I can definitely see why people want our manager sacked

We have a good keeper AND the opposition strikers are generally rubbish. The chances we gifted them in the opening stages of Tuesday’s game weren’t all saved, as their strikers couldn’t get all the free shots on target. This has also been something we have seen regularly..

 

I suppose what it is questioning is how much credit you can give to the manager for that?

 

I can’t help but think that it’s pretty obvious as to why the performances haven’t been good -

1. We lost a lot of good players in the summer
2. A lot of players have been injured or out of form

As many posters have commented, we lost our entire central defence from last term. Even if we replaced them with ready made replacements, it would still take at least half a season to form a solid cohesive unit.

Given our financial constraints, we replaced them with players at an earlier stage in their careers, meaning that it’s pretty understandable that there is going to be a pretty sizeable drop off in form and understanding.

Is that Collins fault? Is it his fault we don’t win enough headers?

I think a back 3 of De Giviney, Pines, McCart will be a lot steadier for the latter half of the campaign.

As for players being out of form/injured - I don’t think this is something Collins can help either. Phillips has been far worse this term than last (although I don’t think that’s due to any less effort on his part).

Kane has been OK and better recently.
Cadden has been much poorer.
Connell has been injured, this has hampered his form, he’s probably our best player.

That’s 2/3rds of a 3 man center midfield either injured or performing under par. Is that Collins fault?

I’m not even going to mention Styles, O’Keefe or Cotter, or go into the striker department.

The point I’m trying to make is that when half the team is either new, out of form, or coming back from injury, how good would you expect the performance of that team to be in half a season of coaching?

I don’t think it’s really fair to lay that blame on Collins. Maybe he could do better, but he sure as heck could be doing a lot worse.

 

All lies damn lies & statistics innit. Some of the arguments here would've been interesting in the 90s - 'we'd be rubbish if we didn't have Redfearn'. Probably - but we did, so we weren't.

If we have poor players, the manager is rubbish because he can't make them better or get them to win games. He's accountable for our poor results.
If we have good players, the manager is rubbish because despite winning we're not playing well. He's not accountable for the good results.

Ultimately, and it's always been like this, it's a team sport - and that includes more than the 11 the manager, coaches, recruitment team & board. Collins has got some decent players and they're doing alright. I'd much rather have a lucky manager than a good one.

 

But like the half glass question that.
Is it the forwards and goalkeeper are over performing so the Coach has to be contributing towards that or cos every other team/player in the league are crap.

Reality I would guess is it’s a bit of both, we can’t slate the coach without giving some credit where there is a positive and no doubt the players in L1 wouldn’t be in L1 generally if they were good goal scorers or good defenders/goalkeepers.

 

I think you speak for most of the fans Whitey with your summery ,excellent post in my opinion.

 

He said:

So it's just "luck and should have, would have, could have" conceded goals.

It's not guaranteed we will return to the mean, because statistical outliers exist and we might actually improve in the second half of the season. Glass half full....

I don't comment on performances because I see very little, but it's clear from comments on both sides that we're not playing as well as we could be but still winning games. I've seen enough good Barnsley teams do the opposite, so it's not worth losing sleep over until results say otherwise.

It's odd that we were absolutely woeful under the previous manager when we went behind yet little criticism came his way.

When conceding first

22/23
W0 | D2 | L12
Occasions = 14
Points = 2

23/24
Occasions =10
W3 | D3 | L4

Clearly you'd rather score first and also win when conceding first, but the manager and team deserve some credit for turning round an awful record last season and becoming a little more determined.

 

Well you could retrospectively ask the same about last year when Duff had the massive advantage of also having much better centre backs and arguably a better keeper.

 

I'd agree we need to stop more shots on target, clearly at any level that's not preferable, although what sort of chances these are, where they're from, who they fall to and how good a chance they are also important factors.

2022/23
Games = 46
Shots on Target Conceded = 120
Shots on target per game = 2.67

2023/24
Games = 26
Shots on Target Conceded = 105
Shots on target per game = 4.03

 

I agree it’s great to do to other teams what has so often been done to us. Play poorly and pinch a win.

No offence but If you don’t watch the games it’s hard to take your opinion with anything other than the proverbial pinch of salt.

Everything returns to the mean eventually. That’s why it’s the mean. Glass half full we have got to 5th in the table by being pretty average. If we improve in the second part of the season our stats will change and the mean will change. Even without that the league is so poor I’d expect us to be in the play offs.

 

absolutely. Can’t recall what xg stats were like under him. There were certainly a lot of tight games

 

Is this how ppl talk about football in the pub now? Great result but disappointing xG, hopefully we return to the mean coefficient soon eh lads bloody Collins out the shots conceded per game is bang out.

 

Just on bulletin boards

 

Interesting how stats can be perceived based on when people opt to start, stop and choose to look at. Without taking any recent or focussed time period do you know that Barnsley have spent more time in the 2nd tier of English football than ANY other club? Significantly too …. (I think 75 seasons and more than 10 more than any other club - happy to be fact checked but recall reading this many years ago).
Wouldn’t that stat back up we are a 2nd tier club as the norm?

 

IIRC Leicester were our nearest challenges for that title. Although that could have changed in the last few years.

 

I don't know what xG is. A couple of people on here have tried to explain it, but the only take away I've gotten from that is it appears to be statistics on things that didn't happen. How many goals didn't a team score.

I quite like actual stats in football, goals scored, goals conceded, points, etc, but subjective opinions on the potential to score based on god knows what divided by christ knows what else arbitrarily defined by **** knows who does nothing for me.

Anyway, football is much better described by English not Maths. No amount of stats could adequately sum up our performance in the first ten minutes on Tuesday, where as "a truck load of rotting old arse" performs the task adequately. Cole's finish and Kane's penalty were liquid gold.

 

But what does that mean in this instance? Would expect our goalkeeper who is a good shot stopper to continue to stop shots. And our striker who's been good at scoring goals (at Oakwell particularly) for the last 18 months should continue to score goals (unless he's sold of course). The defence can't exactly get worse, and will hopefully be improved by Pines, and ideally a run of games with the same back 5 and gk.

 

Of course. It's a stat to be proud of. Nevertheless the fact that our average league finish is, I think 42nd, shows quite clearly that we have usually been towards the bottom end of the second tier. We've never been fully established there. I was lucky enough to see one of our longest stints in the second tier from the early eighties to the late 90s. We had more relegation battles than promotion challenges in that time.
My gripe is that many people misinterpret the stat about our tenure in tier two and think we have some birthright to be there. We don't. We've almost always had to fight like hell to be there and stay there. Since the Premier League and Sky that has only got harder.

 

It means that at the moment we are performing above expectations based on our performances relying on extra quality in key areas to do that.

Statistically if we do nothing then you would expect that our expected outcomes = more or less or actual outcomes.

Within that of course we can change things that could improve or indeed worsen the team. If we say sold Cole then one of our X factors that mean we are outperforming would be gone and you would expect that our mean expectations would be lowered.

Conversely performances & management may improve so our mean expectations would go higher.

 

I've never given a 'pinch of salt' opinion on our performances, and I'm careful not to. But that's nothing to do with the statistics which I do sometimes comment on. Outliers do exist, and they happen frequently. More so when you're playing division 1 football and opposition strikers miss plenty of opportunities. I just don't see the point in negativity for the sake of negativity. We're in the position we are on merit. You can only beat what's in front of you, which we do more often than not.