A few numbers to have a peer at.
First thing that jumps out: when the bookies have not got our games quite right (4/9), all four results have been in our favour.
That’s interesting isn’t it? I appreciate that bookmakers’ odds are not the be all and end all, but they are a good neutral barometer of what we might generally expect to happen in a game.
Throw in the European results – beating top seeds Basel and almost beating Roma – and things really do look quite good for the whites at the moment.
The other thing I was looking at is the Johnson v Kamara comparison, but I don’t know that there’s much of a story here. Kamara’s come in and done well, but I don’t know that it means anything other than that he’s a decent player who’s playing like a decent player. Equally, Johnson’s acquitted himself quite well when fit. It’s not really an either/or situation because when Johnson’s fit he’ll play, but when this happens I think there’s a good argument for giving Kamara at least half an hour a game, especially away from home where he’s done a lot of his best work over the last couple of seasons.
A major boon for us going forward has been the relatively decent form of our front players, but perhaps more important has been Damien Duff’s fine play and the consistent attacking menace of Dempsey on the other wing. All of which means that we now seem to have several attacking players on the same page.
Roma is the top seed in the group (UEFA coefficient 78.582 at the time of the draw, third-highest in the competition), not Basel (UEFA coefficient 51.050 at the time of the draw, second-highest in pot 2).
For what it’s worth, the group we were drawn into included the third-strongest team from pot 1, the second-strongest from pot 2, and the strongest from pot 4 (CSKA Sofia, 14.250 at the time of the draw). It’s really a rough group in that sense, dragged down only by the fact that we had the weakest coefficient in pot 3 (15.899, just above the cusp between pots 3 and 4). Bearing that in mind, it’d really be quite an achievement if we were to advance.
Comment by Josh — October 27, 2009 @ 9:16 pm |
That is interesting. I think bookies predictions are a good barometer: they have to be correct much more often than not otherwise they go bust. Expecting Wolves to beat us is a surprise though (although I guess they did get that right).
On Kamara/Johnson, I think I’m moving towards favoring Kamara because he and Duff make a nice compliment to Zamora. Johnson has always been reluctant to play wide (see why he got so angry at Everton), whereas Kamara is happy to drift and pop up anywhere. With Duff also in the side, we have more of a 4-5-1/4-3-3 look and seem more fluid and unpredictable.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Zamora has been playing better since Kamara came in for Johnson. Have a read of Jonathan Wilson’s piece in the Guardian today. Although it’s more about playing without a real striker, it highlights nicely why a team without a rigid forward line are so menacing.
Johnson in a way falls into Wilson’s categorization of english players as unable to understand “forwards who refused to stand still and let themselves be marked.” That’s indicative of a wider belief that each position on the pitch has a defined role and a defined set of tasks.
Johnson believes his task is to make runs. So he does. Lots and lots of them. But if you’re a top-class defender and you know that’s all the player’s got, he won’t cause you as much trouble as the maverick player (especially if his pace is on the decline.).
Comment by rjbiii — October 27, 2009 @ 9:50 pm |
I love the “consistent attacking menace of Dempsey!”
Comment by Derek — October 27, 2009 @ 9:59 pm |