Thursday, 7 February 2013

Goalscorers, Goals, Conceding, Defending..

I keep hearing we are short of goals, goalscorers, we have the worst strike force in the top 7 of the PL... 

But if you look at the stats for the season so far, they tell you something quite different. 


Firstly, after 25 games last season (bear in mind we had 8 more points and had won more games) we had scored 49 goals. That's 7 more than we currently have. 


I keep hearing we are woefully out of form. How do you measure form? 4 games, 8 games, 12 games?? 


The last 13 games is a nice point to work from. The NLD was a low point of the season... Since then, we have been the 2nd best team in the PL.


Many of you will find that hard to believe or refute it. 


Well here is the top 7 form table: 


1. Man Utd    P13  W11  D2   L0   GF:31   GA:14    PTS:35/39 

2. Spurs        P13  W7    D4   L1   GF:22   GA:8      PTS:28/39      
3. Man Cty    P13  W7    D4   L2   GF:22   GA:11    PTS:25/39      
4. Chelsea    P13  W6    D4   L3   GF:27   GA:14    PTS:22/39      
5. Arsenal     P13  W6    D4   L3   GF:26   GA:16    PTS:22/39      
6. Everton    P13  W5    D7   L1   GF:18   GA:14    PTS:22/39      
7. Liverpool  P13  W6    D3   L4   GF:27   GA:16    PTS:21/39 

Interesting to look at the goals scored...4 goals less than "free-scoring" Arsenal. 


However, we have the same as Man City over the last 13 games and they have Aguero, Tevez, Dzeko, had Balotelli and Y Toure, Silva and yet can't score more than us over the last 13.. 


Look at the goals conceded column... 


You might just see that we have conceded less than everyone... 8 less than Arsenal, giving us a better goal difference.. 


We have managed to score the same and concede less (3) than the current PL Champions over the last 13 games. 


And some say we have no chance of top 4... 


Strange... if the next 13 games play the same way as the last 13 (and depending on the CFC/TH game) we will finish 3rd. 


So rather than moan and whinge "we are rubbish" or "we need more strikers" or "we are sh*t in defence" please take a moment to look and see how the team/manager have evolved as the season has gone on... 


Here is the same table (I had to include 8th because we started slowly) for the first 12 games of the season: 


1. Man Cty    P12   W8    D4    L0    GF:25     GA:10      PTS:28/36 

2. Man Utd    P12   W9    D0    L3    GF:29     GA:17      PTS:27/36 
3. Chelsea    P12    W7   D3    L2    GF:24     GA:13      PTS:24/36 
4. W B A       P12    W7   D2    L3     GF:19     GA:13     PTS:23/36 
5. Everton    P12    W5   D5    L2     GF:22     GA:16     PTS:20/36 
6. Arsenal    P12    W5   D4    L3     GF:23     GA:13     PTS:19/36 
7. WHam     P12    W5   D4    L3      GF:15    GA:12     PTS:19/36 
8. Spurs      P12    W5   D2    L5      GF:20    GA:21     PTS:17/36 

Only 2 goals more (granted), but defensively we improved dramatically over the last 13 games. Having said that we are not miles behind our rivals, except for Man Utd, but are worse off defensively by some big margins... 


Today's game was huge for us.  In fact the next week is huge. We had 2 PL games to play before any of our rivals play again... A massive opportunity to put pressure on them all.   Today's win has closed the gap to Chelsea, maintained the gap to Arsenal and moved us away from Everton.


Everton and Chelsea slipped up yesterday and Liverpool got a point at Man City. 


COYS 


PS: For what it's worth, yes we could have done with another striker, however, we have options, we have goals from other areas and we are defensively so much stronger than we were... 


I don't think we actually look like losing games, even when we go behind... 

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