Skip to main content

Winning games

Winning games

M

Meldrew's Ghost

Joined
Jan 17, 2015
Messages
5,083
Location
Preston
I've just had a look back over this (now last) season's results. We won 18 games (and only the top 5 won more) as follows:

Won home and away vs Barnsley, B'ham City, Charlton, Sheff Wed, Stoke, and Wigan.

Won at home only vs B Rovers, Brentford, Fulham, Huddersfield, Hull, and Luton.

We didn't win away against any team that we didn't also beat at home.

In total we beat 12 teams, but only 3 of these (Brentford, Fulham and the plastics) finished in the top half of the table. We had as many wins (9) in the first third of the season (16 games up to and including Huddersfield at home) as we had in the last two-thirds of the season (9 from 30 games). We needed to win more games against our play off rivals.

Obviously we needed a more clinical strike force over the season as a whole, and the owner has to shoulder the blame for that. However, there is the fact that after 16 games we were looking at challenging for automatic promotion and leading the goals scored table. How did that all fall apart thereafter? Was it tactical? A mass loss of form? We simply stopped over-performing? Did the manager's alleged desire to talk to Stoke unconsciously affect plater confidence?
 
I remember something like this being discussed during the season, though it's worth having a look at where clubs where when we played them rather than just their finishing position. Not sure if the picture would change much though.

Didn't Burnley get promoted a few years back by beating the "lesser" sides and picking up the odd result against the "top" sides? I'm sure someone has the stats for that.

We weren't far off. I think we all know in what department we were mainly lacking, though the lack of home clean sheets needs fixing as well. Turning 4 defeats into draws would have seen us in the PO's. We lost 7 games by 1 goal.
 
I did a thread along the same lines in February, suggesting we needed to start beating teams above 17th in the league.

Of course, we didn't.

Instead, post-lockdown, the very first thing we did was stop beating teams 17th and below in the league.
 
The only way we'll go up us by being flat track bullies like Burnley did imo. Throw our weight around against weaker sides and try to grind something out against our competition.
 
Meldrew's Ghost said:
I've just had a look back over this (now last) season's results. We won 18 games (and only the top 5 won more) as follows:

Won home and away vs Barnsley, B'ham City, Charlton, Sheff Wed, Stoke, and Wigan.

Won at home only vs B Rovers, Brentford, Fulham, Huddersfield, Hull, and Luton.

We didn't win away against any team that we didn't also beat at home.

In total we beat 12 teams, but only 3 of these (Brentford, Fulham and the plastics) finished in the top half of the table. We had as many wins (9) in the first third of the season (16 games up to and including Huddersfield at home) as we had in the last two-thirds of the season (9 from 30 games). We needed to win more games against our play off rivals.

Obviously we needed a more clinical strike force over the season as a whole, and the owner has to shoulder the blame for that. However, there is the fact that after 16 games we were looking at challenging for automatic promotion and leading the goals scored table. How did that all fall apart thereafter? Was it tactical? A mass loss of form? We simply stopped over-performing? Did the manager's alleged desire to talk to Stoke unconsciously affect plater confidence?
Click to expand...

I mentioned on another thread that Millwall, Reading, Derby, QPR & WBA did the double over us and in those 10 games we only managed to score ONE goal. We didn’t need to win many of those to have finished in the top 6.
 
Broken down in a different way of 66 points we won 48 of them in the 24 games we played against teams that finished in the bottom half of the table.
18 points in 22 games against teams in the top half is a terrible return.
Promotion form against bottom half teams and relegation form against the top half resulted in a middle third finish.
 
Promotion chasing sides often beat better teams by a goal or two when they don't really deserve to by having a clinical striker that can put a half chance away in games where there aint many chances, prime example is Mitrovic at Fulham. Don't think we're ever going to be a side that dominates the majority of our games and storms the league like some do so the only way I could see us winning enough games to go up is by somehow unearthing a quality goalscorer who can turn the tight games from defeats and draws into wins.
 
On reflection this season a missed opportunity after the enforced break but a top 10 finish was a reasonable return for a pretty average Championship squad.
 
Back
Top