Swans v Barnsley

[Yankee_Jack]

We look like we're making it up as we go along instead of playing with a purpose where everybody is clued into the plan. Despite all that possession, Barnsley could have beaten us badly and a better team would have. The score was 1-1. It could have easily been 3-0 by halftime. We conceded shortly after we scrambled a goal.

 

[ivoralljack]

We're obviously creating chances but the players are missing them, which is not Cooper's fault. However, I have to say that I'm far from happy about so many aspects of our play. Our defence is leaky and prone to making stupid mistakes these days; our passing (including ball retention) has gone to pot, has become sloppy and innaccurate; there is little pace in our transition and I firmly believe that Cooper's tactics, team selection and set up are wrong. We're still handily placed but it could have been so much better - I read also that we've only won ONE of our last seven competitive games, so we are obviously on a downward spiral and, imo, our league position flatters to deceive. Some stats from the game:

POSSESSION: 40-60 SHOTS: 19-12 OT: 5-8 CORNERS: 2-5 FOULS: 8-5 GOALS: 1-1

One encouraging feature is that we achieved a ratio of 66.66% on target shots but it should be noted that, had Barnsley the bottom team been more clinical themselves, we could have lost this game by 3 or 4 goals. Things are NOT right and Cooper should be sweating blood with his players to make them right.

 

[Borini]

We look like we're making it up as we go along instead of playing with a purpose where everybody is clued into the plan. Despite all that possession, Barnsley could have beaten us badly and a better team would have. The score was 1-1. It could have easily been 3-0 by halftime. We conceded shortly after we scrambled a goal.

I have been saying this since the first 3 games. We are a really poor team and now the rest of the league knows they have nothing to fear from us. Paper weight midfield with no quality, players playing out of position. No pairings/triangles on both sides of the pitch. It is a good job the scum are even worse as next week would have been embarrassing.

 

[KVetch]

Barnsley did not play like a bottom of the table team. You can never underestimate any team. And I hope they're ready for next Sunday. Seemed like most of the on target shots were straight to the keeper. We're missing Dyer or anyone who can get the attack going.

 

[CroJack]

I don't think we are a poor team.

Woodman is a good goalkeeper.
Naughton, Rodon, Hoorn and Roberts are good back four. Add Grimes, Ayew, Celina and we have a spine of a very good team. These eight have to play.

Celina should definitely play as ATM. The question is where should Ayew play? He is getting better and better, he scores goals and has already three assists. We desperately need two dedicated wingers on both flanks, which means Ayew could play up front.

Midfield is another problem imho. Should we play more ofensively than we do? Should we switch from 4-2-3-1 to a more ofensive Bielsa's 4-1-4-1? I would do that.

 

[The Blobster]

We play too deep and struggle to get out of our own half.
Play the game in your opponents half and the games much easier.
Playing from the back is fine but it needs speed of passing and good movement, something we don't see with our static midfield.

 

[KVetch]

I was worried about Woodman before the start of the season, how is a young keeper going to do in the competitive Championship. But he's been solid, I hope they find a way to keep him. He's only going to get better. I think Ayew would be better used if he didn't have to play on the wing, if a player like Dyer or Garrick could control the wing.

 

[Victoria Swan]

We desperately need two dedicated wingers on both flanks, which means Ayew could play up front.

Herein lies the key for me. Our best play will come from stretching the field wide and having wingers like Garrick and Kalula run behind and play it in for Baston or Ayew (who is actually really good with his head).

 

[Yankee_Jack]

Herein lies the key for me. Our best play will come from stretching the field wide and having wingers like Garrick and Kalula run behind and play it in for Baston or Ayew (who is actually really good with his head).

@Victoria Swan hit the nail squarely on the head.

Cooper is struggling. He has three #9s ... Borja, Ayew (#9 is his best position for us, always has been), and Surridge. He is trying to play his "best" players and not his best XI. Hence he ends up with a team of VIII and 3 individuals (Borja, Ayew and Celina) up front only one of whom is playing in his best position (Borja). I can only assume that the starting of Surridge was an experiment against Barnsley ... let's face it, not a great demonstration of fitness for purpose, certainly not ahead of Borja.

So Cooper has to sober up, he has to pick a #9 and go with him ... it could be Borja, it could be Ayew, but it is not Surridge. Once that decision is made, and he discards Celina as a winger (as bad an idea as playing Sig out wide as somebody commented earlier), THEN we can get to a solution where we have true wide players ... two out of Routs, Dyer, Garrick, Peterson, Kalula, McKay (remember him) ... to give us width and a good combination with our FBs. At the moment our FBs have to be the most frustrated players on the field both going forward and having to defend with limited assistance from our wide forwards.

