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Thread | Midfield pairs
at 10:34 7 May 2025
(Scroll down for the stats and to ignore the waffle!)
All of this (understandable) talk about next year's side got me thinking about who might be the nailed on starters. My immediate conclusion was that basically those who are nailed on to stay are not nailed on to start, and those who would be nailed on to start if they stayed are not nailed on to stay.
The uncertainty of personnel for next season is perhaps best illustrated in the CM positions, where (as things stand) we're losing 2 of the 3 players who've started more than 3 league games, and Morsy is not a spring chicken. I found myself, like many people, disappointed that Cajuste is going, but entirely 'meh' about losing Phillips (and I have nothing against the guy).
So /then/ I wondered whether my general impression of our CMs is actually borne out by our team's results. It seems to me that the following five conclusions are reasonably close to the general tone of the board over the last couple of months:
1) Morsy has been a great servant to the club, but if we're honest his abilities are starting to fade a bit and he's perhaps a bit slow now. We can't build around him for the long-term future.
2) Cajuste is a quality player, what a shame we couldn't pick him up on a permanent deal for the bargain basement option fee.
3) We can do better than Luongo now.
4) Phillips was OK at times, but a failed experiment, and probably too expensive. It's good, or at least fine, that he's leaving.
5) Taylor has looked OK in the Prem when he's come on. He might make a real contribution next season.
Our unchanging formation allows us to compare midfield pairs in terms of their results. Clearly there are many variables (suspensions, injuries, who we're playing, home or away, red cards, what stage subs come on etc etc) but I think the figures are at least interesting.
Here are the team's results when the following midfield pairs start the match. The columns are: Wins, draws, losses, games started, points won in those matches, PPGstarted.
Morsy Cajuste 4 4 8 16 16 1.000
Morsy Phillips 0 4 3 7 4 0.571
Morsy Taylor 0 1 2 3 1 0.333
Phillips Cajuste 0 1 6 7 1 0.143
Morsy Luongo 0 0 2 2 0 0.000
So, Morsy and Cajuste is the ONLY starting pair which has won a match. And that pair has won 25% of their starts.
Here are the team's results when the following midfielder starts the match. Again, the columns are: Wins, draws, losses, games started, points won in those matches, PPGstarted.
Morsy 4 9 15 28 21 0.750
Cajuste 4 5 14 23 17 0.739
Phillips 0 5 9 14 5 0.357
Taylor 0 1 2 3 1 0.333
Luongo 0 0 2 2 0 0.000
Taylor's sub performances are not captured by the above numbers. He came on in 3 of our wins, which doesn't tell us a great deal, but he did score our winning goal against Wolves. Our well-documented failings in the last 15 minutes of games may have some impact on how robust it is to rely on an analysis of those who started games.
There are a million caveats to any conclusions. Personally I think the above subjective statements about Cajuste, Phillips and Luongo are borne out by the numbers.
For me, it's the Morsy stats that are the most telling, and perhaps the most contradictory of the prevailing narrative. Morsy was such a captain fantastic in the lower divisions that he was the player most people feared being suspended (for which he has a knack), and was many people's pick for player of the year. He was the first name on the team sheet. Surely it would take quite some drop off in form, or some serious recruitment, for even a minority of fans to question his place in the team? Apparently not.
When he and Cajuste play together, we have form that would put us right on the cusp of staying up. No other pair comes close in terms of PPG, and no other pair has managed even a single win. Phillips has just over HALF the PPG that Morsy has, and Phillips has started 14 matches, so it's not a teeny tiny sample size.
So I am relatively optimistic about Morsy's prospects for next season. Given that Cajuste has had rave reviews, I don't think Morsy has had the credit he's deserved. Indeed, Phillips has started 7 games with Morsy and 7 games with Cajuste, and the former have yielded 4 points compared with just 1 for the latter.
You can dismiss this data, or draw any number of different conclusions from it.
I think it shows that Morsy has had a better season than many give him credit for, that Phillips has been a huge disappointment (no wins from 14 starts), and that yes, it would be lovely to keep Cajuste if that is in any way realistic.
