[Albion] Midfield goal production and the striker myth

[albionalex]

It’s a shame we haven’t got any strikers coming through pushing for a place in the squad.

Clearly GP, to his credit, has no qualms putting faith in young talent (Lamptey, Alzate, Connolly, Sanchez), so I can only assume he doesn’t feel we have any worthy strikers from the u23’s/u18’s (yet..).

The one to watch out for is young Zak Emerson. 8 goals in 10 games for the u18’s.

I might be wrong but I think our top scorer for the U23's this season is Jenks, a midfielder.

 

[vagabond]

I might be wrong but I think our top scorer for the U23's this season is Jenks, a midfielder.

Correct 5 in 16. Jenks is one I’ve long wanted in the squad, and am on record saying I’d rather he get a chance over Lallana.

But he is a midfielder, I was only looking over the out and out strikers available to us.

 

[albionalex]

Correct 5 in 16. Jenks is one I’ve long wanted in the squad, and am on record saying I’d rather he get a chance over Lallana.

But he is a midfielder, I was only looking over the out and out strikers available to us.

That's a very impressive conversion rate - hopefully he break through in the next season or two.

 

[GT49er]

How on earth is the midfield functioning well if it’s not scoring its expected contribution of goals. It’s a basic contradiction - you’ll have to explain a bit more

Easy. They're doing the basic midfielding pretty well - breaking up play, keeping/winning the ball, progressing it forward and setting up chances, etc. What they're not doing, unfortunately, is chipping in with a few goals - which would make all the difference to our results. Simples ..........

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

Correct 5 in 16. Jenks is one I’ve long wanted in the squad, and am on record saying I’d rather he get a chance over Lallana.

But he is a midfielder, I was only looking over the out and out strikers available to us.

Agree - called Jenks some time ago. Very promising player.

I’d like to see Cochrane in the squad as well next year.

 

[kemptown kid]

Easy. They're doing the basic midfielding pretty well - breaking up play, keeping/winning the ball, progressing it forward and setting up chances, etc. What they're not doing, unfortunately, is chipping in with a few goals - which would make all the difference to our results. Simples ..........

Given our possession and shots stats of the past few games, everything is going 'pretty well' or even very well apart from scoring goals. More clinical finishing, more threat from corners and free kicks, plus, of course, scoring penalties - none of these require abandoning 'Potterball' or demonizing any individual players.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

How on earth is the midfield functioning well if it’s not scoring its expected contribution of goals. It’s a basic contradiction - you’ll have to explain a bit more

OK then. A midfield has three jobs. To create chances, to break up attacks and to score. Of the three the latter is the lowest priority because that is the main task of the strikers. To not be functioning I would expect significant failure in all 3 categories. We are far from that.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Easy. They're doing the basic midfielding pretty well - breaking up play, keeping/winning the ball, progressing it forward and setting up chances, etc. What they're not doing, unfortunately, is chipping in with a few goals - which would make all the difference to our results. Simples ..........

You can be Saint, I'll be Greavesie

 

[perseus]

Lots of moaning about the strikers and lack of competent strikers.

Its quite interesting. Brighton strikers so far scored 11 goals (Maupay 7, Connolly 2, Welbeck 2).

That is one more goal than West Ham in 4th place.

The midfielders scored 7 goals so far.

That is 13 less than West Hams 20 (Soucek 8, Bowen 5, Lingard 3, Fornals 2, Lanzini 1, Rice 1).

Leicester strikers scored 14 goals (Vardy 12, Perez 1, Iheanacho 1). Better than the Brighton strikers? Yes, 3 more. Does 3 more take you to the Champions League?

No. Midfield goal production does.

I repeat: the Brighton midfielders scored 7 goals. Leicesters midfielders: 24 (Barnes 9, Maddison 8, Tielemans 5, Praet 1, Ndidi 1).

I've said this about twenty times on the board already, always getting the reply "... but its the strikers job to score, Clough said so in the 70s"). Fair enough. But fact remains - goal production from midfielders are very important if you want to win games, and the major difference between Brighton and the top teams. The handful more goals produced by their strikers got very limited impact compared to the ca 15 goals more that the midfielders of (pretty much every) other team scored.

