Without wanting to steal Alberts thunder too much, I though his presentation of information was very interesting and it sought me to dig deeper into our Attack and Defence last season:

http://experimental361.com/2012/06/27/championship-attack-defence-performance-201112/

I thought this was interesting. This guy does a lot of statistical research to produce in depth information about the qualities and shortcomings of teams. Note what was said about our 2011-12 season:

Derby - The extra shot on average that it took the Rams to find the net, and the extra two on average that they faced in every match kept them in mid-table. From graph (2) it looks like they based their play on soaking up a lot of pressure, as they were pretty good at it. Unfortunately, as graph (1) shows, they didn’t have the attack to match.

Last season we faced more shots per game (13) than every team in the league other than Peterborough, however it took opposition teams over 10 shots to score against us, with only Hull, Reading, West Ham & Crystal Palace having a better record.

However we had an average 11 shots per game, but it took us 10 chances before we scored on average.

Defence soaked up a lot of pressure, but our attack was poor.

So far this season it looks to be the other way around! So are we trying too hard in attack whilst neglecting defence? Looks like it at the moment. Going on last seasons stats it looks like we were experts in soaking up pressure so what has gone wrong? It could be a number of things:

1. Too much emphasis going on Attack rather than defence
   
2. Shackell being replaced with Keogh
   
3. Are the midfield being caught out in attack
   
4. Are we playing a more attacking lineup and being caught out for it
   
5. Going on last seasons stats we like to soak up pressure, so why this season have we conceded so many whilst trying to do so, whereas last year we were mostly succesful in keeping them out? It can only be the quality in defence.
   

I think we should have invested more in Attack as looking at the figures obviously our defence was one of the top ones, however out attack was inadequate.

im getting bored with analysis

We are now -2 points due to goals scored or conceded in the last 15 minutes

And -1 for goals scored and conceded after 80 minutes.

The attacks doing a better job at the moment at the end of games.

Its cos we have options now.

We have 4 decent forwards.

Options to change it out wide aswell.

We havent been able to say that for a long long time.

I like these stats, very interesting stuff.

I think it'll be interesting to see how this season goes, as we seem to creating more chances now, just got to start putting them away.

To improve the stats how about this defence:

............................................Fielding.............................................

O'Connor..................Keogh.................Buxton.....................Roberts

Right back is O'Connors best position. Bucko played very well against Wednesday and should keep his place when fit. Brayford on the bench for me.

Brayford certainly benefitting from an awesome first season.

He's not the best fullback at Derby now. I dare not whisper the man who is incase i get laughed at.

Brayford certainly benefitting from an awesome first season.

He's not the best fullback at Derby now. I dare not whisper the man who is incase i get laughed at.

Not gazza Roberts?

Not gazza Roberts?

Shhh. They're watching.

Opinion seems to be divided on brayford's performance yesterday. Some say he was great, some think he was poor.

Only listened to the game on ramsplayer - sounded like he was decent going forward but gave the ball away a fair few times.

Anybody else think we faced most shots because we back out of tackles until most of team has back tracked to defend. In fact I dare say if we never had that loose wire god of a man Theo up front last season chasing punts up field I think season would of been alot worse as we don't like tackling more of block and hope

I hope yesterday is him back on track but Roberts has been no lower than 7/10 for...... Well, since his last in a string of dodgy performances season before last!