Clearly we've not done well enough this season, and many believe that CM is a department which bears a lot of responsibility for that. It will need substantial recruitment next season, but my starting point is that Morsy starts next season as the man in possession. In a team that lacks experience, he has it in spades. And I'm not sure the evidence is there for a big drop off in performance in what is a brutal division.
Most of us watch a lot of Town, but sometimes a false impression can be gained on a subjective basis. I'd be interested to know people's thoughts. Do the above numbers surprise you? Can we conclude anything from them?
Next episode: 3 of our 4 wins have come with Dara and Burgess playing together... |
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Thread | El Miss-you-ni
at 13:06 5 Jul 2024
Shame that things didn't work out for him here. Another one to add to the list of those who promised much but for various reasons didn't go on to make it with Town. He had a great start to his post-Town days at Orient, and I'm sure he'll be a success at whatever his level ends up being. For Orient fans to love him so much at his relatively young age, bossing that position and showing leadership means he's got something.
I think he's another one for whom we've just progressed too quickly. If we hadn't made it out of League One immediately under Kieran, he could have been a fixture in that midfield and then kicked on in the Championship.
A nice problem to have I guess, and Kieran is capable of real difficult, hard-nosed decisions. Sentimentality has its time and place, but for Kieran that time and place is the two hours after we've been promoted!
I wonder what the fee will end up being. I suppose given his age, he didn't want to be loaned out forever, and as he wasn't gonna play in the Prem, we would have to let him go. Being a desperate seller is not going to help the price, but I'm sure having plenty of Champ/League One suitors will have pushed it up a bit.
Loving the look of that Oxford side! (not their kit, mind...) |
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Thread | Pub to watch the Derby, somewhere near the M4?
at 20:52 5 Apr 2024
Idiot that I am, I am going on holiday with the wife and kids, tomorrow, to Wales. Storm Kathleen has already promised to ruin the week weather-wise, but the fact that we are driving west along the M4 during the most important East Anglian derby in a long time is the bigger problem.
Does anybody by any random chance know of any pubs that are nailed on to be showing the match tomorrow, ideally in the stretch heading west from Reading or thereabouts?
With apologies for taking up a thread on something so dull and involving such serious levels of stupidity.
COYB |
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Thread | The fate of the promoted teams
at 08:25 2 Apr 2024
Plymouth's sacking of Ian Foster got me thinking about the diverging fates of the promoted clubs.
Last season saw three teams with exceptional records fight it out at the top of League One. Whatever one thinks of Wednesday, they deserved promotion. All three got more than two points per game. One side got more than a hundred points, one got more than a hundred goals, and the third team languished on a mere 96 points, with a goal difference of 44. Each won at least 4 of their last 5 games.
Fast forward 11 months, and two of those sides are in the bottom 4 of the Championship, between them they average one point per game, and between them they have won only one of their last 5 games. Neither still has their promotion-winning manager. These two teams, added together, have fewer points than the other. Added together, they only have two more goals than the other has.
The new teams of the other two promotion winning managers, between them, have fewer points than the promoted team which retained its manager. And remarkably, fewer goals between them.
How very lucky we are to have Kieran McKenna. Yes, Wednesday is a bit of a basket case, and yes Plymouth were very unlucky to lose Schumacher on top of having lost Lowe. But Plymouth and Wednesday were so good in League One - not a simple league to get out of. They have proven that the Championship is a hard place.
And yet look at our incredible record. Just like last year, KMac was able to assess what we needed in January and improve the squad greatly. This time round, his resources did not dwarf the remainder of the division, especially those teams around us. He assesses and answers questions within games too. Other sides call us lucky or cry foul when we come from behind to win games. We have incredible fitness and team spirit, yes, but not all of our goals come in the 97th minute. They are often the result of working out what change needs to be made (when we're already losing) and making that change, be it tactical or personnel-related.
It could still go very wrong or very right, and maybe that's the joy of football. Either way, we're already guaranteed at least 4th place (a position which was my very optimistic prediction for the season).
Our numbers on their own show how incredible the season has been, but Plymouth and Wednesday underline that in a very big way. |
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