Return of the Mac

[Seth's left foot]

51 minutes ago, brady1993 said:

Of course confidence has an effect but Johnson has always been dreadful on the ball. It's the reason why Norwich happily sold him to us despite being their POTY.

Whilst I agree that we needed to improve on some of the players such as Buxton and Ward. The fact is we haven't. We've bought Wieman, Camara, Blackman, and Anya since having ward and they are all worse than a fit Ward.

That's harsh on Anya, he's only just joined and has been one of our better players but I agree that our recent scouting of wingers is poor.

[Lokidoki]

55 minutes ago, brady1993 said:

and your point is ?

That you can play around with statements about performance to interpret matters into any context. In this way PC was preforming as well if not better that SM 2014/5.

 

54 minutes ago, Tombo said:

I was there too. It's a myth.

I don't do myths but I do football matches and folks' memories are very selective. I would rather call it the other team's tactics and that ours was easy to nullify and that's why we cried out for a plan B. The fact that SM could not change tactically, in a match, without throwing on every forward on the pitch that was on the books,  was always an issue. I would hope and this is my point, that he has learnt, however his performance at Newcastle demonstrated otherwise.

Let me remind you of Ramage's words " teams that come and sit in with two banks of four"  - Come on how will he deal with that?

[cheron85]

3 minutes ago, Seth's left foot said:

That's harsh on Anya, he's only just joined and has been one of our better players but I agree that our recent scouting of wingers is poor.

He looks like a willing runner but not much else to me...

The mark of a great winger (vs an okay winger) is the ability to beat a man from a standing start (IMO)... Any number of quick, skillful wingers have appeared over the years and then vanished when defenders have realised you just need to get tight to them... Ince has it... Ward had it... Russell probably doesn't but is good at finding himself space, or running across the pitch til he finds it... Anya I'm not so sure about...

[Tombo]

5 minutes ago, Lokidoki said:

I don't do myths but I do football matches and folks' memories are very selective. I would rather call it the other team's tactics and that ours was easy to nullify and that's why we cried out for a plan B. The fact that SM could not change tactically, in a match, without throwing on every forward on the pitch that was on the books,  was always an issue. I would hope and this is my point, that he has learnt, however his performance at Newcastle demonstrated otherwise.

Let me remind you of Ramage's words " teams that come and sit in with two banks of four"  - Come on how will he deal with that?

Well I don't do boring cliches like this one. Teams that come and sit in with two banks of four give us the impetus to do what we do best - attack. The reason 4-4-2 is so popular is because nobody likes playing against it. Nobody particularly likes playing it either. 4-4-2 is the formation of stalemate. If teams come and sit in with two banks of four, I say GOOD. It means they're desperate to stifle us. It means they're playing with fear of our frontline. And at our best our team smell fear like sharks smell blood in the water and we dominate them.

It's often been suggested we're vulnerable to the counter attack when we do this, and that may be fair enough to say. Wouldn't say we've been found out, but everyone has a weakness and that's ours. But can you afford to leave players up the pitch for a counter when we're peppering your goalmouth with shots? All we've got to do is pen them back into their own half all day and not get frustrated. Be confident that our attack is better than their defence because in this league, 9 times out of 10 it is.

Play to your strengths. Do not try to play against your weaknesses. That's a defeatist mindset. 

[WhiteHorseRam]

I think we can expect a turn up in results but we will need to give Mac a bit of time to sort things out, like we would have given another new manager.

We are not going to turn into 1970 Brazil overnight.

Maybe by the Wednesday game.

[Lokidoki]

10 minutes ago, Tombo said:

Well I don't do boring cliches like this one. Teams that come and sit in with two banks of four give us the impetus to do what we do best - attack. The reason 4-4-2 is so popular is because nobody likes playing against it. Nobody particularly likes playing it either. 4-4-2 is the formation of stalemate. If teams come and sit in with two banks of four, I say GOOD. It means they're desperate to stifle us. It means they're playing with fear of our frontline. And at our best our team smell fear like sharks smell blood in the water and we dominate them.

It's often been suggested we're vulnerable to the counter attack when we do this, and that may be fair enough to say. Wouldn't say we've been found out, but everyone has a weakness and that's ours. But can you afford to leave players up the pitch for a counter when we're peppering your goalmouth with shots? All we've got to do is pen them back into their own half all day and not get frustrated. Be confident that our attack is better than their defence because in this league, 9 times out of 10 it is.

