A few stats from the season thus far.

[Jam_Man]

I dont think we should play more defensively away if we had Barrett and Clarke at centre half. This would just invite more pressure and they are simply not good enough to deal with it.

Maybe playing so openly is allowing the opposition to attack us more and thus more pressure is on them anyway.

. We still let in goals because Barrett/ Clarke remained together and they just aren't good enough whatever you surround them with.

Why is our home record over the last two seasons very good then ?

For what its worth, the main reason we have let in even more goals this season compared to last is the fact that a certain midfielder is now playing for Charlton. His excellent play helped cover the weaknesses of those behind him.

We havent let any more goals in than last season at home, its our away form thats terrible.


We had the 6th best home defence last year and the 2nd best this year.

If we can defend at home then I still believe its the way we play away from home rather than the individuals, if we just had a bad defence it would be bad all the time....

 

[Jam_Man]

PS Last seast we were second top goal scorers in the league away yet the 7th worst defence.

However whats interesting is that overall we were 6th in the league based on away and 8th based on home record.

Now this suggests that last season we carried on playing our normal game and it did well for us but at the cost of a lot of goals.

This season we are 10th based on home and 20th based on our away form so it hasnt worked....

 

[Jam_Man]

double post shennanigans!

 

[Southend Neil]

Maybe playing so openly is allowing the opposition to attack us more and thus more pressure is on them anyway.



Why is our home record over the last two seasons very good then ?



We havent let any more goals in than last season at home, its our away form thats terrible.


We had the 6th best home defence last year and the 2nd best this year.

If we can defend at home then I still believe its the way we play away from home rather than the individuals, if we just had a bad defence it would be bad all the time....

Are we that open away from home though? I just think it boils down to the fact that you will always come under more pressure away from home and you need a strong backline to deal with it. If we were more defensive, Barrett/Clarke would in my opinion not be able to deal with it. I just could never see us grinding out 0-0s and 1-0s with them as a partnership.

Our home record has been quite good because last year we had an excellent midfield and whilst that has got worse this year, we have a better and more commanding goalkeeper. We would have let in more away this year because Bailey/Flahavan is still a better combination overall than JFC/Mildenhall. Also you have to factor in, the decline in the performances of Francis and Barrett which haven't helped.

Anyway, now we have Dervite who appears to be on a completely different level to the others, I am sure our away goals against average will go down.

 

[chapperzUK]

I was bored at work today (no surprise there) and thought I'd have a quick look at the League One table. And I thought I'd share a couple of observations on it. I don't know if they mean anything but they might make a good debating point:

- This time last season we only had four more points than we do today (credit to Southend Neil for that one).

- Despite the general opinion that we have two centre-backs who can't play together, only Leicester (who are 854 points clear at the top) have conceeded fewer goals at home than we have.

- Despite having the second best home defensive record in the division, only the bottom two have conceeded more goals away form home than we have.

- Our top goalscorers are Lee Barnard and Dougie Freedman with five goals each. No League One club has a top goalscorer with fewer goals (although Yeovil are joint bottom with us).

- Despite the relatively poor season thus far we remain sixth in the attendance table with an average gate of more than 7,800. That's twice as high as our average gates were just six or seven years ago.

- Although we're scoring a lot of late goals we're actually a much stronger team in the first half of matches. If games were only 45 minutes long we'd be 11th in the table and only two points off of the play offs.

- Our good form in the first half of matches is fortunate as we're the third worst team in the division at coming from behind at half time. Eight times it has happened and we've taken just one point from those matches (Orient away).

- Sadly don't expect much from Saturday's match at Colchester. We're bottom of the away form chart with just one point taken from the last five matches (again Orient).

Ron Martin would not be happy. Not charts or graphics. Anyway nice research mate!

P.S. Watch out for some more stats tomorrow ;)

 

[Jam_Man]

Are we that open away from home though? I just think it boils down to the fact that you will always come under more pressure away from home and you need a strong backline to deal with it.

Its true you are under more pressure but I still think its the team as a whole and not the centre backs at fault...

Anyway, now we have Dervite who appears to be on a completely different level to the others, I am sure our away goals against average will go down.

I dont think it will just because of him, one defender cant change form that drastically, only influence it. Time will tell...

 

[Beefy]

- Our good form in the first half of matches is fortunate as we're the third worst team in the division at coming from behind at half time. Eight times it has happened and we've taken just one point from those matches (Orient away).

Make that nine times.

If you worked that out yourself, you must have been very bored!

:zzzzz:

Nah, all that sort of stuff is on Football365's website.