Bolton Wanderers (A) F A Cup 3rd round, Jan 5th, 3pm

For me the biggest, and most worrying trait we are developing game after game, is that when we concede, we concede again and fall apart. We can’t manage leading, and we can’t manage conceding! In-game management is utterly non-existent, which reminds me very much of the 2006 relegation team.

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O’Driscoll experiment that was taking a near top 2 team out of the top 6 has stopped that happening for a while.

Rarely does a manager have such conditions. They have to get the best out of what they have and transition the personnel over a period of time.

Keats could have let some of the players go in the summer if he had really wanted to. Some of the ones being criticised were seen by him as part of his plans.

This isnt DK’s team? This season he’s signed …

Dunn
Martin
Johnson
Fitzwater
Wilson
Osbourne
Ronan
Ismail
Ginnelly
Cook
Gordon
Ferrier
Jarvis
Mussa

  • I may even be missing one or two

I’m sick of this “it’s not his team” rubbish. Granted there are some left from Whitney but he’s has ample chance to add to this squad, especially defensively. I still think he needs time and I accept his hands are tied, but to say it’s not his team just isn’t true. He’s added more than enough to make a difference and unfortunately we’ve stagnated.

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Some decent players in that lot - mostly offensive though.

That’s the problem. Keates hasn’t struck the right balance. Going forward I think he’s done well. Defensively he’s ballsed it up a bit.

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Fair point. And in fact, we haven’t stagnated, we appear to have gone backwards. I’d love him to succeed but right now we have a major problem with a manager badly failing to get the best out of his players as a team

Want to know the scale of the problem? I think it’s generally regarded that we were in a “crisis” during the latter days under Whitney. But the stats show that in his last 10 games in charge, we got 11 points, scored 13 goals and let in 16. By contrast, in keates’ last 10, we’ve got 7 points, scored 9 and let in 19! Go back another 5 games and we’ve got 13 points from 15 games, scored 17 and let in 31. By this time last season, we’d only lost by 2 clear goals twice, both to teams who were promoted. This season? 8 times, including the likes of Bristol, Bradford and Southend.
The myth that the problem is with the defenders from last season is clearly untrue based on the above. The problem lies in tactics, team management and players being on top of their game mentally.
I really hope Jarvis and any other new signings are the catalyst for a charge up tje table because,based on form over the last 15 matches, we’re going down.

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Great points there :+1:t2:

Hard to argue with any of those points made above to be honest - fair point :ok_hand:

No my point is he hasn’t achieved anything in the game so I’m not sure what we have to compare against?

That second half display was totally unacceptable.
We controlled the game in the first half.They made two attacking changes at half time and we’re obviously going to come at us all guns blazing.What does Dean Keates do to counteract that? Absolutely nothing!
Our midfield two were always going to be overrun.Our wide men are not a great help defensively.Ishmael doesn’t know or bother to track back and put a tackle in and Jervis who had a very promising first half was always going to run out of gas.Added to that for all his honesty and efforts Dobbo was having a nightmare.On the bench we have Osbourne,Edwards and Johnnson.At least one of those and maybe two should have gone on at half time to try and nullify their two changes.Not for the first time Keates does nothing until it is too late.
He is now quoted as saying we now have a clear week on the training pitch,there One or two bits that need working on.If he thinks there are only bits to work on he needs to take a look at himself.
Where are his many coacihing assistants on match day?He seems very much alone on the touch line.

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Has Keates done well offensively? We’re the 6th lowest scorers in the division.

Say what you want about the defence but in the crucial moments of the game when we need to relieve pressure off the defence we struggle to hold the ball further up the field.

We then let the other team pump balls into the box. Law of averages suggest someone is going to get onto the end of one

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Exactly. That’s what I’m surprised at with some of our supporters- they’re all for blaming 4 players but our problems start in possession and the lack of a ball carrier. We’re hugely missing chambers and we are, of course, missing oztumer. Dobson is trying but quality isn’t quite there, wingers have been consistently poor, other midfielder has been patchy at best. If you can’t hold the ball and relieve pressure, then in the end the opposition are going to score.

What were missing is a striker whose game is making a run from the left of cookie, behind him into the other corner and vice versus so we can hit the channels, hold it and then bring the rest of the team up. Cook does great winning battles within the width of the box but he’s not going to run channels all day like grigg and Bradshaw did. It’s stretches team and makes them not able to step up on us because of the threat in behind. Ferrier makes straight, obvious runs and doesn’t bring others into play well enough

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Compared to last year we are.

Ok Oztumers a miss but he was our only creative source. They may blow hot and cold but the wingers seem to contribute more and we essentially replaced one Bakayoko and one loanee with Cook and Ferrier. To this point Cook alone has a better rate than any of those combinations managed put together. Ferrier has again blown hot and cold but he’s essentially replacing nobody considering none of the loans really worked and at times we played with a lone striker, and that was Baka.

I don’t know what the stats say or how they stack up but I find us way more threatening this season to watch.

Can’t deny the defensive missteps though. Martin hasn’t worked and that’s 100 percent a Keates signing. He looks about 3 years off the pace.

The stats say we’re not scoring as many goals as last season but we’re shipping far more in. I posted stats for our last 10 games compared with Whitney’s last 10 games, when we were generally regarded as being in crisis. We’ve scored 4 less goals and we’ve shipped in 3 more!

I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that

Descriptive statistics mean nothing, if the generative model they’re supposedly measuring isn’t known.

Were the teams in that same period of the same quality as what we have played? Given we have played Sunderland twice, a championship team, a few promotion contenders…

There’s also the qualatitive (subjective) measures of those performances - which I think haven’t been as bad as people are making out. There have been some very good performances where we should have taken 3 points.

Basically, unless the games in this 10 game run were at the same time, against the same players, and the same managers, conditions etc., then it’s meanigless to compare.

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I would agree within the world of research boffins and clever ■■■■■, however, if your defition was taken literally for the general proletariat , then there would be nothing ever to talk about on TV, football forums or down the boozer. The BBC would be ■■■■■■ straight away :grinning:

House prices
Exam grades
Car sales
Crime figures
Inflation
Etc…Etc…Etc

Bet you had minitab for christmas as a boy :wink:

4 less goals? For a start you are not comparing the same set of games. Secondly I’m guessing that doesn’t include cup games?

But not exactly a material difference and I’m talking about the way we look. You can find statistics to prove anything.

You can find statistics that prove Luke Leahy is the best player in the team (passing, crossing and assists stats). It doesn’t really tell the story of what is happening (Neuromatic will like that one!)

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Same stage this/last season

            P     W     D     L          F        A     GD     Pts

2018 26 8 9 9 33 35 -2 33
2019 26 8 8 10 28 41 -13 32

The worrying thing is that we didn’t get a flying start last season and at this stage, Whitney was under tremendous pressure to keep his job, which of course he lost a few weeks later.

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