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I came across an interesting point today on this forum, brought up by Stanley who asked rhetorically if we were actually learning from the mistakes we have made every game.
The point that I made was that we are attempting to learn from our mistakes every game. To a degree this is shown in the stats and highlighted well by the people at Whoscored.com in the pictures below. However this is an underlying trend of general recurrence of errors that are costing us.
First up we have Charlton to Cardiff and what you'll find is that our weaknesses were Finishing, free kicks and individual errors. Moving to the Cardiff game, we can see that finishing has become a strength and individual skill has also. However, we were still giving away too many free kicks around the box.
Going onto the next game against Wolves, you can see here that our weakness of giving away many free kicks is gone and has been replaced by stealing the ball often. However we did lose possession often. Moving to the game against Rotherham however and we see that we have actually eliminated all our weaknesses and Rotherham actually did what we usually do. The Rotherham result was our peak so far in this season because looking at the next game, you might have been able to tell things weren't going to go well after that.
Huddersfield brought about a couple of weaknesses in our side, being the return of aggressive and giving away free kicks. However to have no real strengths may have given away that we weren't playing to our best. This is shown going into the Forest game where we were once again aggressive, giving away too many dangerous free kicks but adding the offsides and the individual errors.
Against Blackburn, hoping to eradicate some issues, we didn't give away as many free kicks in dangerous positions and we weren't that aggressive (these seem to be very interlinked with one another), however we were still getting caught offside too much and we still committed individual errors. Hull was an impressive game, not least because we didn't give away many individual errors and showed some structure.
Unfortunately, Sky Sports came into town and ruined our potential rise with the Fulham game, which for only the second time this season, brought about poor finishing but also the return of individual errors. After the mauling, we came home to Bolton, hoping to eradicate these errors and this was done fairly well, with goals being brought about by individual skill and finishing being a big strength, however we were once again too aggressive and were caught offside often.
Hoping to fix these issues, we went to Birmingham and were unlucky not to get a point after a poor penalty call, but in terms of weaknesses we were better with the aggression but were still being caught offside too often. Coming home to Sheffield, we were poor at finishing, gave away possession poorly and were again caught offside often. This was arguably our scrappiest game this season but we did well overall to get a draw against an in form team.
A game later, we even won against MK, however this lingering weakness of ours - the offsides - were still haunting us. We were however much stronger finishing wise and held the ball much better in the opposition half. Finally we come to Brentford, our worst performance this season, and the strengths column shows that. More importantly, our weaknesses showed that we were poor at finishing, too aggressive, gave away possession often and were caught offside often.
My general belief here is that we have to look at what have been the most consistent weaknesses. Certainly; aggression, free kicks and Offsides are key to eradicating our problems but we are too inconsistent with our finishing, one week doing everything well and another not doing it well enough. Are we as bad as some here say we are? No way, not by a country mile we aren't. But we do need to work on getting some fundamentals right.
The point that I made was that we are attempting to learn from our mistakes every game. To a degree this is shown in the stats and highlighted well by the people at Whoscored.com in the pictures below. However this is an underlying trend of general recurrence of errors that are costing us.
First up we have Charlton to Cardiff and what you'll find is that our weaknesses were Finishing, free kicks and individual errors. Moving to the Cardiff game, we can see that finishing has become a strength and individual skill has also. However, we were still giving away too many free kicks around the box.
Going onto the next game against Wolves, you can see here that our weakness of giving away many free kicks is gone and has been replaced by stealing the ball often. However we did lose possession often. Moving to the game against Rotherham however and we see that we have actually eliminated all our weaknesses and Rotherham actually did what we usually do. The Rotherham result was our peak so far in this season because looking at the next game, you might have been able to tell things weren't going to go well after that.
Huddersfield brought about a couple of weaknesses in our side, being the return of aggressive and giving away free kicks. However to have no real strengths may have given away that we weren't playing to our best. This is shown going into the Forest game where we were once again aggressive, giving away too many dangerous free kicks but adding the offsides and the individual errors.
Against Blackburn, hoping to eradicate some issues, we didn't give away as many free kicks in dangerous positions and we weren't that aggressive (these seem to be very interlinked with one another), however we were still getting caught offside too much and we still committed individual errors. Hull was an impressive game, not least because we didn't give away many individual errors and showed some structure.
Unfortunately, Sky Sports came into town and ruined our potential rise with the Fulham game, which for only the second time this season, brought about poor finishing but also the return of individual errors. After the mauling, we came home to Bolton, hoping to eradicate these errors and this was done fairly well, with goals being brought about by individual skill and finishing being a big strength, however we were once again too aggressive and were caught offside often.
Hoping to fix these issues, we went to Birmingham and were unlucky not to get a point after a poor penalty call, but in terms of weaknesses we were better with the aggression but were still being caught offside too often. Coming home to Sheffield, we were poor at finishing, gave away possession poorly and were again caught offside often. This was arguably our scrappiest game this season but we did well overall to get a draw against an in form team.
A game later, we even won against MK, however this lingering weakness of ours - the offsides - were still haunting us. We were however much stronger finishing wise and held the ball much better in the opposition half. Finally we come to Brentford, our worst performance this season, and the strengths column shows that. More importantly, our weaknesses showed that we were poor at finishing, too aggressive, gave away possession often and were caught offside often.
My general belief here is that we have to look at what have been the most consistent weaknesses. Certainly; aggression, free kicks and Offsides are key to eradicating our problems but we are too inconsistent with our finishing, one week doing everything well and another not doing it well enough. Are we as bad as some here say we are? No way, not by a country mile we aren't. But we do need to work on getting some fundamentals right.
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