| What came before and now under Mckenna 16:13 - Dec 3 with 322 views | Nutkins_Return |
I've just been analysing and thinking about our direction of travel under Mckenna and team evolution under him. Breaking it down by half seasons effectively you could say the following:
First takes over (let's just call that a half season): immediately improved us. A bit more organized. Picked up better results without really ever hitting our stride completely. Cohesion issues still and up and down results.
L1 Promotion season (First half): immediately a bit more consistent but lacking a bit of consistent threat. Struggled at times against teams putting 11 men behind the ball and susceptible to conceding against run of play. Too many draws despite performances improving. Controlled and patient in games. Frustrating at times not getting wins done.
L1 promotion season (second half): outstanding Jan window and whilst from memory still having a few draws at start quickly hit stride and offensively a big improvement. Belief we had a goal or 3 in us in second half of games and could out power and out gun teams. Defensively stronger and new weapons to unlock defences and overwhelm them (See Charlton ,Exeter and even games like Barnsley) or wear them down eventually (Port Vale etc).
Champ Promotion (first half): 15 terrifying and worrying mins against sunderland aside we were a swashbuckling side who went toe to toe. Always had goals in us but defensively had frailties. Took playing from back to the next level and opened teams up with fast breaking risk/reward play. Brave and creative, great understandings all over the pitch. Style meant we did concede a fair few but backed ourselves to score more. Exciting and ballsy and just kept winning.
Champ Season (Second half): intensity dropped a bit and maybe fatigue/injuries meant our form had a bit of drop but without us ever being really poor. Reeled in by Leeds and Southampton on their merit to a degree. Too many draws crept in and looked like we may end up in playoffs. Flicked a switch and galvanized went toe to toe again and really brave and attacking went and got the job done!
Prem (first half) - lots of effort, defensively frail and ultimately lacked quality. Loads of fight in us though and eaked out some decent results
Prem (second half) - never gave up but the stuffing gradually got punched out of us. We were too lightweight and lacked enough quality in depth. Relegated.
Looking back ultimately there are parallels with our L1 promotion season (probably between that and when McKenna took over). We were controlled but hadn't become our attacking, swashbuckling second half is the L1 season/champ team. Ladappo was ok but frustrated at times and teams good defend and eak out draws against us. I think it is what gives me and other confidence McKenna is a team builder and develops a team over a bit of time. We feel to lightweight to me still physically. I don't think it needs huge changes in personnel or system to get a lot more out of this side though.
Sorry for the long waffle. |  |
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| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:45 - Dec 3 with 245 views | NedPlimpton |
What worries me is how fragile we look at the back (as well as how pedestrian we look going forward)
When McKenna first came in, although we never really hit our stride as you say, we rarely conceded. He got us doing the basics really well and we looked solid if unspectacular. A quick look shows we went on a run of only conceding 3 in 13 not long after he took charge
Compare that to now, where he's clearly trying to build a side but we also keep conceding awful goals from our own mistakes |  | | |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:54 - Dec 3 with 217 views | FrimleyBlue |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:45 - Dec 3 by NedPlimpton |
What worries me is how fragile we look at the back (as well as how pedestrian we look going forward)
When McKenna first came in, although we never really hit our stride as you say, we rarely conceded. He got us doing the basics really well and we looked solid if unspectacular. A quick look shows we went on a run of only conceding 3 in 13 not long after he took charge
Compare that to now, where he's clearly trying to build a side but we also keep conceding awful goals from our own mistakes |
I don't think we are that fragile at the back tbh, we don't conceded a lot of chances
our issue mainly has been converting chances,
but more recently it's been actually getting shots on target and a slow as fk midfield |  |
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| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:56 - Dec 3 with 208 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:45 - Dec 3 by NedPlimpton |
What worries me is how fragile we look at the back (as well as how pedestrian we look going forward)
When McKenna first came in, although we never really hit our stride as you say, we rarely conceded. He got us doing the basics really well and we looked solid if unspectacular. A quick look shows we went on a run of only conceding 3 in 13 not long after he took charge
Compare that to now, where he's clearly trying to build a side but we also keep conceding awful goals from our own mistakes |
It is our mistakes that are leading to goals and yet our defence is statistically about as good as anyone except Stoke's. That suggests to me that we would have a very good defence if we cut out many of those mistakes.
