stevegrant

Indeed. I imagine most of us have come across "that guy" in our careers, the bloke who can speak with absolute crystal clear self-confidence about any subject and can convince most people in earshot that they know what they are talking about, and yet those with pre-existing knowledge can see him for what he is - a bit of a bluffer. From what I gather from his time at Brentford, he was the "ideas guy" but also the vast majority of his ideas were ignored because there were checks and balances alongside and above him at the club to ensure he didn't go "off message". His job title was Joint-Director of Football. As mentioned elsewhere, he left Brentford 14 months ago and yet they didn't seek to hire a replacement, which seems to imply that they are happy to continue with the other DoF who remains at the club. Their record since that time would appear to back up that decision. For all that he may have used the Thomas Frank defence when talking about the Nathan Jones situation, Frank was already a known quantity at Brentford as he was working at the club with their B team, so it was easier to give him a bit of rope when the early results weren't good because they had seen his management and coaching style in action over a long period of time.

I don't know if there is a model that differentiates between, say, a centre forward and a left-back taking a shot under the same circumstances. I would imagine there might be attempts to do so, but I imagine without being a bit of a "best guess", it's quite difficult to quantify the shooting ability of an individual player relative to another, especially across potentially different eras. A lot of the originating stats probably date back at least 15 years or so - there will obviously be a weighting towards more recent data, but old data will have been used to set the initial baselines.

A lot to digest there, but one summary point I would make is that if the Wolves game this season is in the top two for "the most dire performances I think I have ever seen" then I would suggest you've not been watching any game you've been in attendance at over your decades of support, and that, in fact, you are suffering from the common ailment known as recency bias. We were "meh" against Wolves, they had one shot and scuffed it in, while we contrived to miss an actual open goal where the opposition keeper had literally given up trying to get up in time and three or more other very presentable chances (to the extent that I would expect even our profligate strikeforce to have taken at least one of them). I've been at games (and I'm sure you have too) where we've not even managed to lay a glove on teams, even bad teams from lower divisions in cup ties. So you call for fairness from people in other posts when talking about Jones and yet your dislike of Hasenhüttl ("dictator", FFS ) plucks out a random defeat where we weren't objectively "bad" - whether you use the eye test or statistics, or a combination of both - leads you to ridiculous hyperbole to support that dislike. Very difficult to take any other point seriously, in truth. As for xG, it's not based on "different people's definition of an easy chance or a hard chance". It is a statistical model based on all of the previous data that is available for shots from a particular position on the pitch and assigns a % chance of the player scoring that shot based on a range of variables: the angle the shot is taken from, so a shot from the centre of the goal naturally has a higher chance of being scored than a shot from the touchline; whether the shot is being taken on the player's stronger foot, their weaker foot, or with the head; the position of the goalkeeper; the number of defenders in the way; whether there is a challenge for the ball at the point of the shot; probably some other things I've not thought of It's not an exact science, but then it doesn't claim to be. It's only statphobes who claim that people try to frame it as the be-all and end-all, and that if we "win the xG" then we win the game. It's *a* statistic that is useful for assessing the balance of play based on the quality of chances created, with a view to not simply relying on shots/shots on target figures which are fairly obviously not a brilliant barometer because any team could have 10 potshots from 40 yards that have practically zero chance of going in but lose to a team who creates two 5-yard tap-ins. It's a useful context metric. Football is a low-scoring sport, so as you say, human error and special moments can be a much bigger difference than they would be in a higher-scoring sport like, say, rugby or individual sports like tennis or golf. xG applies context to the final score to give a more accurate - but by no means perfect - reflection of how the score should have looked. Statistics are not meant to be used in isolation when assessing things overall - they're good for people who do modern betting, with things like over/under markets on shots on target, number of fouls, cards, corners, etc - but in conjunction with what you can see with your eyes. To disregard them is simply a luddite/dinosaur view these days, nobody in the modern game would seriously take a complete "I don't care what the stats say, my eyes tell me this" approach because they'd be laughed out of the room, even at non-league level there's basically nobody that stubborn anymore.

