Minority Report v Derby County

I have bookmarked this comment and will use it to cheer myself up when I feel down. Thanks.

 

And that in itself just shows how different folks can watch the same event and come away with completely different opinions. My son and I both thought that it was a close game, and that neither side looked like relegation contenders.

 

And also how the result skews opinion.i thought we were marginally the better side over 90 minutes if you scored each minute like boxing, I scored it about 922 to 900 in favour of us.

 

Go on their forum GG
What a shambles.First time this season I really have the dread of relegation in my mind.
We had some chances for sure, but we made Barnsley look like Barcelona, not a team who has lost 7 in a row. New/sacked manager bounce for them or not, we had to get at least a draw.
The most disappointing point was the second goal, not the goal itself but that if, we had exactly the same chance, I don't think we would score!

These players had shown fight and bottle all season until last couple of games and tonight they just looked like they’ve given up. And if they hadn’t, they might as well do after that.

Its not bad luck when you miss a free header from 5 yards out. Its a crap header.

This team will struggle in League One.Very poor.

The absolute pits. Spineless and abject (with exceptions) for most of the match.

Bird my MOTM tonight in what has been a pretty dire performance

FFS off the fkin bar - not saying we deserved the point but how fkin unlucky have we been with the woodwork in recent weeks

crossbar today...dont get me wrong im clutching at straws as weve been poor but for the love of god give us some luck

Festy bright spark in a poor team tonight.

The players have no excuse for this lacklustre 2nd half performance. Have a long look at yourselves and show the passion that the travelling support has.

Carrying on from the Blackburn game. Look totally lost as a team.

Outworked, outplayed and outfaught so far.

Rooney must be the most stubborn bloke ever. If I was him I’d go home and have a nice life. This is painful.

Rooney needs to rip this lot to bits after this performance, then take himself home and have a word with himself.

This is bad, I imagine Rooney must be livid with what he is seeing.

Woeful display so far.

I have watched the second half and I have to say we look like a side walking into relegation.

We were very poor out of possession. Didn’t get near their players. Their players won most 50/50 balls in the few instances we got close to them. We turned 60/40 balls in our favour into 50/50 balls by a pure lack of technical ability to control the ball added to the fact that they were actually trying to close us down.


In possession, the lack of urgency was amazing until the last 5 mins. Played into a crowded midfield when the ball was on the flanks. First instinct of most if the players was to try and play backwards and safe. . Depressing evening.

what Barnsley did well was move the ball quickly side to side into space, whereas we did everything so slowly it was easy for them to get across and cover. And far too often we turned back into a congested area and ended up losing it rather than turning out and spreading the play

Three main things that killed us last night. Rotten luck, Poor decision making, and some ropey defending

Really poor apart from the last few minutes. Unlucky hitting the bar but we need to create more clear cut chances then luck will change. All disappointing. Ebosele looks a first team player already though, looked dangerous going forward.
Fair play to Barnsley, they just seemed to have a bit more fight about them where it counted.

 

Interesting as always. Much I agree with and some I don’t. Thought there were some formation tweaks. Centre halves spaced more evenly. Woodrow dropping into a No 10 role but fairly minor.

A draw may have been a fairer result though that’s mainly due to the last 15-20 minutes when as is usual a team on a bad runs sits deeper and deeper to defend a narrow lead and invites pressure onto themselves.

Benson is a conundrum seems a little lightweight and easily shrugged off the ball and not keen on much running or tracking back. He needs to work on the bread and butter side of the game because all the passing attributes are there but you need to earn and fight to make that impact not just expect your midfield partner to do everything

 

I'm sorry - I didn't mean that what you quoted wasn't accurate as far as Derby fans were concerned.

I meant - did you think the post you quoted was accurate as far as the game was concerned?

If Derby played below par against us - according to their fans - then it remains to be seen where that leaves us in terms of our own trajectory from now on.

The more i read how poor they were on the night, the more it makes me think that we won cos we caught them on an off day.

Anyway, we'll see. I do think however, unlike quite a few others on here, that our squad will have to scrap their balls off to stay up.

We're not so blessed with talent that any old coach can turn up and keep us in this league.

 

Sorry!!...my view was that we deserved to win, 2-1 was probably fair...I didn't think they were anywhere near as bad as their forum seemed to think.

 

That's the game I saw. And I would add an enjoyable game that would have been so even if we hadn't won. Some good football, plenty of effort, played at a decent tempo in front of a noisy crowd. All in all a good advert for Championship football between two half decent teams who, all things being equal, wouldn't be troubling the promotion places but wouldn't be looking over their shoulder either. Derby's points deduction and our mistake when recruiting the manager resulted in a bottom of the table fixture, but both teams looked a lot better than that. Nothing at all to get frustrated about in terms of performance for either set of fans. Although Derby fans can legitimately feel that way as its never nice to lose.

