ucandomagic
Active Member
Just the normal graphs and charts this weekend, as I don’t get full Championship XG data until Tuesday and that data will immediately be out of date, as we play Oxford that evening. I did delay this post until today, though, so that I could include the Swansea v Leeds result in the charts.
Coventry was a very annoying game to watch for non-football reasons. Robins has been sacked because they are significantly underachieving expectations. As you can see in one of my charts below, I forecast them to finish 5th this season. After 15 games they were 17th in the actual table, but 7th in a league table based on XG for and against. Their problems have been in defence – they had scored quite freely, 20 goals in the15 games before our game, but conceded 21 goals in those 15 games. This trend was clearly repeated in our game with the 2-2 result, the exact result that I said in my last post that the stats would suggest. Provisional XG data for yesterday’s game is Coventry 2.3 – Blades 1.3 so, combined with having 10 men for more than half of the match, getting a point was quite a result.
Taking my emotions out of the game, I thought that Coventry generally played very well and caused us problems at the back all match. They were, however, vulnerable to quick breaks and we scored twice from our only shots on target. Unusually for us, our defence was shaky and conceded 2 fairly sloppy goals. I think Big Harry’s brain was still somewhere in the air on his way back from Bahrain!
I hate shithousing, and sadly the Bassette – Anel business dominated discussion about what was actually a decent, open game of football. Obviously Anel needs to control his reactions but, in my mind, behaviour like Bassette’s should be subject to retrospective review and a possible ban for violent conduct as well as bringing the game into disrepute.
So, on to the graphs
As usual, Graph 1 compares our progress against 3 benchmark sets of results which represent Automatic Promotion, Playoff Certainty and Playoff Possibility. My benchmarks take account of who our opponents are each week. On 32 points, comparing to my benchmarks, we are still bang on my Autos Promotion schedule – and of course without the deduction we would be 2 points ahead. As I said above, I had Coventry finishing 5th, so my benchmarks all included a draw for this match as a good result.
Graph 1:

Graph 2 compares this season against our last 3 successful promotions from this level (all in second place), in 2005/06, 2018/19 and 2022/23. On 32 points after 16 games (with the 2-point deduction) we are 3 ahead of the 29 points that we had under Wilder in 18/19, 6 ahead of Hecky in 22/23 and 6 points behind Warnock’s great start in 05/06.
So this is still our best Championship start since 2005, and is better than our last 2 promotion seasons – all with that deduction!
Graph 2:

Next, the coloured annotated up-to-date League Table, which highlights where our strengths and weaknesses are against opponents’ league positions. Blades are now in 3rd place, only behind Leeds and Sunderland on goal difference. Without the 2-point deduction we would be 2 clear of the pack!
League Table:

Before the start of the season, I posted my predicted league positions for the end of the season and Chart 1 reviews each team’s current position relative to my end of season forecast position.
Chart 1:

The big overperformers compared to my forecast are Derby, Blackburn and Sunderland and the biggest underperformers compared to my forecast are Coventry, reflecting my earlier comments. So I would expect Coventry to climb steadily up the table as the season progresses.
Our next game is on Tuesday against Oxford. They were hugely outperforming expectations early in the season but have been slipping back over the last few weeks. Stats would suggest a 2-1 or 3-1 Blades win – so let’s hope that Oxford don’t have a strong positive reaction to shipping 6 at home to Boro on Saturday!
That’s it for another weekend. A couple more green blocks in that home column over the next 6 days and we’ll be flying high!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
Coventry was a very annoying game to watch for non-football reasons. Robins has been sacked because they are significantly underachieving expectations. As you can see in one of my charts below, I forecast them to finish 5th this season. After 15 games they were 17th in the actual table, but 7th in a league table based on XG for and against. Their problems have been in defence – they had scored quite freely, 20 goals in the15 games before our game, but conceded 21 goals in those 15 games. This trend was clearly repeated in our game with the 2-2 result, the exact result that I said in my last post that the stats would suggest. Provisional XG data for yesterday’s game is Coventry 2.3 – Blades 1.3 so, combined with having 10 men for more than half of the match, getting a point was quite a result.
Taking my emotions out of the game, I thought that Coventry generally played very well and caused us problems at the back all match. They were, however, vulnerable to quick breaks and we scored twice from our only shots on target. Unusually for us, our defence was shaky and conceded 2 fairly sloppy goals. I think Big Harry’s brain was still somewhere in the air on his way back from Bahrain!
I hate shithousing, and sadly the Bassette – Anel business dominated discussion about what was actually a decent, open game of football. Obviously Anel needs to control his reactions but, in my mind, behaviour like Bassette’s should be subject to retrospective review and a possible ban for violent conduct as well as bringing the game into disrepute.
So, on to the graphs
As usual, Graph 1 compares our progress against 3 benchmark sets of results which represent Automatic Promotion, Playoff Certainty and Playoff Possibility. My benchmarks take account of who our opponents are each week. On 32 points, comparing to my benchmarks, we are still bang on my Autos Promotion schedule – and of course without the deduction we would be 2 points ahead. As I said above, I had Coventry finishing 5th, so my benchmarks all included a draw for this match as a good result.
Graph 1:

Graph 2 compares this season against our last 3 successful promotions from this level (all in second place), in 2005/06, 2018/19 and 2022/23. On 32 points after 16 games (with the 2-point deduction) we are 3 ahead of the 29 points that we had under Wilder in 18/19, 6 ahead of Hecky in 22/23 and 6 points behind Warnock’s great start in 05/06.
So this is still our best Championship start since 2005, and is better than our last 2 promotion seasons – all with that deduction!
Graph 2:

Next, the coloured annotated up-to-date League Table, which highlights where our strengths and weaknesses are against opponents’ league positions. Blades are now in 3rd place, only behind Leeds and Sunderland on goal difference. Without the 2-point deduction we would be 2 clear of the pack!
League Table:

Before the start of the season, I posted my predicted league positions for the end of the season and Chart 1 reviews each team’s current position relative to my end of season forecast position.
Chart 1:

The big overperformers compared to my forecast are Derby, Blackburn and Sunderland and the biggest underperformers compared to my forecast are Coventry, reflecting my earlier comments. So I would expect Coventry to climb steadily up the table as the season progresses.
Our next game is on Tuesday against Oxford. They were hugely outperforming expectations early in the season but have been slipping back over the last few weeks. Stats would suggest a 2-1 or 3-1 Blades win – so let’s hope that Oxford don’t have a strong positive reaction to shipping 6 at home to Boro on Saturday!
That’s it for another weekend. A couple more green blocks in that home column over the next 6 days and we’ll be flying high!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!