Away Form

[ender4]

How is our away form now compared to other top 4 contenders?

[Tom13]

4 hours ago, Farlz said:

The win is great obviously, feel fantastic but we were awful yet again for 75 minutes of that match. Carbon copy of every away game we play until the Brentford red. 

We're not losing every away game of course and we are picking up good points but the performances are still a massive concern for me, we haven't found the formula. I do genuinely worry about every away fixture at the moment. 

If we could just crack this, man, the sky is the limit. 

I don't agree at all that we were awful for 75 mins. We had some really good control first half.

67% possession over the whole game.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Tom13

[Sulberto21]

4 hours ago, The_Rev said:

 

So we are two points behind Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal in the away table.   I'm not sure who they have played on their travels but we've been to Anfield, St James Park, Stamford Bridge and White Hart Lane already this season.   Narrative eh? 

 

2 minutes ago, ender4 said:

How is our away form now compared to other top 4 contenders?

….

[Chine]

6 hours ago, The_Rev said:

 

So we are two points behind Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal in the away table.   I'm not sure who they have played on their travels but we've been to Anfield, St James Park, Stamford Bridge and White Hart Lane already this season.   Narrative eh? 

That’s darn good ! Fk Neverton off out of that as they are not in our conversation 

[Tomaszk]

The results are fine.

There's something weird at the start of away games when we're just all over the place. Seems to happen almost every game.

We're making it tough for ourselves.

[Mark Albrighton]

Just thinking out loud here. 

We’ve played 8 games in the conference so far this season.

Of those, 6 were then followed up by an away league game -

Wednesday 23rd August Hibs 

Following Sunday win at Burnley

Thursday 31st August Hibs 

Following Sunday loss at Liverpool 

Thursday 21st September Legia 

Following Sunday away at Chelsea 

Thursday 5th October Mostar 

Following Sunday draw at Wolves

Thursday 30th November Legia

Following Sunday draw at Bournemouth 

Thursday 14th December Mostar

Following Sunday win at Brentford

 

Ideally you’d want a 50/50 split between home and away games following what has typically been a Thursday fixture. We haven’t had that. We have played 2 home games following a Thursday game (Luton and Fulham).

Eagle eyed readers will have spotted that away games at Newcastle, Spurs and fan favourite Forest are not listed. These 3 away games that took place on a Saturday with no midweek game, European or otherwise. So can’t apply this thought to those two defeats.

I don’t know or think this conclusively proves anything. But I think it is mildly curious that our away performances are being questioned and that we have also played more away games following a Thursday fixture.

[DJBOB]

In defense of Cash at RM away conundrum, Brentford didn’t really have a lot to get at in the first half except for some runs that broke through though most of them were offside. 
 
I’m still of the opinion that it’s the main cause of our slow away starts (inability to build up against a high press, diabolically uncreative on the right side against a low block).

 But Unai keeps trying to make it stick. 

[El Segundo]

Results wise we're doing pretty well away, but the performances don't really justify the returns in my view. 

I'd say the only away performance where we were convincing winners was at Burnley. 

The other performances have all featured a fair bit of sloppiness at both ends with our defence being carved open way too easily (I'm not counting the offside ones), and individual errors. I'm not convinced our opponents will continue to fail to take advantage of that as much as they have so far.  It would be nice if they do though. 

[FLVillan]

I think the conventional wisdom for an away team in general is to keep things tight, hope to quieten the home crowd and grow into the game, playing in a counter-attacking way.  And that simply is not the way Unai wants us to play.  

Teams now are also setting up to play deep and get men behind the ball against us.  Frustrating for us to watch as we try to break teams down, but imagine being a home supporter and your team has eleven men behind the ball and hoping to nick a goal and build momentum.  Wolves, Bournemouth, Forest and now Brentford all happy to sit deep and defend at home - reminds me of the Lambert days at Villa! 

[Marka Ragnos]

1 hour ago, El Segundo said:

Results wise we're doing pretty well away, but the performances don't really justify the returns in my view. 

I'd say the only away performance where we were convincing winners was at Burnley. 

The other performances have all featured a fair bit of sloppiness at both ends with our defence being carved open way too easily (I'm not counting the offside ones), and individual errors. I'm not convinced our opponents will continue to fail to take advantage of that as much as they have so far.  It would be nice if they do though. 

Your assessment screams a need for targeted and high-quality sport psychology for our squad, if we don't already have that? What after all would be the difference between home and away forms if not something in one of the "four Cs" of sport psychology?: Control, Confidence, Concentration, or Commitment? It's got to be something in one of those areas, surely. One helpful way to look at the fracases in London on Sunday is that all that perhaps represented a misguided, undisciplined effort of players trying to reduce stress levels. We've got to to find a way to play away and win without beating the **** out of people like Maupay. But I admire our players so much. They have sick levels of concentration. I can't imagine how mental that must be, but it must lead to some mental exhaustion, too. How do players recover from that? What can be done to assist them in emotional and mental recovery and recuperation before draining away games? 

