Perspective required

[BillyStubbsTears]

2 points off the play-offs.

11 points off 3rd.

Confidence boost this win will hopefully enable us to kick on.

 Aye. But we are still bang out of form. Replay that match tonight a dozen times and we might win 2. The points are welcome of course, but we are not making the playoffs with that sort of performance.

Similar could be said about Saturday. Replay that game and we would have won the majority.

Well you'd kind of hope so as we were playing the side second bottom of the football league. But I'm not sure what you are basing that on. Certainly not Saturday's performance.

Shouldn't really need to say this, but I'd be delighted if tonight was a turning point. But we really didn't play well tonight and we need to do much, much better if we are going to make the playoffs. It's a bit obtuse to argue against that.

[Sammy Chung was King]

We have bits missing in the side that will cost us the play offs. We badly need two strikers in the side. He overloads the midfield because we lack a good ball winner and also to protect the defence.
I don’t understand loaning Faulkner out. Yes he has things to work on in his game but looking at what we have he is good enough to start for us. Olowu needs to be starting soon.

[Upton Rover]

How we won that was a real bonus, because we were very poor for most pats of the game, I think this league is the worst for some years

[colincramb]

Let’s be brutally honest.

That wasn’t a good performance at all. We scored with our FIRST meaningful attack and we were absent for the first hour. Yes it’s a win, but as others have said if we play like that down at Swindon it will be a 3-0 ‘away rovers special’ defeat for us.

Nice to win for a change. But is it a turning point in the season? I very much doubt it based on that performance

[roversdude]

Out of interest- Did we have a corner last night?

[normal rules]

No. They had nine corners

[Donnywolf]

Low point ? Rowes free kick near dugouts that he took short and was it 2 touches later it was passed back to him and out for a throw in

High points ? At last a collosal stroke of luck for 1 0 that was desperately needed

Olowu was immense imo. I stayed behind to boo Haines and applaud JO. The joys of a 70 something
LOL

[Campsall rover]

Out of interest- Did we have a corner last night?

No.
Unbelievably.  That is a very rare stat.

[DonnyOsmond]

2 points off the play-offs.

11 points off 3rd.

Confidence boost this win will hopefully enable us to kick on.

 Aye. But we are still bang out of form. Replay that match tonight a dozen times and we might win 2. The points are welcome of course, but we are not making the playoffs with that sort of performance.

Similar could be said about Saturday. Replay that game and we would have won the majority.

Well you'd kind of hope so as we were playing the side second bottom of the football league. But I'm not sure what you are basing that on. Certainly not Saturday's performance.

Shouldn't really need to say this, but I'd be delighted if tonight was a turning point. But we really didn't play well tonight and we need to do much, much better if we are going to make the playoffs. It's a bit obtuse to argue against that.

Err, the dozen extra shots we had, the greater xG, the amount of the game spent attacking their final third....

[vaya]

In attack particularly, the value of team work was hardly evident, yet with supposedly expert coaching, you wonder what added value Schofield provides.

It was scrappy and they got away with some fortunate escapes when Tranmere were on top particularly in the first half. The individual skill of the opposition players and teamwork was a good deal better for the majority of the 90 minutes. We were never really in control; passing and tactics were haphazard with little mutual understanding.

And yes Campsall, Mitchell is reliable and and it was reassuring to have Olowu back even if the coach could not see his value by starting him. We have two at the back who can head the ball properly now as well, but it no wonder that Tranmere were another team who obviously targeted RSW as the weakest defensive link.

It will be interesting to discover whether Schofield recognised that there is huge scope for improvement. And what was his rationale for not playing Lavery? What little I have seen of him in the previous game suggested that he was more of a team player.

Has Schofield slept with your wife or something? You never stop!

Let's hope he hasn't slept with his wife. We can all do without a 1000-word diatribe on how Schofield got all the positions wrong.

[Alan Southstand]

His wife maybe trusts the process? Just a thought!

[ravenrover]

Would it have been wrong to Give Joseph MoM?
Thought both Maxwell and Brown did well tonight especially Maxwell 2nd half, they seemed to be focusing more up their right hand side

[BillyStubbsTears]

2 points off the play-offs.

11 points off 3rd.

Confidence boost this win will hopefully enable us to kick on.

 Aye. But we are still bang out of form. Replay that match tonight a dozen times and we might win 2. The points are welcome of course, but we are not making the playoffs with that sort of performance.

Similar could be said about Saturday. Replay that game and we would have won the majority.

Well you'd kind of hope so as we were playing the side second bottom of the football league. But I'm not sure what you are basing that on. Certainly not Saturday's performance.

