[Football] What the **** has happened to football

[Mo Gosfield]

Lack of crowds is clearly having an effect.
Sides haven't just decided to go gung-ho and attack like crazy. Its a product of this new sterile environment. Lack of preparation / short pre-season may have played a small part but the game has clearly changed since fans were omitted. Never underestimate how much a crowd affects games. Think of all those Amex games where the crowd has literally sucked the ball into the North goal, roaring us on and ensuring the tempo didn't drop. Think of those ' backs against the wall ' games where you are hanging on and the crowd is there with you, roaring every block, every tackle, every header away. It has an effect all over the pitch. At corners, at throw ins, at fierce tackles, at penalty shouts and at numerous contentious issues. The crowd can work with you and it can work against you.
Without a crowd, players are more relaxed. It feels more like a controlled training game. They feel freer to try things. Home advantage is nullified. Stats so far.....Home wins...16....Away wins...19....Draws...3.....says it all. The usual tightness has gone out of a lot of games. Teams trailing at home don't have a home crowd to encourage them back into the game. In 11 of those 19 away wins, three or more goals have been scored by the winning side.
Its different, its exciting and it won't start to change until we get crowds back.

Hey ho...double post....start the week as you mean to go on!

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

 

[Blue3]

Currently we sit one place above Manchester United and one place below Manchester City! The season has started with preseason where you get some funny results

 

[el punal]

No change for us, sitting in our usual spot.

Okay, so four games in what is our usual spot? Above Man.Utd then.

 

[Perfidious Albion]

This is why we should not be hitting the panic button about our recent results. Take Saturday, as a fan I underestimated Everton. I was thinking of the usual Everton, mid table ,o k side ..... but consider that they are top of the league with maximum points. I should have expected a game against the table toppers. I know we still played badly but the result does not look so bad in that context.
Since the two Manchester giants are next to us in the table , we can hold our heads a little higher.

 

[zefarelly]

This is why we should not be hitting the panic button about our recent results. Take Saturday, as a fan I underestimated Everton. I was thinking of the usual Everton, mid table ,o k side ..... but consider that they are top of the league with maximum points. I should have expected a game against the table toppers. I know we still played badly but the result does not look so bad in that context.
Since the two Manchester giants are next to us in the table , we can hold our heads a little higher.

I agree, we were masters of our own downfall Saturday, but otherwise have been unlucky vs Manure and Chelski. Palarse is the first litmus test. They deserve a rough ride.

 

[FatSuperman]

For those of you that use stats to control your bed wetting, the following is based on the infogol stats, and shows the differential based on expected goals and expected goals against. Obviously a lot of noise in the data after just a handful of games - but assumes that teams start reverting closer to their actual performances...

 

[BBassic]

It's been an interesting month for sure.

Were it not for the post and the after hours penalty we'd probably be included in the list of "shock results".

We'll be fine.

 

[BN41Albion]

Yesterday proved how poor United are at the moment. They were there for the taking against us and we failed to take that opportunity through bad luck, careless play and loss of concentration. It is likely that at least 12 other PL clubs would have beaten them on the day. We caught Chelsea below par as well and once again carelessness and an inexplicable miss from Dunk cost us dear.
We are not a ' tight ' side. We give other sides plenty of chances. We create quite a lot ourselves and 8 goals in the first 4 games should have produced more than 3 points. We are work in progress, with a lot of young players but I worry how loose we are at the moment. We regularly give the ball away in our final third and at this level it costs you dear. Judging on the current sharpness of a number of sides outside the ' Big Six 'it will be difficult for us to finish above the bottom six unless we really tighten up as a side.

Yeah, I do worry that we'll end up struggling again because of the same problems as last season. Not scoring enough to kill games off/conceding soft goals. I hope I'm wrong, but it's definitely been a bit of a reality check these last few weekends and a reminder that there are a lot of strong teams in the prem - finishing further up the league is bloody difficult to achieve, especially for clubs like ours with the wage structure etc.