Play to your strengths. Do not try to play against your weaknesses. That's a defeatist mindset. 

we will need to improve our CB's then as we still have one of them on the pitch week in week out

[FindernRam]

Absolutely right mate. We cannot beat 4-4-2. Mind you to be fair a lot of other teams struggle-look at England

[brady1993]

58 minutes ago, Mostyn6 said:

those players struggled to pass the ball too during the collapse and prior to McClaren arriving!

I feel that you're wrong but unfortunately I can't find a way to isolate stats just to the collapse or find passing stats prior to Mac arriving. So I can't really provide evidence to disagree with your statement and there isn't much point me arguing that point specifically further if I can't back up what I say. If you or anyone else can find stats to those two periods, I would be interested in seeing them.  

What we can look at is stats from the previous three seasons for comparison, although I admit the analysis is somewhat flawed due to situations of players not being directly comparable and there is a reasonable chance Mac manages to coach more out of the new bunch. For the purpose of this I'm just going to focus solely on passing related stats. I will take averages of the previous three seasons solely for championship appearances and where they have made more than 10 appearances in that season. For defenders and keepers I will look at passing accuracy, passes per game and long balls per game. For midfielders I will also include key passes per game and assists.

Grant vs Carson

Grant - 56.5% passing accuracy, 29.8 passes per game, 8.5 long balls per game

Carson -  51.4%, 29.4, 8.2 

This would indicate Grant as being quite a bit better at passing out from the back, his accuracy is a full 5% better with negligible change in number of passes and long balls

Buxton vs Shackell

Buxton - 82.7%, 41.5, 4.9

Shackell - 75.1%, 44.4, 4.3 

For full clarity Shackell stats are dramatically skewed by his time at Burnley where he had a 70% pass completion in the championship. His stats whilst worse than Buxton are far more respectable when you look at his time at derby. I was actually a little surprised by this and perhaps with Mac in charge we will see something even better from Shackell.

Eustace, Hendrick vs Johnson, Butterfield

Eustace - 80.5%, 36.9, 3.3, 0.3 key passes per game, 0 assists

Hendrick - 82.4%, 37.1, 2.2, 1 key passes per game, 4.3(skewed by abnormal 14/15 season with 9 assists)

Johnson - 73.1%, 47, 3.9, 0.8 key passes per game, 2 assists

Butterfield - 80.7%, 38, 2.9, 1.5 key passes, 3.3 ( skewed by abnormal season in 14/15 with 8 assists)

One of these players sticks out like an absolute sore thumb doesn't it ? Whichever way you look at it Johnson is terrible on the ball for a midfielder. Given our style of playing being about controlling the game through possession of the ball, he blatantly doesn't fit and in my opinion (for his price tag) is the worst signing in recent history. The others are a much of muchness. With Butterfield and Hendrick unsurprisingly more creative than Eustace.

I will come back to this later and finish it for the forwards and wide players. Feel free to discuss and criticise what I've put up so far.

[brady1993]

43 minutes ago, Seth's left foot said:

That's harsh on Anya, he's only just joined and has been one of our better players but I agree that our recent scouting of wingers is poor.

I don't mind Anya but I don't think he should be any more than a useful squad player. He just looks like an average tryer to me, without much ingenuity.

[brady1993]

39 minutes ago, Lokidoki said:

That you can play around with statements about performance to interpret matters into any context. In this way PC was preforming as well if not better that SM 2014/5.

 

I don't do myths but I do football matches and folks' memories are very selective. I would rather call it the other team's tactics and that ours was easy to nullify and that's why we cried out for a plan B. The fact that SM could not change tactically, in a match, without throwing on every forward on the pitch that was on the books,  was always an issue. I would hope and this is my point, that he has learnt, however his performance at Newcastle demonstrated otherwise.

Let me remind you of Ramage's words " teams that come and sit in with two banks of four"  - Come on how will he deal with that?

If we were easy to nullify we would have never managed to climb to 2nd, it's really that simple. The reason teams would come to Derby to and sit with two banks of four and try to stifle us was fear. Fear that if they opened up they'd get torn to shreds. Case in point Wolves that season came to play football at derby, Wolves got beat 5-0. Nearly every team we played that season tried to stifle us and we still kept on winning.