I don't ignore it as such, it's just that the data is easier to obtain for league games, and it's a more consistent situation. Cup games, especially Carabao Cup games, are notorious for teams playing weakened teams. Absolutely no doubt that City fielded a much weaker XI than they could have done (de Bruyne and Haaland on the bench the obvious observations but there were a number of others, including the keeper whose erratic positioning was the sole reason Djenepo was able to score his goal in the manner that he did), and as a result there's just a bit more context to that result and performance. We played well, certainly, but then I could counter it with the absolute shambles that was the second leg at St James' Park, and so much else that's gone on either side of it strongly suggests the City game was an exception rather than any sort of trend.

Can't remember if it was this thread or another one, but while there was certainly a big farewell for Rasmus at Brentford 14 months or so ago, he was co-Director of Football there and they haven't bothered replacing him. I think we would probably all agree that they're doing alright there without him.

If he had, at least there'd be a metric that most people have got some sort of grip on in the real world. And there's been no discernible improvement. Under Ralph, we were 18th on 12 points from 14 games, having scored 12 and conceded 24. The xG stats suggested that we should have scored 14.72 goals and conceded 20.41 goals, which would have given us 15.39 points and - if every game were played based on xG - would have had us 12th in the table and probably not overly concerned with how things were going. Since Jones has come in, we are 20th overall and also 20th in that timescale too. 3 points from 7 games, 5 scored, 14 conceded. Should have scored 6.87 and conceded 11.18, which should have earned us 6.39 points. So the number of goals scored overall (because let's be fair, set piece goals count exactly the same as open play ones) is kind-of the same, goals conceded is exactly the same - two per game - and then looking at what we should have scored and conceded based on the quality of chances created/given up, we were slightly better under Ralph at both ends in terms of chance creation, but only marginally. Where there is a HUGE difference, though - and I know I said that set piece goals count exactly the same as open play ones, but in reality if a team is heavily reliant on set pieces then against an organised and high quality defence you have to do something pretty special to break through - is the difference between set piece and open play goals. Under Jones we've scored just one goal from open play, which was JWP's equaliser at Everton, in 7 games. Meanwhile, under Ralph only two of those 12 goals were from set pieces (Adams equaliser at Leicester, Lavia equaliser against Chelsea) and 10 in open play. Can you read much into it? I think where the goals are coming from would suggest that we are much more predictable and formulaic under Jones, hence the huge reliance on set piece goals. And predictable in the Premier League is no good unless you have players who are the best in the league, which - other than JWP's free kicks - we don't have. You're relying on the opposition making a mistake if the opposition know exactly what you're going to try to do because of the level of players and coaching and organisation of the teams in this division.

To be honest, I think that signing was opportunist more than anything else on our part - very cheap because of his contract situation at Luton, fills a position that is a short-term problem because of injuries and also has many of the attributes the manager seems to demand that certainly aren't present in our current full back options. If we retain both KWP and Livramento beyond the summer then he's probably a player we'd look to move on (or loan) next season but if there's transfer interest in either of those then he can provide backup for the other.

I'd suggest that if you or I were being blamed for something that is now beyond the scope of our job description (but the effective change wasn't really communicated to stakeholders), we'd be quite hacked off as well.

My understanding is that Semmens has had effectively zero input into the footballing side of things since the end of the January transfer window. Which is basically fine, he's the CEO, not the Director of Football.