Many, many years ago, Wales had three #9s at their disposal - Ron Davies, Wyn Davies, John Toshack - each deserving to be Wales' #9, each a potent #9 in the old first division; all superb headers of the ball. Whoever was managing Wales then came up with the stupid idea of playing all three at the same time .... three #9s getting in each others way, none of whom could cross, but could get on the end of a decent cross with lethal finish ... but there was no width, nobody to cross the ball. It was a shit show. A classic example of picking best players, not best XI. Borja / Ayew is a similar situation. Stupid is as stupid does and the stupidity of playing both at the expense of creative wide players is, and has been, killing us for weeks ... yet Cooper persists.

Meanwhile we lack creative force at the pointed end of midfield (I presume the Dhanda experiment is over); we lack creativity and collaboration with FBs out wide; we lack defensive solidarity down our flanks.

What Cooper has been trying for the last 6 weeks or so is coming up with limited returns and is disrupting the fluidity we had last season and enjoyed up until the Cooper Experiment started. We have a very good squad of players; but a good squad ill-used produces inferior results. This is what we've been seeing.

Question: Was Barnsley really that good? I think not, but they were good enough to nullify and arguably deserving of more than they got.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

Here are our results and form:



It's as clear as night and day. For the last 5 weeks ... we have sucked compared to the first month of the season. Although @CroJack has presented data that paints a rosier picture, and I'm a data driven person so I respect that, the data above tells the story about return on effort ... which sucks. It is a miracle that we are still within a sniff of the top of the table.

Whatever brainwave Cooper had during the international break, he needs to dispense with that delusion and take a long hard look at what we were doing back in August. There were minor critiques of those performances posted by many, and valid though they may be, the return on effort during August was total and absolute - and August was not an easy month. The "experiment" that Cooper concocted during that international break has been an abject failure. Time to admit defeat and resume normal service before it's too late.

Sept 14 is when Ayew reappeared and Cooper tinkered and corrupted the line-up to accommodate. Is he under orders to play the top earners - Borja and Ayew, when in reality only one is needed to spearhead the front line.

 

[Victoria Swan]

At least play Ayew as CAM behind Baston if he isn't going to play him at #9. That way he gets them both on the field at once if that is what he is being told to do.

 

[CroJack]

It's as clear as night and day. For the last 5 weeks ... we have sucked compared to the first month of the season. Although @CroJack has presented data that paints a rosier picture, and I'm a data driven person so I respect that, the data above tells the story about return on effort ..

Well, I don't think we should call the match results 'data'. We all know that we didn't deserve to win 5 out of the first 6 league games. And we definitelly can't compare home games against Cambridge and Northampton with an away game against PL team Watford in the League Cup. As far as I remember we played well against Watford.

The outcomes of the league games we have played should look like this.

The first six games:

Swans - Hull = Win
Derby - Swansea = Draw
Swansea - Preston = Draw or Loss (we won)
QPR - Swansea = Draw or Loss (we won)
Swansea - Birmingham = Win
Leeds - Swansea = Loss (we won)

Total between 7 and 9 points

The last six games:

Swansea - Forest = Draw (we lost)
Bristol - Swansea = Draw
Swansea - Reading = Win (we drew)
Charlton - Swansea = Draw (we won)
Swansea - Stoke = Draw (we lost)
Barnsley - Swansea = Draw

Total 8 points.

What we can see here is that nothing has changed. We have deserved 8 points from the first 6 games, and 8 points from the last 6. The difference is that we have been lucky in the first 6 games and unlucky in the last 6. But our performances have been the same. The real output is 8 points for both sequences. And we all know luck evens out during the course of a season.

With a total of 16 points Swans should be in 12th place right now.

So, no, my data don't "paint a rosier picture'. In my opinion you are wrong when you say that we have been really good in the beginning of the season and that we have become really bad when Cooper started playing Ayew. Niether is true. We have been pretty average since the beginning of the season.

In the majority of our games we have played one poor and one good half, and that's something that should be adressed. Against Barnsley we have created 0 big chances in the first and 5 big chances in the second half.

I can see there have been complaints about not attacking down the flanks and streching opposition. Unfortunatelly, that's all what we do. We do attack down the flanks but we are not effective enough. And why is that? Is that because we don't play two dedicated wingers there or something else? The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it's because we lack support from the centrall and attacking midfield. We don't have the Allen - Gylfi and De Guzman - Michu combination. We don't attack through the middle! Not enough. We do that in patches, but we should threaten all the time from central and attacking midfield. If we do that then it will give more space on the flanks to our wingers and full-backs. But we have to be more adventurous and committ more midfield players when we attack. Especially Fulton has to help attack crosses. He has the height and physicality. With Borja, Ayew and Fulton in the opposition box we can be a real threat from crosses.