Look, at times we aren't going to be able to break a team down that has just come for the point. This isn't that much to do with tactics and more to do with if an opponent just decides from the get go that will try and defend a point, it becomes an uphill task to break them down. We managed to do it often enough under Mac otherwise we wouldn't have climbed to 2nd.

[duncanjwitham]

19 minutes ago, brady1993 said:

ton vs Shackell

Buxton - 82.7%, 41.5, 4.9

Shackell - 75.1%, 44.4, 4.3 

For full clarity Shackell stats are dramatically skewed by his time at Burnley where he had a 70% pass completion in the championship. His stats whilst worse than Buxton are far more respectable when you look at his time at derby. I was actually a little surprised by this and perhaps with Mac in charge we will see something even better from Shackell.

It's not really Shackell's completion percentage that's the problem though.  It's the amount of time and touches he takes to get the pass away.  He might complete the same number as Bucko, but Bucko's passes would have been completed 2 touches earlier and without ruining any momentum we had.

[brady1993]

Just now, duncanjwitham said:

It's not really Shackell's completion percentage that's the problem though.  It's the amount of time and touches he takes to get the pass away.  He might complete the same number as Bucko, but Bucko's passes would have been completed 2 touches earlier and without ruining any momentum we had.

I agree with that but to demonstrate that point you'd have to dig up the relative number of touches to passes and I couldn't find any concrete stats on that front.. I just found it interesting that the stats I looked at don't demonstrate him being bad on the ball like it clearly does with others. 

[Mostyn6]

1 minute ago, brady1993 said:

I agree with that but to demonstrate that point you'd have to dig up the relative number of touches to passes and I couldn't find any concrete stats on that front.. I just found it interesting that the stats I looked at don't demonstrate him being bad on the ball like it clearly does with others. 

it's skewed by Shackell and Keogh passing needlessly across the backline in last 2 seasons. Whereas Buxton was part of McClaren's "pass with purpose and speed of thought" philosophy.

It's much easier to find Keogh and Forsyth/Olsson when 20 yards away than, Martin 60 yards away.

[brady1993]

4 minutes ago, Mostyn6 said:

it's skewed by Shackell and Keogh passing needlessly across the backline in last 2 seasons. Whereas Buxton was part of McClaren's "pass with purpose and speed of thought" philosophy.

It's much easier to find Keogh and Forsyth/Olsson when 20 yards away than, Martin 60 yards away.

I'm not sure that's entirely the case but I can't really argue against it either.

I hope you're right though and Shackell becomes a bit slicker at passing out from the back under Mac.

[Tombo]

When oh when will we have a Rams player interview with him? 

[Lokidoki]

1 hour ago, Tombo said:

4-4-2 is the formation of stalemate

It isn't when we try to play it lol

[Pearl Ram]

It'll be interesting (to me at least) to compare Mac to Bruce in the coming months. Both appointed on the same day, both clubs on 10 points, one coach adventurous, the other more cautious.

I'm convinced we are in better nick now to finish higher than Villa which I wouldn't have been under the previous manager, I hope it works more for Mel than McClaren, I hope we get off to a flier against Leeds, they need to be put in their place after a few bad results against them of late, good luck to all at the club in the coming months.

COYR.

[Animal is a Ram]

think he looks better with less of a tuft 

[brady1993]

37 minutes ago, EastHertsRam said:

It'll be interesting (to me at least) to compare Mac to Bruce in the coming months. Both appointed on the same day, both clubs on 10 points, one coach adventurous, the other more cautious.

I'm convinced we are in better nick now to finish higher than Villa which I wouldn't have been under the previous manager, I hope it works more for Mel than McClaren, I hope we get off to a flier against Leeds, they need to be put in their place after a few bad results against them of late, good luck to all at the club in the coming months.

COYR.

Whilst I agree with your sentiments, I think a lot hinges on how quickly Mac can restore confidence and what he does in January.

[cheron85]

2 minutes ago, brady1993 said:

Whilst I agree with your sentiments, I think a lot hinges on how quickly Mac can restore confidence and what he does in January.

I think if he plays them in the right position and doesn't yell and point fingers at them we should see this happen fairly quickly...