The season so far

So 13 games into the season and averaging a point a game so far, sitting 3 points above the relegation zone. Compared to last season it's not great but it was never going to be was it?

The start we've had in all honesty is about as good as I'd hoped for, particularly after the Rotherham game in pre season and the subsequent opener at Bristol City.

On the surface it looks as though when we're playing 4-1-4-1 we're struggling to create chances but as yet we haven't found a midfield pairing strong enough to play Hecky's preferred 4-4-2 but what do the numbers say? Lets have a butchers!

Individual games

Common consensus seems to be that apart from Bristol City and Sheffield United away, we've competed in most games this season and been particularly unlucky to be on the losing side against Ipswich and Hull.

Lets have a look to see if this is born out by the xG (expected goals) of those games. For those of you not familiar with xG it is basically a simple way to think about the Expected Goals value, is as the number of goals a team “deserved” to score, if we lived in a world where all players were equally skilful and we had perfect information about the shot. For example a penalty is calculated at 0.75 xG as a penalty is generally converted by the attacker 75% of the time.

It is well described here:

We'll start at the Bristol City game and show how the game went from an xG point of view and have a look at a passmap and try to see why.

A quick explanation of the graph above: every jump up in the line is a shot at goal. The larger the jump, the higher the xG rating, the better the chance. The dots are actual goals scored.

This graph doesn't make pretty reading with City taking an early lead and completely dominating the game up until the hour mark scoring another 2 and having a few other decent chances, while the Reds don't trouble the opposition at all, until past the hour mark when Bristol City ease off allowing a consolation goal late on.

The above is a passmap which shows the average position of each player in the game, the larger the dot the more time that player has spent on the ball. The arrows indicate how often the ball is passed between each player. The thicker the arrow, the more often the passing combination has been made.

The 2 main issue I can see with this pass map that caused such a poor performance are:

1) The position of Alex Mowatt is far too central, offering no width on the left attacking wise. This problem is exacerbated further when you consider that Andy Yiadom is predominantly right footed so will always look to come inside. Defensively Mowatt is leaving Yiadom horribly exposed on the left and you can see he has been pushed back more having to deal with 2 Bristol players, if you compare his position vertically to Mccarthy on the other flank. This could be why Mowatt was farmed out to Oxford?

2) Ike Ugbo is left far too isolated up front on his own with Bradshaw dropping far too deep into midfield and having minimal impact on the game. There is literally no link up to Ugbo at all which would explain why we failed to trouble the opposition defence for an hour of the game.

After the horror show at Bristol came a much improved performance at home to Ipswich. This is born out by the xG in that game which shows that the Reds were extremely unfortunate not to come away with all 3 points.

As you can see from the timeline the Reds completely dominated the first half and should have been 2 goals to the good. Ipswich hit us with a couple of sucker punches after half time and completely shut the game down offering no attacking threat but restricting us to small chances.

It was a similar story in the Hull City game-

Barnsley completely dominated this game with Hull scoring from their only chance in the game.

This points to a need to be more clinical in games where we are dominating something that may come once this young squad has a bit more championship experience.

So you may be thinking that we've been unlucky this season and should have more points on the board than we do currently. I went through each game so far and calculated how many points we would have if the games went according to xG . Here are the results-

As you can see we have as many points as we should according to xG at this stage of the season. With our 2 unlucky home defeats at home to Ipswich and Hull being offset by the fortuitous win at home to Forest, and 3 draws gained from games we could have lost against QPR, Boro and Wednesday (although xG doesn't equate for Adam Reach falling on his arse and looping the ball over Davies or phantom disallowed goals.)

Joe Williams

While looking at the passmaps available from a few of our games against Bristol City and Nottingham Forest, one player in particular stood out for me - Joe Williams-

He is ideally positioned for the role of a defensive midfielder. You can see from the pass lines he is doing a good job of taking the ball off of the central defenders and transitioning it through the lines into Moncur and Mowatt, in particular in the Bristol City game. In the Forest game he is again positioned well in front of the back 4 and allows both full backs to push forward to provide width, with Hammill and Hedges tucking in slightly to support Bradshaw.

Williams would appear to be pivotal, particularly if we are to continue playing 4-1-4-1.

Tom Bradshaw

Bradshaw is our top scorer and has looked our man most likely to get among the goals this season. This is illustrated by the graph below showing a breakdown of our attack.

You can find an explanation of this graph here

Bradshaw is our biggest goal threat by quite a distance. On current form he is expected to score just shy of 0.4 goals per game which would equate to around 18 goals if he played every minute of a 46 game season, which I'm sure every Reds fan would be delighted with. He is currently scoring at a rate of 0.3 goals per game which would still result in 14 goals which is still pretty decent.

Harvey Barnes is actually currently scoring at a better rate than Bradshaw at 0.45 goals per game, although I wouldn't expect him to maintain that scoring rate throughout the season. Barnes is looking like an excellent signing and is providing a goal threat from the wings which is helping offset a disappointing return from Ike Ugbo so far.

Overall picture

The below graph shows how many expected goals each team in the championship is scoring compared to how many they are conceding. Ideally you want to be in the bottom right of this graph.

Attacking wise we are absolutely fine, sitting just below average for the division and creating more chances per game than the table topping blunts. Where there is a problem is the amount of chances we are conceding per match, which is the second worst in the division behind Burton. Burton are the worst team in the division by some margin for chances created and conceded, so we should really be looking to pick up 3 points from the Pirelli stadium on Tuesday night.