There have also been complaints about our wingers Ayew and Celina not helping in defence. That's simply not true. They both work hard constantly running down the flanks. Apart from one game when some of our players looked knackered after international commitments and too many games played, I don't have any complaints about our players work rate. They are all fighting for the shirt. And that's why I am optimistic. We need some tweeks in our style of play, we need more consistency, we need to stop playing sloppy passes in dangerous areas, and we need to erradicate stupid defensive errors, but there are also many positive things that we can be proud of.

 

[ivoralljack]

You have highlighted one of my pet gripes and that is the midfield. I have been moaning about this for what seems like an eternity. Simply put, the midfield is the engine of the team and if it is not performing, for whatever reason, then the whole team suffers. For me, they fail in two essential areas in that they do not support the strikers sufficiently well and they create very little. There are times when I ask myself what the fcuk are they doing there?

Every player on the field should be seeking to IMPACT the game by making a positive contribution, not just wearing a shirt and occupying space playing by numbers. In midfield we need a mixture of aggression to win the ball, passing ability to keep the ball after it's been won and then creative ability to set up chances for the strikers. And this is where character and determination comes in because, when it does break down, they have to be prepared to do it again and again and again until the opposition cracks. I do not see too many of these qualities in our present setup.

I watched Blades v Arsenal last night and I can't tell you how impressed I was with Guendouzi. He was all over that game, so much so that I couldn't work out what position he was supposed to be playing! He defended, he attacked, he created, he won the ball, he played on the right side then on the left and then down the middle and generally made a huge contribution for his team. The irony is that he was the one out-jumped for United's goal but then he should never have been left to mark a player significantly taller than he was. He certainly didn't deserve to be on the losing team.

Thing is, Guendouzi was plucked from the SECOND tier of French football, which arguably is not as strong as the Championship and here he was far and away the best player in a top Premier League team. And he is improving by the game likely on his way to becoming a mega-star. I put this down to character and attitude. He never stopped running, never stopped trying to influence the game, never gave up on a seemingly lost cause and his contribution was immense. Here is a man who played as a true professional should and I wish that we had more of his ilk in our team.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

Results are facts not measurements. Results are data. Results are the absolute arbiters of success or failure.

The streak of results in August are statistically independent - therefore the probability of that sequence is quite low. If you consider a result equivalent to a unbiased coin toss, then the probability of that sequence is something less than 1%. A highly improbable outcome unless a result is biased in our favor due to something .... let’s call the something a combination of quality / method / touch of madness. Despite all the intra-match data pointing to limits or flaws in our performance the results speak for themselves and stand alone. There was a bias in our favor.

Similarly the streak since Sep 14, has a stronger probability of occurrence since we won one but drew 3 and lost 3: a more “average” outcome when compared to our first streak. The intra-match data may indicate improvements or strength, but again the results speak for themselves and stand alone. There was a bias acting against us.

The critical point is the stark difference between the two streaks. Also worth noting is that the opposition in the first streak was distinctly stronger than in the second. During the first streak our Return on Effort was excellent. During the second streak it has been abysmal. This difference is not a sliding trend over time, but a stark abrupt shift. It is reasonable to conclude therefore that something significantly changed to the drivers of these two different streaks in the international break,

Either the players said fuck it we’re not doing this anymore (possible but highly unlikely), or much more likely Cooper did something that caused / had a significant impact. The one observable change at the start of Shit Streak is the reappearance of Ayew and a corresponding shift in tactics, selection, and player coordination that this caused. So ,,, is it just Cooper, is it just Ayew, or is it a combination.

Open to other interpretations, but until Cooper normalizes team selection by selecting the best XI instead of what he might like to think of are his best players stuffed into a Monkish model, we are going to have a disappointing and mediocre Return on Effort. Ayew’s effort has never been questioned ... but his discipline and application of effort except as a pure #9 has always been suspect and observably disruptive.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

To supplement the preceding post, there is a phenomenon called Reversion to the Mean, which means that over time things average out, and / or given some perturbation from the norm .... like a rocket up the arse .... the performance of something will shoot up then revert to normal over some interval of time.

I think it is fair to say that we have either witnessed a dramatic reversion to the mean but with an overshoot to the down side, or a dramatic change being made that has produced a reset of the norm downward. Results over the next month will tell the story.

Perturbations of a system can take two forms: elastic or plastic, Elastic ones can spring back or revert to the norm. Plastic ones don’t, they are permanent shifts of the norm. Consider a ballon: blow into the ballon and it expands, let the air out and it collapses - an elastic deformation. Blow too much air into the ballon and it bursts - a plastic deformation, it has a new norm and will never ever go back.

