Indeed. I was correcting a post suggesting we’re “too open”.
Every man and his dog knows we have an issue finishing.
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[Albion] Have Albion progressed this season?
- Thread starter Bozza
- Start date
Indeed. I was correcting a post suggesting we’re “too open”.
Every man and his dog knows we have an issue finishing.
No - we are exceptionally good at getting back into shape.
I still think its part of a betting syndicate and Uncle Tony will make £200m at the end of the season if we get 40 points and score less than a goal a game. then BOOM, 2 strikers and do a West Ham next season
I tihnk my pills have kicked in
It’s a no-brainer for me - Graham has taken us beyond where Chris could have got us to, for the simple reason that every single player under him has improved significantly. Even Maupay (who’s finishing has clearly been a long way off what you’d hope for from a frontline striker) has become a much, much better player in open play, and is a key part of our pressing game.
We have centre backs unafraid of passing the ball and surging forward. We have combative, but also sublime midfielders - Bissouma’s consistency has been extraordinary. Solly has gone from a “hope he makes it” winger to a prem-class wingback. That we’ve been able to get by without Lamptey, Propper, March etc is testimony.
The finishing is the only thing - with a decent striker we would have turned a lot of draws into losses. Maybe the club needs to look at whether the coaching team needs strengthening in this regard. This is the best football I’ve seen us play, and if we can make a couple of decent signings over the Summer, I think we can go into next season with a lot of confidence.
We have centre backs unafraid of passing the ball and surging forward. We have combative, but also sublime midfielders - Bissouma’s consistency has been extraordinary. Solly has gone from a “hope he makes it” winger to a prem-class wingback. That we’ve been able to get by without Lamptey, Propper, March etc is testimony.
The finishing is the only thing - with a decent striker we would have turned a lot of draws into losses. Maybe the club needs to look at whether the coaching team needs strengthening in this regard. This is the best football I’ve seen us play, and if we can make a couple of decent signings over the Summer, I think we can go into next season with a lot of confidence.
We are, as you will see the point I’ve made previously in terms of why I think there is an improvement.
However, because we attack more there is no doubt IMO we are more open. (See recent goals conceded - we don’t normally concede due to pressure, it’s normally as we’ve lost the ball upfield).
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We're more open, but are conceding less (and are comfortably top half of the table on goals conceded)
By far and away the biggest area we have for improvement is breaking down teams who defend in numbers and are happy to cede possession to us knowing we'll struggle to get through. Fix that and we're going to be flying. Everything else is on the up.
blue-shifted
Banned
Not just those two. Leicester's recruitment is the best in the business and I'm sure TB, PB and DA are trying to get us close, as ours has also improved a lot from the Ali J and Locadia days. I DO keep saying Potter has a better squad
Of course, Leicester did try to sign Ali J at the same time as we did.
Dave Fishwick
Well-known member
Not just those two. Leicester's recruitment is the best in the business and I'm sure TB, PB and DA are trying to get us close, as ours has also improved a lot from the Ali J and Locadia days. I DO keep saying Potter has a better squad
Leicester's recruitment the best in the business?
For every Fofana and Tielemans there's plenty of duds.
Perez, Praet, Ghezzal, Ward, Benkovic, Adrien Silva, Iborra, Slimani, Musa, Kapustka. Over 150 million worth of players there that have failed to pull up trees or that they've failed to recoup money on
Vardy, Mahrez, Kante, Fofana. Tielmans, Maddison, Schmeichel, N'Didi and that's off the top of my head. Only Gross and Lamptey come close.
We’re more open but we have one of the best goals against records in the league?
I don’t think we’re more open at all. In fact I’d say we do exceptionally well at limiting our opponents to few chances. The number of clean sheets we’ve been picking up would make Hughton proud.
Surely there are more players than just Gross & Lamptey who are at the same level of 'brilliant signing' as someone such as the £32m Tielemans?