People do seem to completely rewrite history when it comes to players who were coming through with us but didn't make it and then went on to be good with other clubs. Matt Targett, despite being a local lad and a massive Saints fan growing up (which everyone knew, it wasn't some well-hidden secret), was subjected to absolute dog's abuse when he played if he ever dared to misplace one pass, especially when we were attacking the Northam, those pitchside in the Kingsland were unrelenting. He was behind Ryan Bertrand in the pecking order for his entire time in the first team squad, and almost certainly rightly so considering Bertrand's pedigree and general performance level. At the time we allowed him to go on loan to Fulham and then sold him to Villa, he simply wasn't going to get enough regular football unless there was an injury, and at the time everyone was delighted that we'd "pulled Villa's pants down" (or words to that effect) to get £15m for a player who many thought wasn't good enough. Harrison Reed was in the first team squad when we had Morgan Schneiderlin, Victor Wanyama and Oriol Romeu at the club. While everyone could see a promising footballer when he got an opportunity (everyone picks out a game against Everton where he was excellent), those opportunities were understandably limited because of the calibre of player in front of him, and there was also an underlying issue when he did get a chance, which was that his all-action style would often see him getting booked in the first half of games and his influence would be pretty much nullified from that point onwards because he couldn't risk a second yellow card. He probably needed the time away playing in the Championship where if you're a good player you'll find a fraction more time, to develop and work on how his off-ball work could be harnessed for an entire game without running the risk of costing his team, which he has done and he now looks like a very good player. Not world-beating, but good enough to not look out of place. You've also got to remember that while we as fans might say "well, I'd rather we keep him just in case Bertrand/Wanyama/whoever gets an injury", players want to play football. Reed, especially, had got to an age (he was already 25 when we sold him!) where he probably accepted his chances here were limited and he needed to leave in order to actually have a playing career, and from memory he had a year left on his contract and the signs were he wasn't going to sign an extension if one was offered.

Well the 9th goal was scored with the last kick of the game, the ref didn't give us time to kick off again, so it would make sense that everyone was fucking off at that point.

So he's managed to get the players to play the way he "wants" to play once in thirteen games, and it depends on a top team turning in arguably their worst performance in years against us. That doesn't really bode well, does it?

Pelle's departure itself was fine, tbf, his knee was nowhere near up to playing Premier League football anymore, we couldn't believe our luck when Shandong Luneng offered £15m for him, and he was never going to turn down the £350k a week they put on the table.

Theoretically now, but where it's not driven by radio scheduling I wouldn't be surprised if it starts a bit late. People slow to get to their seats, etc.

Don't know whether there's any sort of "rift", really. Power shift, more likely. There has been a change in the chain of command since Sports Republic bought the club which means that Semmens now isn't at the top of the food chain anymore. Gao (and Katharina Liebherr, to a lesser extent) let him get on with it and trusted his judgement, presumably because Gao wasn't actually putting any money in (no particular issue with that, the club ideally should stand on its own two feet - we've seen what happens when it doesn't), whereas now SR are putting money in to fund transfer spending they understandably want more control. If there was a "rift" and Semmens objected so strongly to the appointment, it seems odd that a resignation letter hasn't been written.

My understanding is that Adam Blackmore is on holiday this week, which is why he's not involved with the fans forum. Hearing Paul Belverstone (formerly of ITV, now - I think - Premier League Productions) might be chairing it.

Presumably they'll take the safety first approach of only letting people tackle in the style of the current England team so as to not inflict any damage whatsoever.

We'll never know what's said behind closed doors, but the two Ronald Koeman seasons were very much the exception in that, despite being safe in the division, we kept on going right to the end of the season. Since I've been going to games in 1991, in seasons where we weren't expected to be at the upper end of the division (i.e. in the second or third tiers), there was always a noticeable drop-off in performances and results once we were "effectively" (not necessarily mathematically) safe from any relegation danger, and we'd coast through the remaining games. When in previous years there's been those nagging dangers and you reach safety at a much earlier point in the season, as we did last season, I guess there is a natural relief that relaxes you a bit too much. And perhaps that's why - at the moment - we don't have the absolute elite-level players that we have had in the past. While we know many of them have the ability, they don't quite have that elite-level mindset and mentality that would make them a candidate to play for a title-challenging team where you need to be the absolute best 100% of the time. And that's where management comes in. You can coach technique, patterns of play and (sorry, Nathan...) systems, but there are relatively few managers in the modern game who can instil that elite level of hunger in already-excellent players. For the most part, they either have it already or they never will.