Glad you wrote this: saved me the trouble.

 

[perseus]

Glad you wrote this: saved me the trouble.

PS; not that I would not replace our current forward line, or that I agree with Potter e.g. I believe in four at the back with one proper winger.

 

[London Irish]

Easy. They're doing the basic midfielding pretty well - breaking up play, keeping/winning the ball, progressing it forward and setting up chances, etc. What they're not doing, unfortunately, is chipping in with a few goals - which would make all the difference to our results. Simples ..........

So the midfield is still functioning well if it's still doing "unfortunate" things. Sorry but I don't think most people would find that a logical argument

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

 

[Pavilionaire]

Liverpool won the title last season with their midfield contributing relatively few goals and assists - the damage was done by Salah, Mane and Firmino with TAA and Robertson providing assists.

Henderson, Fabinho and Wijnaldum are quality but are not scorers or assisters.

There was a time when Gerrard made a big goal contribution from midfield but it never won them the title.

It's rare that a team gets relegated with a striker that gets into double figures. Chris Wood has managed it 3 times I believe, which is a big reason why Burnley usually finish comfortably safe, but he's been injured this year and they have struggled for goals.

In the Prem it is all about having that striker, and our problem is Maupay has had a poor season. If he doesn't start scoring soon we are in trouble, because there's no evidence Welbeck and Connolly are going to get us out of this mess, while Zeqiri is an unknown at this level.

 

[GT49er]

So the midfield is still functioning well if it's still doing "unfortunate" things. Sorry but I don't think most people would find that a logical argument.

It's doing most of what it should do, and doing it rather well. That's not just a logical argument, it's fact. Unfortunately it hasn't added regularly chipping in with goals to its many excellent attributes. I can't see what you are finding so difficult to understand; most people appear to do so OK..

 

[London Irish]

It's doing most of what it should do, and doing it rather well. That's not just a logical argument, it's fact. Unfortunately it hasn't added regularly chipping in with goals to its many excellent attributes. I can't see what you are finding so difficult to understand; most people appear to do so OK..

Because scoring goals is either fundamental to their job, or it isn’t. I still don’t know which of those statements you think is true.

The case being made here surely is that it is fundamental to their role, hence the comparison to teams much higher on the table to us who have goalscoring midfielders - the point being (surely) that it’s critical to winning games and climbing the table. This isn’t something of lesser importance that we can treat as an afterthought after discussing the really important stuff.

If I went to my manager tomorrow and said, that thing that’s fundamental to doing my job, I’m going to be mostly failing to do it today, is that ok? Well the bonus is I’d probably have a lot more time to start 12-page threads on here about stuff that might be important, but on the other hand, you know, it’s probably not if you look at this or that etc etc.

My own view is I think it is fundamental and probably the OP has done us a favour by highlighting it. I welcome it particularly because I think Maupay has been hard done by the weight of criticism he’s got. His goals kept us up last season and 7 this season is not a bad return, albeit at times his confidence looks lower than last season. Saturday being unfortunately one of those days. Which almost certainly would have been overlooked if Trossard or Mac had stuck goals away

 

[Beanstalk]

Lots of moaning about the strikers and lack of competent strikers.

Its quite interesting. Brighton strikers so far scored 11 goals (Maupay 7, Connolly 2, Welbeck 2).

That is one more goal than West Ham in 4th place.

The midfielders scored 7 goals so far.

That is 13 less than West Hams 20 (Soucek 8, Bowen 5, Lingard 3, Fornals 2, Lanzini 1, Rice 1).

Leicester strikers scored 14 goals (Vardy 12, Perez 1, Iheanacho 1). Better than the Brighton strikers? Yes, 3 more. Does 3 more take you to the Champions League?

No. Midfield goal production does.

I repeat: the Brighton midfielders scored 7 goals. Leicesters midfielders: 24 (Barnes 9, Maddison 8, Tielemans 5, Praet 1, Ndidi 1).

I've said this about twenty times on the board already, always getting the reply "... but its the strikers job to score, Clough said so in the 70s"). Fair enough. But fact remains - goal production from midfielders are very important if you want to win games, and the major difference between Brighton and the top teams. The handful more goals produced by their strikers got very limited impact compared to the ca 15 goals more that the midfielders of (pretty much every) other team scored.