Signing a top Premier League level finisher for only £3m (albeit for only a few seasons) is certainly up there with any signing Leicester have achieved. We'd not have got to the promised land or stayed there without the sort of unique finishing ability Muzza gave us. In addition, Biss was £2m cheaper than N'Didi and has been a huge upgrade on the player he replaced (Stephens) where as N'Didi is a level slightly lower than the world class Kante.
blue-shifted
Banned
Brilliant recruitment. Pound for pound (spent) easily the best in the division
I do find the Leicester comparisons tedious though. So many people are like .. "well they can do it, so why can't we", like it's an easy think we could just decide to do.
In the pound for pound spent in terms of players fees, agent fees and wages, our recruitment team are comfortably in the top half of this division. Just because we're not top, isn't enough reason for criticism.
This season we’re surely top 4 though?
It’s hard to see many other clubs bettering our ‘pound-for-pound’ signings of Lallana, Welbeck and Veltman (£900k). It’s also possible that we’ll look retrospectively at players like Moder, Caicedo & Ferguson and say that this was our best ever season of signing. Progress since ‘Sami’s Summer’ is mind blowing.
See this is simply not true, sure its a reasonable summary of CH's last season in charge, but if you hadn't noticed we are presently 14th not 17th and we have finished 15th in two out of our 3 completed seasons. Not to mention that by in every metric other than goals scored we are a far improved team. In fact by chances created combined with goals against we are in the top 7. Sort out the missed chances and we are in for a brilliant seasons next year. I will agree that 2 out of three seasons external factors have really helped us but not this year.
Vardy for £1.6 million. Mahrez for 450k. Kane was on loan there in their promotion winning season.
It's certainly not easy and I wouldn't claim it is. But it should be an ambition and I believe that the board has more desire than fans who are just happy to be here.
- Jun 27, 2012
- 14,656
Well its fine margins but compared to 2018/19 and under Potter - Albion have more points (41 points vs 36 last season, and currently 37 vs 36), and assuming we're not goalless in the final 4 games - more goals. (39 vs 35 and 35 vs 35). So we're scoring more points
, scoring more and conceding fewer.
Tom Hark Preston Park
Will Post For Cash
- Jul 6, 2003
- 72,391
Can't be arsed to look up how many points - oft quoted on here - how many points we've surrerdered to our peers at our habitual arse-end of the table. Like somebody much smarter than me said on here recently 'the worse the opposition, the worse we play' True, that
Barham's tash
Well-known member
Points covered by others im sure but fwiw:
YES.
Because:
We no longer concede ludicrous goals of a pin ball nature
Defensive set up at set pieces has REALLY improved
Our defence know that they will be cleared out by a thoroughbred instead of a middle office manager
We can see a clear path from the U23’s to the first team
Even Ali J is starting to look threatening
When we play well it really is like watching a highly tuned Rolls Royce merlin engine at tip top performance
Now if only we could improve on:
Shot conversion rate
Number of goals overall
LUCK
Injuries to key players
YES.
Because:
We no longer concede ludicrous goals of a pin ball nature
Defensive set up at set pieces has REALLY improved
Our defence know that they will be cleared out by a thoroughbred instead of a middle office manager
We can see a clear path from the U23’s to the first team
Even Ali J is starting to look threatening
When we play well it really is like watching a highly tuned Rolls Royce merlin engine at tip top performance
Now if only we could improve on:
Shot conversion rate
Number of goals overall
LUCK
Injuries to key players
Scoring more points.
Scoring more.
Conceding fewer.
But yeah aside from all that we’re still “treading water” [emoji108]
You've cherry picked our worst season (and, in some ways that's valid as it was Hughton's second in the PL with us) because we're not *yet* passed the total points for either of the other two seasons. We might yet and then your point would be a lot more valid, which is why this discussion should be for the end of the season.
If we stay on 37 we'll have done worse than both the other two seasons mentioned and only one point better than the one compared to. (I don't think we'll stay on 37 - but we could).
If Potter had only matched that season and got us to 17th on 36 points would either of you have sacked him then (hypothetically of course, because he's beaten it with 4 games to go)?