Data free from football-data.co.uk
I thought this worked quite well for Blackburn, so here’s a look at Everton when they play away from home.
What stands out? For Blackburn it seemed that the key to playing with them was to foul as much as Blackburn, to not be bullied perhaps. Everton? Not so close. But the one thing to watch is that this is a team that seems to thrive on picking pockets while away. What do I mean?
Well first look at the away wins. There are a lot of them (pink shade).
Then have a quick look at the shots (not shaded, but the HS and AS columns) and the corners (blue shade). As you can see from the totals (grey shades), Everton have conceded lots of shots and corners (i.e. absorbed pressure) on their travels, but still managed to win matches. To me that says counter attack. It’s not a definite thing, but this appears to be what the data are telling us.
They’re one of the best away teams in the league. Tim Cahill is very very hard to stop (I’m really not sure that we have someone who can; we seem quite vulnerable to Cahill type attacks); Yakubu can be deadly when he’s on (hattrick up there, remember?) and Andy Johnson can run defences ragged on the break. Mikel Arteta is a fantastic player, a real wizard on the wing, and Joleon Lescott has thrived at both ends of the pitch this year. This is going to be hard.
Against that, we usually get something from this game. So who knows?
The People says that Les Reed will be axed from his overlord position in the summer. Okay.
Interesting quote from Roy about Jimmy Bullard:
“We have to keep on at him about his discipline. The way we would like him to play and the discipline we would like him to show us has not always been a major feature of his game.
“But all credit to Jimmy, he’s working at that. And as a coach you can only be very happy when a player steps up at such an important moment like that at Blackburn and produces such a wonderful free-kick.
And there was me thinking Jimmy had deliberately been given a free role.
Christopher Samba says Blackburn were complacent on Saturday:
“It’s our fault because we were not mentally prepared – I think we thought it would be easy. We have to learn a valuable lesson from this that no game in the Premier League is easy. It doesn’t matter whether you are playing a team from the top of the league or a team from the bottom, you still have to prepare for each game in exactly the same way. I think we maybe went into it with the wrong attitude. The first half was just flat, nothing happened, and we just wasted 45 minutes. Then we ended up paying the consequences. We are very disappointed with this result and performance.”
If that’s true then it’s disappointing we couldn’t capitalise.
Team meeting, productive. Jimmy:
“We haven’t given in and we had a big team meeting before the game on Saturday – our season starts here,” he told the club’s official website.
“It was a serious meeting involving everyone – coaching staff and players. We usually have a meeting before the game but there was more said and we’ve got a really positive attitude.
“We have to forget everything that has happened and what league position we’re in. We went to Blackburn to try and win the game.
“We’re all in this together and even when we went a goal down we felt good. I had a look around and the boy’s heads were up. We thoroughly deserved a point on Saturday.
“It’s all about winning now – we’re not looking at the teams we’re playing now. We’re going out on the pitch, forgetting the names on the team sheet and just playing. The season starts here and we’re going to give it a right good crack.”
Fulham have put Bullard’s goal up.
Over and out (me, not Fulham).
