Post by Rags on Apr 15, 2024 14:17:10 GMT
Quoting myself...
I'm not convinced by the 16th Dec as a turning point, it seems more like correlation than causation to me. However, there is a distinct difference in the playing staff either side of this date.
I forgot Shaun Donnellan: 9 wins in his 17 starts. For someone who didn't strike me as that important to the side, his absence turned out to be more telling than I had envisaged.
It could also be, of course, that when teams played us a second time they were no longer worried by the big ex-football league club. They'd seen our fragility and weaknesses the first time round and prepared better the second time round. Take those 13 wins to 16th December: we lost the returns against St Albans (H), Slough (H), Braintree (A), Chelmsford (A), Welling (A), Bath (A), Tonbridge (A); had already lost to Hemel and and still have to play Havant at home. The other four return matches were drawn.
In fact, we haven't done a double all season: Havant & Waterlooville are the only team we have beaten who we haven't also lost or drawn to.
I was at Avely and while the presence of Crooky always has a very direct effect on the performance (
) my initial posting was this:
OMG that was so bad. Awful, simply awful. I can't bear to relive it this evening so I will write my thoughts tomorrow or possibly early next week. Or possibly never.
Can't pass, can't move, can't control the ball, can't win any headers, can't shoot on target. [...] Terrible.
Is it more to the point that we stole some of the wins before Dec 16th and were found out after that? Having been at Avely (see above) and also Hemel ("We were slow and laborious in our attacks... We reverted to long-balls up to their centre-backs, lacking imagination.... We are out of ideas and the lack of quality coaching shows.") I'm now amazed that we did manage to win so many games in the first half of the season. It seems as if we reverted to the mean around the New Year and started getting the results that we had deserved to get back in 2023.
Apr 15, 2024 8:19:31 GMT Rags said:
I'm not convinced by the 16th Dec as a turning point, it seems more like correlation than causation to me. However, there is a distinct difference in the playing staff either side of this date.
I forgot Shaun Donnellan: 9 wins in his 17 starts. For someone who didn't strike me as that important to the side, his absence turned out to be more telling than I had envisaged.
It could also be, of course, that when teams played us a second time they were no longer worried by the big ex-football league club. They'd seen our fragility and weaknesses the first time round and prepared better the second time round. Take those 13 wins to 16th December: we lost the returns against St Albans (H), Slough (H), Braintree (A), Chelmsford (A), Welling (A), Bath (A), Tonbridge (A); had already lost to Hemel and and still have to play Havant at home. The other four return matches were drawn.
In fact, we haven't done a double all season: Havant & Waterlooville are the only team we have beaten who we haven't also lost or drawn to.
I was at Avely and while the presence of Crooky always has a very direct effect on the performance (
) my initial posting was this: Can't pass, can't move, can't control the ball, can't win any headers, can't shoot on target. [...] Terrible.
Is it more to the point that we stole some of the wins before Dec 16th and were found out after that? Having been at Avely (see above) and also Hemel ("We were slow and laborious in our attacks... We reverted to long-balls up to their centre-backs, lacking imagination.... We are out of ideas and the lack of quality coaching shows.") I'm now amazed that we did manage to win so many games in the first half of the season. It seems as if we reverted to the mean around the New Year and started getting the results that we had deserved to get back in 2023.