For once I wholeheartedly agree with you Swanny.

I would also add that we don't create many clear cut goalscoring opportunities. With our style of play we rarely have chances where our players of any position are one on one with the keeper. Perhaps it's not just a single problem of us not scoring enough, which in the case of our midfield is absolutely true, but a combination of us also not creating enough high-quality situations for our strikers/midfielders to score from. If you take Palace as an example (WBA had two pens so that skews the xG dramatically) each shot, on average, had only a 0.12xG rating. A one-on-one shot inside the area is normally around 0.6xG.

The below shows that the majority of our chances in Feb were more difficult to score than not. In 5 games we created 8 chances that logically should have been taken. That includes the 2 penalties against WBA.

 

[blue-shifted]

For once I wholeheartedly agree with you Swanny.

I would also add that we don't create many clear cut goalscoring opportunities. With our style of play we rarely have chances where our players of any position are one on one with the keeper. Perhaps it's not just a single problem of us not scoring enough, which in the case of our midfield is absolutely true, but a combination of us also not creating enough high-quality situations for our strikers/midfielders to score from. If you take Palace as an example (WBA had two pens so that skews the xG dramatically) each shot, on average, had only a 0.12xG rating. A one-on-one shot inside the area is normally around 0.6xG.

The below shows that the majority of our chances in Feb were more difficult to score than not. In 5 games we created 8 chances that logically should have been taken. That includes the 2 penalties against WBA.

View attachment 134349

Well yes they were, but there were more than 60 of them.

In the PL, you can't just rely on tap ins. Other team's score decent goals. Shots from range, direct free kicks, half chances in the box.

Our failure has been around missing nearly all of the dozens of half chances as much as it has been missing the small number of tap ins

 

[perseus]

Slowness in attack enables the opposition defence to get back?

We need a winger/striker that can shoot/cross with both feet.


March is out for March.

 

[Beanstalk]

Well yes they were, but there were more than 60 of them.

In the PL, you can't just rely on tap ins. Other team's score decent goals. Shots from range, direct free kicks, half chances in the box.

Our failure has been around missing nearly all of the dozens of half chances as much as it has been missing the small number of tap ins

But if we are consistently not scoring half chances, why is our tactical style seemingly based around creating a lot of them? Surely, if this is a deficiency in the squad's ability, then we should have come up with a solution rather than simply hoping our luck will change.

 

[Swansman]

Liverpool won the title last season with their midfield contributing relatively few goals and assists - the damage was done by Salah, Mane and Firmino with TAA and Robertson providing assists.

Henderson, Fabinho and Wijnaldum are quality but are not scorers or assisters.

There was a time when Gerrard made a big goal contribution from midfield but it never won them the title.

It's rare that a team gets relegated with a striker that gets into double figures. Chris Wood has managed it 3 times I believe, which is a big reason why Burnley usually finish comfortably safe, but he's been injured this year and they have struggled for goals.

In the Prem it is all about having that striker, and our problem is Maupay has had a poor season. If he doesn't start scoring soon we are in trouble, because there's no evidence Welbeck and Connolly are going to get us out of this mess, while Zeqiri is an unknown at this level.

Its not "all about having that striker". Two of the players you mentioned (Salah and Mane) are wingers, who these days (often along with the AMC) are frequently scoring more goals than the striker/strikers (in their case Firmino, replaced by Origi when necessary). Maupay may very well reach Firminos goal tally from last season, but the the Brighton wingers wont beat the Liverpool wingers.

 

[ManOfSussex]

Tony Cascarino in The Times today on a similar vain:

No good finishers is Brighton’s issue
People say Brighton are unlucky not to have more points because they create so many chances, as if taking chances is down to luck rather than skill. Brighton have a big problem. They do not have a single good finisher. I don’t just mean the strikers. It has been a bad time for Neal Maupay to go eight games without a goal, but the midfield are not scoring either. A centre-half, Lewis Dunk, is second top scorer. To stay up, they need that to change.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...e-to-give-chelsea-a-fighting-chance-khh7stm3j