Shots, etc
Inspired by a posting on TiFF, here’s something interesting.
We’ll expect more shots to be on target as the season wears on, but the conversion of said shots into goals isn’t necessarily an outlier. I’d have put money on teams being more bunched on this than they are, but not so: you can be bad at shooting all season. So while Hull and Stoke have benefitted this year and Man Utd and Spurs are struggling (suggesting that this is not all about skill) Birmingham and Reading kept up a good ratio all last season. Which suggests that Brum and Reading were either lucky with their shooting all year or went down because of their defence. Either way, this is something we need to be wary of.
Will a defensive midfielder fix this? Surely not. No, there’s a good suggestion that, to whatever extent our start has been ‘difficult’, this has not been because of our defensive play. We need to make and take chances. Which is why I want Dempsey and Gera in the side. But that’s an argument for another day.
I presume you would change Dempsey for Davies which would not be a bad shout, he seems to have gone back to the form he was showing when he joined, not really sparkling like he did last season. Dempsey also looks like a man with something to prove. Interesting facts, actually quite appalling facts for the attack, we need someone to get in form and start putting them away. Cometh the hour cometh the man, AJ needs to start connecting. Rich I also like your posts on TiFF about people keeping cool, i thought the reactions on Saturday were unbeleivably poisonous and full of bile. Almost as if people were waiting for it.
Zamora and Johnson are probably better than what we had for most of last year, so it’s reasonable to think that we’ll improve over last season’s rates. The fact that we’re behind last season’s worst on-target team says a lot – I know we’re not that bad, so it’s going to be difficult not to improve.