Godders

49 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Why do you think this? Genuine question.

As I showed earlier, he's already produced play off form (bar maybe a couple of points), that's despite the awful run we had in January.
So even if he is incapable of improving us further, then even his current record over a whole season would probably see us make the play offs.

So I'm curious as to why you see it as what he could produce "at best".

I am also genuinly interested in @mykeyb reasons for reaching this conclusion.

Adding to what Stevo has said, Bruce has proved time and again that he gets teams promoted from this league, most recently last year, so I'm also genuinely interested to understand what has changed in 10 months to suggest that next season, Bruce could be the "wrong man in charge" if priority number 1 is promotion.

4 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Very good chance of being 7 points away on sat with 5 to go. If we can just get to within 2 points by the last game...

If you're talking about Fulham, don't forget we play them so really we should be looking at it like we'd be 4 off them with 4 to go...

At the moment I think we should be looking at Sheff Wed as the benchmark. We could well be 6 points off them with 5 to go on Saturday night 

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think, perhaps inadvertently, that is an example of what people who have concerns over the current approach/style are getting at.

Looking to the future, the club will not be successful if the team cannot keep hold of the ball better, create sustained pressure on well organised opponents and have the ability to BOTH play on the break and also control games via a more patient version of football.

MO'N's teams have always been restricted by a glass ceiling imposed by the one dimensional nature of his style of football. It's kind of a one trick shot - you can suprise somebody once and do really well if you get lucky, but you cannot consistently be at the top playing break away football.

I'm accepting of the way things are going right now, it's a big job turning the club round and things appear to be getting better, rather than worse as has been the case for the past few years. So that's all good.

If we want to go up, performances will need to be better than they've been this season. Better ball retention, better passing, more intelligent play is necessary. And that kind of style needs to be embedded in the club, otherwise coming back down again is a higher likelihood.

all IMO, of course

 

MON's glass ceiling with us was 6th in the Premier League and a spot in Europe. If that's what one dimensional, counter-attacking football gets you, then I, for one, am all for it.

Only then would we need to worry about whether or not it's good enough to get us into the top 4/Champions League.

9 minutes ago, Nigel said:

Do we boo bad percentages?

 

No, but I'm sure we could get a chant going 

"30%? You're having a laugh" 

Followed by

"You don't know what you're doing!"

25 minutes ago, sheepyvillian said:

. , Man City ,  Liverpool and Spurs ,all play attractive football, and I guarantee the supporters of those clubs wouldn't trade that for anything . What is the problem with me wanting the team I support to play attractive football? If Bournemouth can ,then so can we .

My old man's a spurs fan. I just asked him "would you mind Spurs playing boring, long ball football if it meant winning the champions league?" his response was "we could field 11 goalkeepers for all I care if it meant we won the champions league".

Turns out some of them would trade for the right price.

4 minutes ago, romavillan said:

wow, comparing goal difference per game to possession per game with respect to points? 

That's like comparing the effectiveness of shots that go in against shots that go wide and concluding it would be better for a coach to get his players to get their shots to go in than go wide.

Yes, you are exactly right. Most here seem to be able to grasp that the most important thing to be a good team in football is to score more goals than your opponents score against you. Some though seem to think that having more of the ball is more important. 

30 minutes ago, sheepyvillian said:

Behave .

Well done. Cracking argument. Almost has me coming round to your way of thinking.

Just to put this one to bed though, I was interested in exploring exactly how much of a relationship there was between possession and league points scored. So I've looked at the data for the Premier League, Championship, La Liga and Bundesliga and plotted points per game (to allow for the difference in games played between the teams) and average possession across the season. I then calculted the coefficient of correlation (if you're not aware of what this is, it shows how correlated one set of data is to another. It ranges from 0 to 1 with 1 being perfectly correlated, 0 meaning there is no relationship at all). For comparison I also did the same with goal difference per game as well. 

