the squad and the tactics of Bilic have set them all up for failure on top of that. Whilst I like what I've seen of Araujo at Benfica and Benfica B, starting him by himself against 3 physical CBs on Saturday was an awful decision and we really struggled to work the ball to him. Below (looks awful I know) are our passes + dribbles (red is successful, yellow are failures) from Saturday. First half on the left and 2nd half on the right, we focused our attacks pretty much entirely down the flanks with any central build-up play pretty much non existent. 3 at the back (what Preston played) is a natural counter to a 4231 formation, you have to either: A) Cross the ball in the air and hope your striker will win the aerial battle (low crosses potentially good as well if the crossing ability + movement of the striker is good enough, but 3 vs 1 means the odds are stacked against the striker) B) Striker play off the last man and try to play the ball in behind for him to win the foot race C) Wingers try and get in behind the wing-backs to try and drag the CBs out of position to free up space in the penalty area We didn't do any of that in the first half, there's a massive gaping hole in the attacking midfield spot in the first half that improved in the second half with Sarr and Asprilla inverted which invited them to attack the penalty area Now compare that with Prestons (below) - whilst we ultimately saw more of the ball across the game they had much more balance in their attacks in the first half with the HT changes really limiting their effectiveness and enhancing ours. If we started the game with the team we bought out for the 2nd half then in my opinion we win. A switch to 3-5-2 (Davis + Araujo up top with Sarr dropping out) for this game and imo we win. But Bilic got this horribly wrong at the start which ultimately cost us.
It seems such a cliched thing to say now but it’s true- we haven’t been capable of putting a string of good performances together since before the FA Cup final. The 2019/20 season was terrible apart from Liverpool at home. The promotion season of 2020/2021 was good (albeit watching 95% of it on Hive Live) but it was mainly our solid defence and record equalling clean sheet tally that got us over the line. Last season was appalling in nearly every capacity. This season has really had only one moment so far of any real enjoyment god forbid if we somehow manage to make the play offs and even more so if we manage to fluke promotion (we won’t).
Thanks -very useful thoughts and in line with what most of attending would have thought in a must win game. However the elephant in the room -i have been told- is that in bold namely Sarr has to play if fit (and even if vomiting before and at HT said Bilic) -because thats the stipulation Bilic works under. Gino made this clear to Bilic when he took the job and why many of us feel he is no longer motivated and actually is dropping hints as to the requirements he works under. I get that Sarr has scored/assisted this season but for one game or even just the first half -or even the 2nd- its not even logical to not play two-and his comments on this in the WO are facile. You highlight exactly that point. He wants out but Gino needs a shield (not least as he appointed him not the invisible CEO/chairman Duxbury) so he is it.
I will give Perica one thumbs up, his only goal was against Muff. Which we still conspired to fail to win in the dying seconds, as we so often do. He also had a winning goal harshly ruled out at home to Brentford (remember when we were "better" then them?).
Excellent as always Reids. Do us a favor though, please do not work in VAR. Drawing that many lines might confuse the intelligent people who run it now.
Oh one more thing I forgot about that game was the awful short corner in the first half. It was the first corner of the game, coming in the 39th minute. You've failed to really get anywhere near the Preston goal and the game has been devoid of quality chances - the best thing to do is get it in the mixer and hope you can create something from that ball in. What did we do? Play a godawful short corner routine and squander any chance of getting the ball into the box in a meaningful timeframe. By the time we were ready to cross the ball in we barely had 3 players inside the Preston box ffs.
Had erased that from memory. Seemingly talented players become pub footballers at this club when they're asked to deliver a corner
I agree. Bachmann was good at this level. Emphesis on "was". Any GK that boots the ball out of play when he takes one goal kick after having defenders take them before hand stays a lot about confidence. Bachmann is not the GK to take us forward, and next season is going to be even more of a difficult task than this season with a lot of our better players going to help with the financial hit of not going up. Who else do we have? Okoye, who has played less than five games and looked dodgy in most of them, and Hamer, who hasn't featured bar a friendly in Spain. If Okoye was bought in to be our future GK, then he needs to play some league games. Bachmann is not a terrible GK by any means, but his levels have dropped this season. Not to Foster levels, but they have declined.
For my reaction to this hoary old bollox from Cathcart in the Wobby this afternoon, see @UEA_Hornet 's earlier post on when this exact thing happened literally the game before last, and it did absolutely nothing: (https://wfcforums.com/index.php?thr...rth-end-04-03-2023.60067/page-10#post-3220571)
I actually really like them and think they're probably the most under-utilised edge when it comes to set-pieces, its just most teams execution of them (us included) leaves a lot to be desired.