What has Cooper done. If it is elastic he can fix it by relaxing whatever he did and reverting to his August approach. If it’s plastic, then he broke it and we’re fucked. From another point of view, is Cooper open minded and his thinking elastic, or his he dogmatic and his thinking plastic. If Cooper did in fact do something is he smart enough and big enough to recognize the oh shit and correct .... or is he going to stubbornly plough ahead.

 

[CroJack]

The critical point is the stark difference between the two streaks. During the first streak our Return in Effort was excellent. During the second streak it has been abysmal. This difference is not a sliding trend over time, but a stark abrupt shift. It is reasonable to conclude therefore that something significantly changed to drive these two different streaks in the international break,

During the second streak our away form has been good. One win and two draws. The results in the home games and lack of concentration have been the problem.

1. Swansea v Forest



Celina played as ATM in his preferred role. Apart from number of shots and chances created, we were better in all aspects of the game. Possession, pass success, dribbles, aerials, tackles, corners.
Forest had better chances, but we lost the game because Grimes failed to make a tackle and Dyer failed to track back when Forest counter-attacked. One point lost.

2. Swansea v Reading



This was an even game, but we failed to protect the lead and 3 points. We allowed Reading to score in 90th minute and it was Naughton who failed to protect the flank. 2 points lost.

3. Swansea v Stoke



Again we failed to protect the lead, and even worse we again conceded in 90th minute. I don't know who committed that unnecessary foul in our half in 90th minute, but that was stupid. One point lost.

So, in the last 3 home games we have lost 4 points. With these 4 points we would have 26 points, we would be top of the league, and we wouldn't have this discussion now. There have not been any dramatic changes in our performances, just a couple of bad decisions that have cost us points.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

We are now getting inferior results against inferior opposition. If we are supposedly playing that well, but we are punching below our weight, and leading with our chin. Stoke, Reading and Forest all clocked it.

A result represents the return of 90 minutes of effort. It is a smoothing filter of the myriad events that happen during a game. Under the coin toss principle we can win one, then lose one, then win one etc. and bounce around the mean. We haven't been close to the mean since the international break in Sept. We have been below it The next, say 6 matches, will either see us revert to our mean of August, or stay at the mean of now, or move to something in between. Even BoBo managed to win a game once in a while, and we all thought he was as dumb as a box of rocks. We are now winning a game once in a while. The results tell me we have changed.

If you look at the numbers in the colored circles near the club name in each example, I presume they represent the average star rating for the team. In each example, we had the lower number. Whatever that star rating is based on, as a team, in each game, we performed below the opposition ... and our return on effort was 1 point out of 9. It would be interesting to see what we did in August.

Results are macro numbers, whereas intra-game data are micro numbers. Another phrase that captures the variance between macro and micro is: we're flattering to deceive.

To summarize, since the break, with two bottom three clubs in the sequence, we have earned 1 point out of 9 at home, earned 4 points out of 9 away. A total 5 points out of 18 or 28%. Return on Effort miserable and if it continues relegation form.

 

[Borini]

Swansea City: Freddie Woodman; Connor Roberts, Mike van der Hoorn, Joe Rodon, Jake Bidwell; Jay Fulton, Matt Grimes (captain); Andre Ayew, Yan Dhanda, Kristoffer Peterson, Borja Baston.
Subs: Kristoffer Nordfeldt, Kyle Naughton, Ben Wilmot, Wayne Routledge, George Byers, Bersant Celina, Sam Surridge.

 

[CroJack]

Here is what InfoGoal analysts say about Swansea v Brentford:

Swansea vs Brentford

Swansea recovered from a dreadful first half performance to grab a point at Barnsley on Saturday, drawing 1-1 at Oakwell, and may have been unfortunate not to snatch a winner according to expected goals (xG: BAR 1.46 - 2.32 SWA).

Steve Cooper's side need to improve defensively, but they have been impressive going forward lately, averaging a huge 2.10 xGF per game in their last four matches.

Brentford pulled off a stunning comeback on Saturday, scoring three times in the final ten minutes to beat Millwall 3-2, which was fully deserved based on chances created (xG: BRE 2.43 - 1.65 MIL).

That win lifted Brentford to to 13th place in the table, but they deserve to be much higher than that according to expected goals, ranking as the fifth best team in the Championship.

Despite their excellent overall underlying numbers, Brentford have blown hot and cold away from home this season, and Swansea should have too much attacking quality for Brentford to handle, with the Infogol model giving the hosts a 40% chance (2.50) of beating Brentford.