The findings:

Possession vs PPG = 0.534

GD per game v PPG = 0.900

So while there does appear to be some correlation between league success and possession, there is a far greater siginficant correlation between goal difference per game and league success. If I were a football manager, statistically it seems I would get far more success concentrating on getting my team to concede less goals and/or score more goals than I would be getting them to keep more of the ball.

It seems Steve Bruce may actually know what he's doing, despite you wanting a more possession based game.

1 hour ago, sheepyvillian said:

You know exactly what kind of possesion I'm on about . The sort of possesion most top clubs have when playing at home , like Liverpool or Man City for instance .

No, I'm afraid I don't. I didn't realise there was different kinds of possession depending on which teams we're talking about. I must admit I assumed that possession means the amount of time the team controls the ball, which as has been pointed out, doesn't on it's own translate to results. 

I think you may be falling foul of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here. Have you stopped to think about why the top teams have more possession? I would bet my bottom dollar that a not insignificant amount of the possession comes from the fact that the teams set up defensively when playing them because they expect a tough game. I.e. high possession is a result of successful performances. Not a driver of successful performances. A simple test of this is whether a top team playing another top team has the same amount of possession as they would against a lesser team. If it was style of play (i.e. what your suggesting, that a possession based game is the only way to get success in this sport) then Liverpool should  dominate games against both Sunderland and Barcelona at Anfield. That wouldn't be the case though. Barcelona would dominate the game. 

15 hours ago, sheepyvillian said:

Who questioned wins ? It's the possession stats I have issue with , like I said ,when playing at home we should be having at least 50% possession.,regardless of the result.  Fast.,we're the biggest team in the league,and Imo we should be playing like it .

Think about what you're suggesting here. I mean really think about it.

Consider a team that spends 90 minutes passing the ball between their keeper and the back 4. I've just shown you a team that likely averages far more than 50% possession a game. Have I just shown you a winning team though? Absolutely not. If the ball's not getting out of the defence, the best this team can hope for is a 0-0. Evey game.

Possession stats in isolation means f**k all. So calling for minimum 50% possession at home is absolute bollocks. You, as well as all other Villa fans, would be up in arms if we became that team passing it around the defence in order to have more possession.

Now consider a team playing the tiki-taka defenders. They could sit back for 15 minutes at a time, then nick the ball, leg it up towards their goal and carve out an opportunity. This is a team that will win with far less of the ball, because, importantly, they are the only team that has had the ball in a dangerous area.

If you want to focus on possession then, a far more important stat to look at is the difference in possession in and around the opponents area. Not possession as a whole.

Perhaps you could show us those possession stats to better support your argument that we need to control the ball better at home?

1 hour ago, srsmithusa said:

But I'm sick and tired of assurances and optimism.  I want results and I want responsibility.  Now!!!!  

Man City were a solidly mid-table prem team when they were taken over. Their new owners spent silly money that summer. 

They finished 10th in their first season under new ownership. Mid-table. Zero improvement on previous seasons despite the money spent.

Do you really mean to say that that 10th place finish has hurt them as a club? Because in spite of that first season with no apparent improvement in the league, I'd say they've kicked on to become one of the best clubs on the continent. 

Perhaps it goes to show that instant success, or lack thereof, does not necessarily indicate a bleak future of mediocrity or worse.

1 hour ago, TRO said:

just like Brexit.......we have to wait patiently

What, slowly heading towards a prolonged period of massive upheaval and uncertainty after being sold a bunch of lies by those in charge? 

I hope it's not like Brexit!

3 hours ago, bobzy said:

The truth is in the middle, and I had this conversation to death earlier in the thread.

You can't take the extremes of a situation and gibe it merit. No-one wants the complete demise of the club.

In a slightly-amended-to-avoid-confusion confirmation of my thoughts earlier in the thread, I would rather finish 15th this season playing good football than finish 7th playing horrible stuff - the latter obviously involves winning more. 

Fair enough. 

I'd much rather see us 7th playing horrible stuff, for the very simple reason that winning all the games we need to finish 7th shows that we're doing something right.

