ucandomagic
Well-Known Member
So, 5 games down and 13 to go in the 18 game run-in - and still just 1 point behind target on both playoff pathways.
If we could squeeze out a win on Wednesday against Coventry we would actually be ahead of schedule.
In the February Pig Roast, all was great for 20 minutes. We pressed high & hard, forced their young lad Ndala into a rash clearance that went straight to Gus who slid it through smoothly for Pat to finish like a surgeon. Cal hit the post , Harrison had a sighter, then he had a pass and go, was fed back in by Sydie, and H smashed it home. 2-0.
Unfortunately, we then took our foot off the gas a bit, and played the aggressive atmosphere rather than the weak opponents. Phillips saw red for a challenge that a slo-mo VAR might pick up, but I don’t believe that the ref could see enough in real time. They had a few good minutes after that, and scored a goal which Coops will probably be disappointed with - he was across in plenty of time but the ball went under his hand.
That was about it really - they created almost nothing after that and Tyrese and Sydie both had chances which should have been taken.
3 points taken though, we move on, they go down.
So what do the charts and graphs look like?
Just as a reminder, Table 1 shows recent 6th and 7th points totals – which is where I took my 71 possible, 77 probable playoff targets from.
Table 1:
Table 2 shows my 2 pathways, for the last 18 games, which would achieve either a possible playoff place with 71 points or a probable playoff place, with 77 points.
The Table shows that the red numbers are still just 1 point behind target, and we can continue to look forwards.
Table 2:
Graph 1 shows the whole season visually, and you can see the pathways through the red line. The thin red line is still covering the dashes.
Graph 1:
Finally, the coloured annotated League Table - 14th, and 6 points behind 6th! Our highest League position this season.
If Wrexham hadn’t won late on in their game on Saturday, the gap would have been down to 4 already. It is only 4 to everybody but Wrexham now though – and they still have to come to the Lane. I don't want to see any new red in the table though!
27 of our 45 points have come from just 9 games against the bottom 6!
League Table:
As an added bonus, as I haven’t shown it for a few weeks, Graph 2 compares our performance this season with a few of our previous good Championship seasons. You can see from Graph 2 that we are currently still 8 points adrift of 21/22, when Hecky had taken over from Slav.
Graph 2:
So, Coventry next – and a very different challenge from today’s game. In fact, I think we play much better against better sides and we just need to keep up the energy level and intensity of press for longer – easier said than done of course.
Incidentally, Sporting Life had the xg for today as 1.68 to 0.16 – so we did effectively stifle them offensively. McNeil’s goal had an xg of just 0.03, but with an “xg on target” figure of 0.45, so it was a good effort by him which, on average, should be saved just over half of the time.
Coventry on the night after Tuesday – the dream lives on!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
If we could squeeze out a win on Wednesday against Coventry we would actually be ahead of schedule.
In the February Pig Roast, all was great for 20 minutes. We pressed high & hard, forced their young lad Ndala into a rash clearance that went straight to Gus who slid it through smoothly for Pat to finish like a surgeon. Cal hit the post , Harrison had a sighter, then he had a pass and go, was fed back in by Sydie, and H smashed it home. 2-0.
Unfortunately, we then took our foot off the gas a bit, and played the aggressive atmosphere rather than the weak opponents. Phillips saw red for a challenge that a slo-mo VAR might pick up, but I don’t believe that the ref could see enough in real time. They had a few good minutes after that, and scored a goal which Coops will probably be disappointed with - he was across in plenty of time but the ball went under his hand.
That was about it really - they created almost nothing after that and Tyrese and Sydie both had chances which should have been taken.
3 points taken though, we move on, they go down.
So what do the charts and graphs look like?
Just as a reminder, Table 1 shows recent 6th and 7th points totals – which is where I took my 71 possible, 77 probable playoff targets from.
Table 1:
Table 2 shows my 2 pathways, for the last 18 games, which would achieve either a possible playoff place with 71 points or a probable playoff place, with 77 points.
The Table shows that the red numbers are still just 1 point behind target, and we can continue to look forwards.
Table 2:
Graph 1 shows the whole season visually, and you can see the pathways through the red line. The thin red line is still covering the dashes.
Graph 1:
Finally, the coloured annotated League Table - 14th, and 6 points behind 6th! Our highest League position this season.
If Wrexham hadn’t won late on in their game on Saturday, the gap would have been down to 4 already. It is only 4 to everybody but Wrexham now though – and they still have to come to the Lane. I don't want to see any new red in the table though!
27 of our 45 points have come from just 9 games against the bottom 6!
League Table:
As an added bonus, as I haven’t shown it for a few weeks, Graph 2 compares our performance this season with a few of our previous good Championship seasons. You can see from Graph 2 that we are currently still 8 points adrift of 21/22, when Hecky had taken over from Slav.
Graph 2:
So, Coventry next – and a very different challenge from today’s game. In fact, I think we play much better against better sides and we just need to keep up the energy level and intensity of press for longer – easier said than done of course.
Incidentally, Sporting Life had the xg for today as 1.68 to 0.16 – so we did effectively stifle them offensively. McNeil’s goal had an xg of just 0.03, but with an “xg on target” figure of 0.45, so it was a good effort by him which, on average, should be saved just over half of the time.
Coventry on the night after Tuesday – the dream lives on!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
