Subs, usage, etc

One of the things that’s narking me off over at TiFF is this blind assumption that Roy’s lack of subs has somehow cost us all the games we didn’t win.  I’m exaggerating for effect, but not by much:  there generally does seem to be a feeling that we ought to win every game.   No?  Let’s put it another way then: after every game we lose, certain posters are on the message boards explaining why we didn’t win and how it was Roy’s fault.

The main bugbear seems to be the lack of substitutions.  I can see where people come from here: lots of Premiership goals go in in the last ten minutes, and it’s happened against us three times away from home this year with disappointing consequences (Hull, Blackburn and Everton securing wins with these late goals).  Naturally, Roy’s use of subs against Portsmouth brought rewards.   So in these four away games we see that the match has been directly affected by a substitute.

Which does not mean that making a substitute in response would have made any difference whatsoever.  It might have, but it might not.

Here are all the games played this weekend where a late goal was decisive to the game:

Newcastle 2-0 Villa
Martins 82

Subs: Villa Sidwell on for Shorey 75.  Other subs after second goal.

So: Newcastle make the game safe after Villa have made a substitution.

Bolton 2-0 City
Bolton goal:  Dunne o.g. 88

Subs: Hamann on for Elano (69); Sturridge on for Evans (69)

So: City make the subs, Bolton make game safe later on

Everton 1-0 Fulham
Saha 87

Subs:  Saha for Fellaini (61); Anichebe for Pienaar (76); Vaughan for Yakubu (84); Baird for Bullard (84); Dempsey for Gera (88);  Nevland for Davies (90)

So: Everton make subs, score late; Fulham make defensive sub, concede

Boro 1-1 West Ham
Mido 84

Subs: Hoyte for Wheater (45); Arca for Digard (57); Mido for Alves (67); Etherington for Sears (74)

So: Boro make three subs, West Ham make one sub, Boro score late

Spurs 2-1 Liverpool
Pavlyuchenko 90

Subs: Hutton for Assou-Ekotto (45); Pavlyuchenko for O’Hara (45); Lennon for Modric (75); Babel for Keane (66); Benayoun for Riera (78)

So: both teams make more than one sub, Spurs score late

WBA 2-2 Blackburn
Andrews 89

Subs: Donk (45); Morrison (69); Miller (80); Tugay for Simpson (45); Pedersen for Olsson (63); Khizanishvili for Emerton (78)

So: both teams make more than one sub, Blackburn score late

What does it all mean?

Very little.  But I hope this little slice of action illustrates that substitutions are not a magic wand.   Winners and losers made subs this weekend, some worked, some didn’t.

To which a skeptic might say that at least by making a change Hodgson would show some intent, some sign of ‘going for it’, or something.   To which we’re back to the original question of what exactly we should be happy with away from home.   Roy was presumably reasonably happy with a nice 1-1 at Hull until Paul Konchesky fell over his feet.  He was presumably reasonably happy with a nice 0-0 at Blackburn until we conceded late on, and he was presumably very happy with 0-0 at Goodison until we conceded again.  He even took measures to preserve that one, Baird for Bullard.  When we were chasing a game, at Portsmouth, the subs paid off.

Have you noticed the common thread in the games listed above?   All but the last one (and that was an equaliser, rather than a winner) saw the home team grab a late goal.  The home manager and the away manager will both hope for a win at the beginning of the game, but as time marches on the home team will think “we need to force this” and the away team will think “we need to hold this”. This is perhaps a mistake, but it’s what happens and is defensible.  So perhaps it is not the subs that people are upset with at all, but the ambition.  Roy Hodgson seems to accept a good away point from a tight game, and really I don’t blame him.   This has nearly paid off but, as time runs out, it looks like the team who needs it more finds a way.  Something to keep an eye on.

NFR

John Brown:  Sarah Palin (I wanna lay pipe)

Hat tip to Nordy.

We don’t do politics here at CCN, but tomorrow’s a big day, no?   Best of luck to all you ‘mericans.

Like a virgin

Virgin Media make clips of our games available to the world.  All you have to do is visit this page, and you’ll see Everton beating us in a small window.   Nice.

Also, you’ll see that they’ve added a link here too.   Nice.

The bad news is that every time someone from here visits there, I get added to a prize draw, and if I win I might win a “Ferrari driving experience for two”.  Which is very generous.  I think I’d rather have a “day on the sofa reading the papers and eating sandwiches and drinking cups of tea experience for two” instead, but it seems churlish to protest too much when people are trying to be nice.

There we are then.  Goal highlights, on Virgin.

Don’t panic

If a martian sat next to me and asked me about football I’d have to refer to a league table before too long.  And if that martian said “okay, which are the best teams then?” I’d say that it’s too early to tell, but that if he really wanted a handle on what’s happening, he’d do worse than to look at goal difference.

This is Rich’s Rule of Thumb Number One.  Simply put, points are bloody unreliable measures of how good a team is, but goal difference rarely lies.    Note the rarely there.   It sometimes does.

So, looking at the table above, we see that Fulham are doing alright so far.  Would anyone be that surprised if the top four and bottom four are as per the GD table at the end of the year?  Maybe Sunderland are too low there, but I really believe in this stuff.

The problem is that not all teams have had the same starts, and that running into Chelsea can skew things rather horribly at present, but as guides go, the GD table is, I think, more reliable than total points.

Two things: first, watch for Blackburn.  I had a sneaky suspicion they might be in bother this year, and this indicator says that this may well prove to be the case.  Second, watch Chelsea.   I’m reluctant to say this, but it’s fairly rare for a team to have the best attack and the best defence in a league.   They’ll need a couple more seasons of this to be established amongst the greats, but it’s been an amazing start.

Some time ago I went back through history and looked for teams that, over a three year span, had:

finished no lower than second, and only once

won the league in the other two seasons

had the best attack and the best defence (F/A) in those seasons (I think it had to be all three)

This gave me:

Preston, Sunderland and Villa, but these teams were all around the turn of the 19th century, and the game was a bit ragged then.   And also:

Huddersfield in the 20s (Herbert Chapman)

Arsenal in the 30s (Herbert Chapman)

Wolves in the 50s

Liverpool in the 70s

Liverpool again in the 80s

Man Utd in the 90s

It’s a pretty select group.   Chelsea will have a fair bit to do, but the start they’ve made is horrendously impressive.

Anyway, the initial point was that we’re really not doing that badly.  People won’t believe this, and yes, we could very well go down, but the team is doing alright and probably deserves to be a bit higher up the table.

Things

We’ve just been dog sitting at Hade’s parents for the weekend, hence lower posting here.  Probably not the worst thing to be doing, getting away from London, football, the world really.

Light relief?  Here’s Moritz Volz on boot colours.

Do you remember this?

At the time I thought “wow, you’re wearing bright orange boots on your debut (was it his debut), and against Manchester United?  You’d better be good”.    Which is a thoroughly cliched response to such things here, but still the point holds.   Eddie Johnson probably thought he was just putting on some intriguing boots that day; to a lot of English fans that would have looked slightly off.   We shall return to the subject of boots this week, but Mr Johnson might have done himself a favour by sticking with black boots.  If that sounds silly, well, it probably is, but hey, such is life.

In other news, today The Times had a table about % of headed challenges won.   Fulham are last in the league.  No great surprise – we have precisely one player that you might call good in the air – but still sightly jarring.   Of course winning headers isn’t the be all and end all – often flick ons and challenges don’t go to anyone in particular – but you’d want to be winning more than you lose, I assume.

Finally, some pictures, which are nothing much to do with anything.