I want my team to do the best that they can do, and in this sport that means winning games. At least until the FA introduce extra points for artisitic performance. 

You may not like it, it may not be pretty to watch, but you cannot argue with the fact that something in the grand scheme of things must be going right to finish 7th. And to do it consistently over the course of the season I would argue shows that Steve Bruce knows what it is. 

I'd take 7th over 15th any time you ask me, regardless of how we're playing football.

13 minutes ago, vreitti said:

Isn't it obvious from my OP?

Not really I'm afraid:

47 minutes ago, vreitti said:

But it's really not just about winning or losing, is it? We won plenty when Bruce first arrived, albeit the football was dire, and you could see the 'downfall' around the corner. I know not all emphasize the performance, as I do. To some the result is all that matters.

You're emphasizing performance over results here, so I'm taking that to mean you wouldn't mind seeing us relegated as long as we're playing attractive football 

50 minutes ago, vreitti said:

At the moment I'll too of course take any win, but I'd still like to see genuine progress, from a pure playing perspective.

But now, you want us to win despite how we're playing, so you're emphasizing results over performance.

15 minutes ago, vreitti said:

But it's really not just about winning or losing, is it? We won plenty when Bruce first arrived, albeit the football was dire, and you could see the 'downfall' around the corner. I know not all emphasize the performance, as I do. To some the result is all that matters. At the moment I'll too of course take any win, but I'd still like to see genuine progress, from a pure playing perspective.

Would you rather get promoted playing rubbish football, or be relegated playing beautiful football?

30 minutes ago, JE- said:

Tonight we will see if it's another false dawn or we really have turned that long corner 

Genuine question JE, if we win tonight, would you be willing to concede that Bruce maybe shouldn't be sacked at the moment?

2 hours ago, Tommo_b said:

Just out of interest as I don't know much about Bruce's transfer history, has he signed any decent players before? Would Abel Hernandez be considered decent? Was he a Bruce signing? I know he has signed a lot of dross, but I also know Rafa at Liverpool signed a lot of dross. 

As much as I've had a fair bit of entertainment reading this thread over the last few weeks, it might be worth defining what you think 'decent' is.

If only to stop some here defining decent as "consistently in the frame for the ballon d'or", and then using it as a stick to beat Bruce with for the next few pages.

Wow, what a difference 90 mins makes. 7.30pm on Tuesday and we're all chuffed with the business the club's done in the window. 10pm and Steve Bruce is a dinosaur, past it, with no clue and who won't take us anywhere.

Liverpool are in a worse run of form than pretty much any other team in the country. I guess Klopp is also a washed up has-been with no clue as to how the modern game is played.

Lets give SB the time he needs to get the new players on his (and each others) wavelength before jumping to conclusions.

Sooo...

Any news on signings?

5 minutes ago, TheMelvillan said:

I cant even imagine what the formula for that would look like

Possibly like this:

+100% != +100%

If he signs today, I would expect the medical to be fairly soon. I would think he'd probably want to be at the game tonight, so would be need to be done at the Hospital this afternoon.

Who's the third in then? Taylor is in as part of the Ayew deal, and I'm assuming Hogan is one of the 99 or 95%, so who's the other?

I don't think its Bedeau as I would expect the good doc to show  that as a sale and loan back.

Gueye, when he joined, openly spoke about using us as a stepping stone to better things, and he played pretty well for us.

If Hogan is hungry for premiership football, then when he joins us he'll be putting in the performances just as much as others in the squad I'm sure, both trying to get us promoted and to play himself into the shop window.

3 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

A championship team has a better chance of staying up than a team of inexperienced foreigners glued together to try survive.

I'm glad we are trying to build a team for the future where the nucleus of our side is british

I wouldn't be so sure. Wasn't there talk of 3 teams when Xia took over- one to get us up, one to keep us up, and one to get us to Europe? 

That would suggest this is the "get us up" team and the changes will be rung where applicable once we're back up.