ucandomagic
Well-Known Member
Waited to post this until after the West Brom and Burnley games.
Not much to say about our game, other than the bottom club was away at the top club and the bottom club had twice the possession, twice the accurate passes and twice the big chances! It says a lot about the Championship – Plymouth were actually really good, apart from their finishing being about as lethal as a dead sheep!
As regards United, I am really impressed with “Salmon” McCallum and I would give him a start on the right of the 3 in place of JRS. JRS looks in need of a rest and Salmon has good feet, is left footed and his jump would offer a good target when GoalCooper kicks long. He would also provide good support in front of Alfie. Gus and Cal have really become the engine room of our team – when we look out of sorts their drive just stops our energy levels going down – and Gus’s half-volley goal was absolutely world class technique.
Once again, when you look at the graphs the result is very significant, as this is rapidly becoming our best ever season at this level.
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 45 points, comparing to my benchmarks, we are still 2 ahead of my Autos Promotion schedule – and that is with a 2 point deduction.
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 45 points after 21 games (with the 2-point deduction) we are 8 points ahead of the 37 points that we had under Wilder in 18/19, 7 ahead of Hecky in 22/23 and only 1 point behind Warnock in 05/06.
So we are still 8 points ahead of that great 18/19 season with a 2-point deduction and without the deduction we would even be 1 point ahead of our fantastic Championship start in 2005.
Graph 2:
Historically, our best season ever at this level was in 1952/53, when we got the equivalent of 93 points (allowing for the different number of games and different points for a win). Actually, I only (!) went back to 1892/93 as it went below 30 game seasons before that, which I didn’t think was a reasonable comparison. I’ll post a graph comparing this season against all these old seasons at the half-way point, after 23 games.
Next, the coloured annotated up-to-date League Table, which highlights where our strengths and weaknesses are against opponents’ league positions. Blades are still proudly at the top of the pile. Leeds would be one point further away if they hadn’t got a flukey og at Hecky FC in the 93rd minute. That is now an unbelievable 14 clean sheets in 21 games for the Blades. The gap to Burnley in 3rd place is still 4 points, but Leeds dropped 2 points and West Brom dropped 3. That Boxing Day game is looking bigger and bigger.
League Table:
I’ll get all the Championship XG stats on Friday, and post them with a prediction for the Cardiff game.
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
Not much to say about our game, other than the bottom club was away at the top club and the bottom club had twice the possession, twice the accurate passes and twice the big chances! It says a lot about the Championship – Plymouth were actually really good, apart from their finishing being about as lethal as a dead sheep!
As regards United, I am really impressed with “Salmon” McCallum and I would give him a start on the right of the 3 in place of JRS. JRS looks in need of a rest and Salmon has good feet, is left footed and his jump would offer a good target when GoalCooper kicks long. He would also provide good support in front of Alfie. Gus and Cal have really become the engine room of our team – when we look out of sorts their drive just stops our energy levels going down – and Gus’s half-volley goal was absolutely world class technique.
Once again, when you look at the graphs the result is very significant, as this is rapidly becoming our best ever season at this level.
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 45 points, comparing to my benchmarks, we are still 2 ahead of my Autos Promotion schedule – and that is with a 2 point deduction.
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 45 points after 21 games (with the 2-point deduction) we are 8 points ahead of the 37 points that we had under Wilder in 18/19, 7 ahead of Hecky in 22/23 and only 1 point behind Warnock in 05/06.
So we are still 8 points ahead of that great 18/19 season with a 2-point deduction and without the deduction we would even be 1 point ahead of our fantastic Championship start in 2005.
Graph 2:
Historically, our best season ever at this level was in 1952/53, when we got the equivalent of 93 points (allowing for the different number of games and different points for a win). Actually, I only (!) went back to 1892/93 as it went below 30 game seasons before that, which I didn’t think was a reasonable comparison. I’ll post a graph comparing this season against all these old seasons at the half-way point, after 23 games.
Next, the coloured annotated up-to-date League Table, which highlights where our strengths and weaknesses are against opponents’ league positions. Blades are still proudly at the top of the pile. Leeds would be one point further away if they hadn’t got a flukey og at Hecky FC in the 93rd minute. That is now an unbelievable 14 clean sheets in 21 games for the Blades. The gap to Burnley in 3rd place is still 4 points, but Leeds dropped 2 points and West Brom dropped 3. That Boxing Day game is looking bigger and bigger.
League Table:
I’ll get all the Championship XG stats on Friday, and post them with a prediction for the Cardiff game.
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