Shouldn't really need to say this, but I'd be delighted if tonight was a turning point. But we really didn't play well tonight and we need to do much, much better if we are going to make the playoffs. It's a bit obtuse to argue against that.

Err, the dozen extra shots we had, the greater xG, the amount of the game spent attacking their final third....

We must have very different ideas about football. I never once in the whole match on Saturday felt "we are going to win this".

As for xG in this division...I'll just note that our value on Saturday was only marginally lower than Mansfield's against us the week before. Which says all you need to know about how reliable that metric is.

[dickos1]

2 points off the play-offs.

11 points off 3rd.

Confidence boost this win will hopefully enable us to kick on.

 Aye. But we are still bang out of form. Replay that match tonight a dozen times and we might win 2. The points are welcome of course, but we are not making the playoffs with that sort of performance.

Similar could be said about Saturday. Replay that game and we would have won the majority.

Well you'd kind of hope so as we were playing the side second bottom of the football league. But I'm not sure what you are basing that on. Certainly not Saturday's performance.

Shouldn't really need to say this, but I'd be delighted if tonight was a turning point. But we really didn't play well tonight and we need to do much, much better if we are going to make the playoffs. It's a bit obtuse to argue against that.

Err, the dozen extra shots we had, the greater xG, the amount of the game spent attacking their final third....

We must have very different ideas about football. I never once in the whole match on Saturday felt "we are going to win this".

As for xG in this division...I'll just note that our value on Saturday was only marginally lower than Mansfield's against us the week before. Which says all you need to know about how reliable that metric is.

It means Mansfield got lucky and we didn’t

[Colemans Left Hook]

I want to introduce the phrase "Born again Christian* division2 teams"..

Gillingham Colchester and Hartlepool are now fully converted  with double figure January signings

Homework for BST to produce a graph of the 3 match moving average XG for Gillingham 

Could say it was from zero to hero

XG is for idiots in this low level league
Moving average XG less so see Leyton Orient now cured of their ailment (as my bank manager continues to do summersalts). As this free money is being
" Given" away

* "Old Moore and his Almanac" "allegedly" tried to convert us into one of those


As "Watters" who I expected to be "black" until i belatedly learned otherwise and then "Jesus look alike" May were both got rid as they
Didn't "CONVERT" (chances).

And "no hopers" were rescued from obscurity instead...  After a hell of a lot more than 40 days inthe wilderness

... To be continued

[BillyStubbsTears]

Dickos.

Hang on a minute. I'm going to sit down and try to get my head round this.

You're saying that our performance against Hartlepool was as dominating and as productive in terms of good goalscoring chances as Mansfield's against us?

[sedwardsdrfc]

Thinking back to our last stint in L2 and the majority of the time we were poor (or the game was) that’s just the level we’re at. Back then it always felt like we had a 20min spell when we were just too good and that was the game.

Yes when we are bad we are worse than when we were bad that season. Reality is we might not be as far away as we think. The f we stop conceding stupid goals the performances would have chance to build

[BillyStubbsTears]

We clearly aren't far off play-off material. The table says so. Four pints from the matches against Hartlepool x2 and Colchester would have us in 6th place.

But we are a country mile off where we were in 16/17. Then we had the core of a competitive L1 squad.

Coppinger
Blair
Wright
Butler
Baudry
Marquis
Rowe
May
Mason

Position by position, we don't have players remotely as good as those.

That squad would have massively underachieved if it had not got automatic promotion. The current one will overachieve if it makes the top 7.

[Bessie Red]

2 points off the play-offs.

11 points off 3rd.

Confidence boost this win will hopefully enable us to kick on.

 Aye. But we are still bang out of form. Replay that match tonight a dozen times and we might win 2. The points are welcome of course, but we are not making the playoffs with that sort of performance.

Similar could be said about Saturday. Replay that game and we would have won the majority.

Well you'd kind of hope so as we were playing the side second bottom of the football league. But I'm not sure what you are basing that on. Certainly not Saturday's performance.

Shouldn't really need to say this, but I'd be delighted if tonight was a turning point. But we really didn't play well tonight and we need to do much, much better if we are going to make the playoffs. It's a bit obtuse to argue against that.

I fully expected 3 points from the last two games although I thought it would be the other way round. We are where we are and could still potentially end up in the playoffs purely because it is such a bad lge. The crucial thing now is recruitment in the Summer and we should be well on the way to sorting out what we want to do then, who we want to keep, what type of player we wish to recruit to be able to become top of the pile of frankly a very poor set of teams but also havng an eye on a possible promotion (last thing we need is promotion and then being completely out of our depth in lge 1 if we got there).