Edited December 19, 2023 by Marka Ragnos

[El Segundo]

6 hours ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Your assessment screams a need for targeted and high-quality sport psychology for our squad, if we don't already have that? What after all would be the difference between home and away forms if not something in one of the "four Cs" of sport psychology?: Control, Confidence, Concentration, or Commitment? It's got to be something in one of those areas, surely. One helpful way to look at the fracases in London on Sunday is that all that perhaps represented a misguided, undisciplined effort of players trying to reduce stress levels. We've got to to find a way to play away and win without beating the **** out of people like Maupay. But I admire our players so much. They have sick levels of concentration. I can't imagine how mental that must be, but it must lead to some mental exhaustion, too. How do players recover from that? What can be done to assist them in emotional and mental recovery and recuperation before draining away games? 

Sports psychology could help deal with factors like unfamiliar surroundings and hostile environments. Also with our tendency to start each half sluggishly and ship goals in the first 6 or 7 minutes.  Even at Burnley we conceded 2 minutes into the second half.

But there's also the different mentality and approach of the opposition when they are at home compared to at VP.  Mostly they are more confident, more front foot, more aggressive.  We maybe need to find a way to prevent that knocking us out of our stride so much and then control games more like we do at VP.  Maybe the aggro at Brentford was one way of trying to do that.    

 

[Stevo985]

On 18/12/2023 at 09:53, Tomaszk said:

The results are fine.

There's something weird at the start of away games when we're just all over the place. Seems to happen almost every game.

We're making it tough for ourselves.

This. The results are coming round, but we still don't look particularly great away from home. 

Beat Brentford but we weren't exactly convincing until they had 10 men
Drew with Bournemouth. Bournemouth are a good side but again we didn't look great
Beat Spurs which is a great result. Performance wasn't amazing but not bad
Lost to Forest and we were shit
Drew with Wolves and we weren't great
Scraped a victory against Chelsea when again we didn't look great until they went down to 10

 

That accounts for our "form". And don't get me wrong it's really good that we are picking up the right kind of results. But, especially performance wise, there is still a distinct difference between our home and away performances

[CVByrne]

It's the low block counter attack approach is the one we need to figure out. Brentford were doing the same thing to us Forest did and if it wasn't for the red card could easily have won it 1-0

I think we need to be more adaptable than we are. We were being gifted the space out wide by Brentford and never decide to create the overlap to whip in crosses, ideally with Watkins, Ramsey, Zaniolo type big players to get on end of it. 

Alternatively go with Moreno / Bailey wide to try take on the defenders and create space that way. I still feel we've been a bit lucky away from home, had red cards change games for us against Chelsea and Brentford. Spurs missed a load of chances to go 2-0 up etc.. 

I like the resilience but I think something is missing. Though we always concede first which is partially bad luck. I think the game plan is more set to keep it tight and not give opposition a lead to defend yet we fail to do this in every nearly single away game. 

[Farlz]

Yet another dreadful away performance...

[villan95]

2 minutes ago, Farlz said:

Yet another dreadful away performance...

You're not allowed to say that apparently 

[Farlz]

Just now, villan95 said:

You're not allowed to say that apparently 

It's been clear as day from game 1 that away performances are a serious issue but like you said, can't mention it. 

Can't hide behind fortunate points this week. 

[birdman]

5hit happens. Silly to roll over 2 nil up but sure Unai will admit mistakes with subs. Badly needed that 3rd goal. Onwards I say.

[allani]

The real issue today is that we looked like a team playing our 9th match in 30 days.  Had we been at home then the noise / support of the crowd might have helped the players and given them a lift / boost.  Thankfully we've got no European games to worry about for a couple of months so we won't have so many weekend / midweek / weekend runs.  A few players look in need of a rest (physically and mentally) but with key injuries / suspensions we've not been able to rotate them enough.  No idea whether we will be able to bring in reinforcements during January but we need them if we are to have a strong second half of the season.

[villan95]

5 minutes ago, allani said:

The real issue today is that we looked like a team playing our 9th match in 30 days.  Had we been at home then the noise / support of the crowd might have helped the players and given them a lift / boost.  Thankfully we've got no European games to worry about for a couple of months so we won't have so many weekend / midweek / weekend runs.  A few players look in need of a rest (physically and mentally) but with key injuries / suspensions we've not been able to rotate them enough.  No idea whether we will be able to bring in reinforcements during January but we need them if we are to have a strong second half of the season.

United had presumably played a similar amount of matches recently though and even had 2 days less rest than us heading into this one. I think it was just a really poor performance rather than fitness personally.

[Delphinho123]

38 minutes ago, Farlz said:

Yet another dreadful away performance...

I can’t actually remember the last time we won away from home and I walked away thinking - we deserved that and played well.

Literally. It probably wasn’t even that long ago but I can’t remember!