We are too slow going forward and yesterday gave the ball away too much despite this. |  |
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| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:57 - Dec 3 with 198 views | NedPlimpton |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:54 - Dec 3 by FrimleyBlue |
I don't think we are that fragile at the back tbh, we don't conceded a lot of chances
our issue mainly has been converting chances,
but more recently it's been actually getting shots on target and a slow as fk midfield |
I think we have problems at both ends
We've definitely conceded a lot of soft goals this season. The 3 against Charlton were all absolute shockers, Azor's misplaced pass against Oxford another recent example | | | |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:58 - Dec 3 with 194 views | NthQldITFC |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:45 - Dec 3 by NedPlimpton |
What worries me is how fragile we look at the back (as well as how pedestrian we look going forward)
When McKenna first came in, although we never really hit our stride as you say, we rarely conceded. He got us doing the basics really well and we looked solid if unspectacular. A quick look shows we went on a run of only conceding 3 in 13 not long after he took charge
Compare that to now, where he's clearly trying to build a side but we also keep conceding awful goals from our own mistakes |
I don't think we do look fragile at the back, I think we look really solid at the back, certainly over the course of the last couple of months.
O'Shea is an immense defender at this level, Greaves and Kipre not bad either, Furlong is solid (but slows us down too much) and Davis defends pretty well even though he is often at a stretch because of the main part of his job. |  |
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| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:00 - Dec 3 with 179 views | ITFCSG |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:54 - Dec 3 by FrimleyBlue |
I don't think we are that fragile at the back tbh, we don't conceded a lot of chances
our issue mainly has been converting chances,
but more recently it's been actually getting shots on target and a slow as fk midfield |
We aren't leaking goals wholesale at the back, but boy you are guaranteed in every match that someone in our backline or doing defensive duties will have a mega c0ck up and concede a cheap goal. And the opposition often needs just one, or two chances to convert while we huff and puff firing blanks. Last night was worse because we couldn't even muster enough effort to fire blanks.
That's basically the story of the entire season so far. | | | |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:01 - Dec 3 with 176 views | NedPlimpton |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:56 - Dec 3 by Nthsuffolkblue |
It is our mistakes that are leading to goals and yet our defence is statistically about as good as anyone except Stoke's. That suggests to me that we would have a very good defence if we cut out many of those mistakes.
We are too slow going forward and yesterday gave the ball away too much despite this. |
Maybe fragile wasn't the right word
It certainly is the mistakes that are punishing us at the back more than anything. But again that just alludes to my point about McKenna ensuring we got the basics right as soon as he came in and us barely conceding a goal for the rest of that season. Compared to now where we've conceded 3 to Charlton, 2 to Oxford etc | | | |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:01 - Dec 3 with 173 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 16:57 - Dec 3 by NedPlimpton |
I think we have problems at both ends
We've definitely conceded a lot of soft goals this season. The 3 against Charlton were all absolute shockers, Azor's misplaced pass against Oxford another recent example |
But the point I am making is that if you take away the goals due to bad mistakes from us, we would have the best defence in the division. We need to reduce the mistakes but aside from them we have a good defence (regardless of whether Kipre or Greaves is partnering O'Shea). | |
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| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:03 - Dec 3 with 155 views | NedPlimpton |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:01 - Dec 3 by Nthsuffolkblue |
But the point I am making is that if you take away the goals due to bad mistakes from us, we would have the best defence in the division. We need to reduce the mistakes but aside from them we have a good defence (regardless of whether Kipre or Greaves is partnering O'Shea). |
And if we scored more goals we'd have the best strike force in the division?
The mistakes need to stop before we can start calling ourselves solid at the back, surely? | | | |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:05 - Dec 3 with 137 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:03 - Dec 3 by NedPlimpton |
And if we scored more goals we'd have the best strike force in the division?
The mistakes need to stop before we can start calling ourselves solid at the back, surely? |
I wouldn't say we are solid but we aren't conceding any more than the other top sides (apart from Stoke). That suggests we are either making no more mistakes than them or we are defending more effectively aside from those mistakes. | |
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| What came before and now under Mckenna on 18:32 - Dec 3 with 42 views | Blue_Uprising |
| What came before and now under Mckenna on 17:05 - Dec 3 by Nthsuffolkblue |
I wouldn't say we are solid but we aren't conceding any more than the other top sides (apart from Stoke). That suggests we are either making no more mistakes than them or we are defending more effectively aside from those mistakes. |
Agree we have a good defence in overall. The frustration has been our goals conceded are relatively evenly spread so we are 14th for clean sheets. The best teams have 7 clean sheets vs our 4. Fine margins but that’s a spread of 3 to 9 points depending on whether you go on to draw or win the game. And our scoring at the other end suggests more 1-0 potential results than 0-0. Better to concede 3 in one match, than one every game.
That is one thing that would be the difference between a much more positive feeling and 3rd place (or even a relatively solid 2nd place) in the current table. |  | | |
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