[DonnyOsmond]

2 points off the play-offs.

11 points off 3rd.

Confidence boost this win will hopefully enable us to kick on.

 Aye. But we are still bang out of form. Replay that match tonight a dozen times and we might win 2. The points are welcome of course, but we are not making the playoffs with that sort of performance.

Similar could be said about Saturday. Replay that game and we would have won the majority.

Well you'd kind of hope so as we were playing the side second bottom of the football league. But I'm not sure what you are basing that on. Certainly not Saturday's performance.

Shouldn't really need to say this, but I'd be delighted if tonight was a turning point. But we really didn't play well tonight and we need to do much, much better if we are going to make the playoffs. It's a bit obtuse to argue against that.

Err, the dozen extra shots we had, the greater xG, the amount of the game spent attacking their final third....

We must have very different ideas about football. I never once in the whole match on Saturday felt "we are going to win this".

As for xG in this division...I'll just note that our value on Saturday was only marginally lower than Mansfield's against us the week before. Which says all you need to know about how reliable that metric is.

What do you mean xG in this division? It works in all divisions. Mansfield's goals were an O.G, 2 chances that on average would be scored around 25% of the time and one that would be scored around half the time, then they had a few other lower chances in the game.

Some people just don't understand or accept what xG is, so if that's you then let's be honest there's little point carrying on this discussion. I just hope the people at our club make an effort with it and other metrics, such as xA, because the ones that make the effort with data  are the clubs that have success in recent years. Most other clubs get left behind. Even at this level Forest Green showed that last season.

[BillyStubbsTears]

DO.

I do understand the concept of xG. What I'm less sure about is the detailed effort that goes into producing free data on this at our level.

Regarding the Mansfield game, the first goal came about because they put a dangerous ball across the six yard box with a striker lurking behind Anderson. The fact that it was an own goal doesn't in any way lessen the fact that it was a dangerous chance.

The second goal was the result of sustained pressure, resulting in the ball pinging around our box and giving a player 15 yards out a free volley with no defender within 3 yards of him. That's a very strong goal opportunity.

The third goal was a giveaway because of awful play by Mitchell and Williams. It was well taken but you'd expect a decent professional striker to score those more often than not.

The fourth was an unimpeded run to the edge of the area, followed by a weak attempted challenge, leaving the striker with the keeper to beat from 18 yards. A good finish, but hardly a wonder strike out of the blue.

On top of that, there was a spell of play at 1-0 where Mansfield had two shots blocked in the centre of the area, then two one-on-ones with Mitchell on the edge of the six yard box, including one that he saved with his face.

At 3-0, Mansfield had another unmarked shot from 15 yards that was inadvertently deflected over the bar when heading in.

Also at 3-0, they had a corner which resulted in a scramble with the ball hacked off the line.

It stretches credulity to breaking point to say Mansfield had as many really good goalscoring chances as we had vs Hartlepool. My recollection is we had a couple of speculative long range efforts that were comfortably saved or missed, One decent chance for Hurst and another one for Lavery.

[DonnyOsmond]

The second goal was a volley which was on the edge of a box crowded by a few players, I'd assume most volleys like that would go wide or over based on them going through thousands of shots/goals and assigning that chance to that percentage. It isn't just made up numbers, it's based on historical chances and how often they've gone in.

We had a lot of small chances in the Hartlepool game, but if you have that many small chances then the odds are likely one will eventually go in. There was a few higher quality chance, like Miller's free header from a set piece in the middle of the first half.

[BillyStubbsTears]

DO

As I say. I don't believe anyone is studying L2 matches, pondering each specific chance and comparing that to a database of specific chances with similar nuances and then giving that data away for free. At best, they might have a blunt approach that harvests data on shot distances from goal.

By the way, go and watch the Mansfield match again.

https://youtu.be/4uuhXwFFAdA

That second goal. He was well inside the area, no more than 15 yards out. The ball sat up perfectly to be struck. There were several defenders in the box but he had no-one within three yards of him as the ball fell and he had a clear line to the left side of the goal. Nelson, I think, made a desperate dive to try to block the shot, but the Mansfield player didn't have to rush his shot to beat that. He'd got his shot away miles before the defender's foot got near him.

I'd expect any decent pro to get a good, strong shot on target 9 times out of 10 in those circumstances.

That one chance was a cleaner chance than anything we  manufactured against Hartlepool, with the exception of Lavery's shot straight at the keeper. And if you're talking about the sum of mlcrochances,  it came immediately after they'd had another shot from inside the box blocked.

I'm genuinely bemused that anyone can watch the Mansfield and Hartlepool matches and come away with the conclusion that both home sides made broadly the same number of serious chances.

[Jonathan]

We clearly aren't far off play-off material. The table says so. Four pints from the matches against Hartlepool x2 and Colchester would have us in 6th place.

But we are a country mile off where we were in 16/17. Then we had the core of a competitive L1 squad.

Coppinger
Blair
Wright
Butler
Baudry
Marquis
Rowe
May
Mason

Position by position, we don't have players remotely as good as those.

That squad would have massively underachieved if it had not got automatic promotion. The current one will overachieve if it makes the top 7.

And Houghton. Now the lynchpin of a midfield competing at the top of league one.

All the talk seems to focus on the Head Coach / manager. Both McSheffrey and Schofield had every comment dissected and held up in front of everyone by the critics. Truth is that the squad of players will always be the defining factor.

[scawsby steve]

DO.

I do understand the concept of xG. What I'm less sure about is the detailed effort that goes into producing free data on this at our level.

Regarding the Mansfield game, the first goal came about because they put a dangerous ball across the six yard box with a striker lurking behind Anderson. The fact that it was an own goal doesn't in any way lessen the fact that it was a dangerous chance.

The second goal was the result of sustained pressure, resulting in the ball pinging around our box and giving a player 15 yards out a free volley with no defender within 3 yards of him. That's a very strong goal opportunity.

The third goal was a giveaway because of awful play by Mitchell and Williams. It was well taken but you'd expect a decent professional striker to score those more often than not.

The fourth was an unimpeded run to the edge of the area, followed by a weak attempted challenge, leaving the striker with the keeper to beat from 18 yards. A good finish, but hardly a wonder strike out of the blue.

On top of that, there was a spell of play at 1-0 where Mansfield had two shots blocked in the centre of the area, then two one-on-ones with Mitchell on the edge of the six yard box, including one that he saved with his face.

At 3-0, Mansfield had another unmarked shot from 15 yards that was inadvertently deflected over the bar when heading in.

Also at 3-0, they had a corner which resulted in a scramble with the ball hacked off the line.

It stretches credulity to breaking point to say Mansfield had as many really good goalscoring chances as we had vs Hartlepool. My recollection is we had a couple of speculative long range efforts that were comfortably saved or missed, One decent chance for Hurst and another one for Lavery.

Sorry to be pedantic, BST, but at no point in the game were we losing 3-0. In fact, at the time we made it 2-1, we were ripping them apart.

[dickos1]

Dickos.

Hang on a minute. I'm going to sit down and try to get my head round this.

You're saying that our performance against Hartlepool was as dominating and as productive in terms of good goalscoring chances as Mansfield's against us?

I don’t think the Mansfield game was dominant, at 2-1 we were battering them and they were scared to death. A big lump upfield changed that and that was their only foray into our half, even at 3-1 we missed two absolute sitters

[BillyStubbsTears]

SS
Yep, my mistake.

Dickos. That's not the point under discussion. I was wrong to us the term "dominating". The point is, whether there's any sense in the Mansfield xG Vs us, and our xG Vs Hartlepool being similar. I find in baffling that anyone could watch those two matches and answer "yes".

[Spud]

SS
Yep, my mistake.

Dickos. That's not the point under discussion. I was wrong to us the term "dominating". The point is, whether there's any sense in the Mansfield xG Vs us, and our xG Vs Hartlepool being similar. I find in baffling that anyone could watch those two matches and answer "yes".

Use, sorry Billy (laughing emoji), & SS for beating you to it.

[DonnyOsmond]

SS
Yep, my mistake.

Dickos. That's not the point under discussion. I was wrong to us the term "dominating". The point is, whether there's any sense in the Mansfield xG Vs us, and our xG Vs Hartlepool being similar. I find in baffling that anyone could watch those two matches and answer "yes".

Mansfield had a handful of decent chances from their 11 shots.

We had lots of very low quality chances that add up from our 17 shots.

[BillyStubbsTears]

SS
Yep, my mistake.

Dickos. That's not the point under discussion. I was wrong to us the term "dominating". The point is, whether there's any sense in the Mansfield xG Vs us, and our xG Vs Hartlepool being similar. I find in baffling that anyone could watch those two matches and answer "yes".

Mansfield had a handful of decent chances from their 11 shots.

We had lots of very low quality chances that add up from our 17 shots.

I've pointed out 7 very good chances that Mansfield had.