 

I've watched a shed load of Barnsley performances over the years as have we all. I watch most of them nowadays on ifollow the day after the match. It's a bit crap in that you know the result but you also are a bit less emotional and less swayed by the atmosphere and individual moments.
The Derby game to me looked like hundreds of other games I've watched at this level. Two fairly well matched teams, both creating chances, neither particularly dominant. One of them takes an opportunity more than the opponents and wins. That's what we did. We weren't brilliant but we played ok and got the three points. Simple as that.

 

I agree with all of that. It was an enjoyable and exciting game to watch, with lots of positives. Supporters of both teams should have been given cause for optimism. That's why I'm struggling with this weeks Minority Report. I've read it three times and the only comment that comes anywhere near to being positive is "Benson hit some wonderful passes..." and even that one is immediately wiped out by criticism of the player. I can understand that the Derby fans' comments are born out of frustration with the result, but I can't understand RR's negativity at all, not this week. And don't even get me started about the poster who created a thread within two hours of the final whistle in order to criticise the club captain...

 

Sorry red rain but as much as I enjoy reading your posts...id say....theres no wonder you don't enjoy the game like the rest of us you must constantly have you head in a note book marking down statistics....either way your data must be flawed ...ie writing... eyes not on game etc. So easy to miss stuff
Personally ... it wasn't the fact Derby were better than us I'd say it was more down to the experience of older heads on their part making the ball do the work.... that at times showed.
Not taking anything away from Derby, I thought they played their part, in what I saw as an entertaining game whereby, two sides gave their all.
Yes at times we looked nervous at the back and had no outlet for the ball to be pumped forward from corners....thus when we cleared it was returned back to the danger area rather quickly at times putting pressure on us to hold our shape....but hold we did the majority of the time.
Credit should be given not only to the boys for their spirited display and adaptation to a change of style but also to Joe for his management and game plan and his encouragement from the touchline for the full 90+ minutes ...something we very rarely saw under schopp....and importantly...let's not overlook the fact that Joe only had two days yes two days to implement and get his ideas across...
That alone deserves credit in my book.
As the saying goes one swallow doesn't make a summer ..so before we get in front of ourselves let see what the Hull game brings and what another two days on the training pitch brings about ......think you might be surprised especially if you look up....for the full 90+ minutes...try it .it works for the majority of us....and I'm not been disrespectful.

 

They are not my statistics. They are taken from the BBC report of the match, plus one other source for the territory stat. When I arrive home from the match, I enter the statistics into a pre-prepared spreadsheet, and it does the rest. That is why I said in my report that I had to wait until I got home for confirmation. Statistics are not everything, and as many have pointed out, it is not exactly unusual that games are won and lost, when the statistic say otherwise. You can only look at these things over the long term, especially when the numbers were close as they were on Wednesday. I used the statistics only as confirmation of the impression that I had at the game, that is that Derby were the dominant team.

As I keep saying, Minority Report is usually about systems. Wednesday was slightly different. I had chosen a team before the game, and had found on reflection that my choice could not have played because there were 6 of my team that could not play the full 90 minutes. I wanted to encourage others to perform the same experiment. I wanted others to know what difficulties Markus Schopp had over his tenure as head coach, because there were times when he also had 6 or 7 injuries to cope with as well. I wanted others to see what I have seen, that Schopp was also unlucky, and that the dominance that Derby exerted during that last 15 minutes, when many of our players had run their race and were literally hanging on for grim death, would probably have resulted in an equaliser against an unlucky coach. I wanted to make the point that Schopp had coached the team through the worst of the injury crisis, and just as it was easing, just as there was at last hope that better times were coming.... he was sacked.

However, I also wanted to emphasise that the new guy had made very few changes to the shape and structure of our play. For the reasons that I have stated over and over again, I do not believe that it is possible to play 3-4-3 with a press, and without the press, and the anti-football methods that Ismael used to ensure that the press took place in the opposition half, the team needs to play in a different way, and our owners and CEO seem to accept that. The team must be able to get the ball forward quickly in order to catch the opposition unprepared. In fairness, both our goals came from long balls, but in many other ways, our football broke down with the pass forward because we had no effective way of doing that, and I felt that Benson contributed to that by taking up negative positions. Whilst Gomes was willing to receive the ball whilst tightly marked, Benson was not, and that meant that he did not take up dangerous positions, and he did not want the ball as much as an influential midfield player should want the ball. If it was the coach who had told him to do that, then in my opinion, the coach is wrong, because it led to the passing of the ball along the line of the back 3, and the slow transition of the ball forward.

In short, there was much that had not changed, and much that needs to.

 

Hi @Red Rain I asked yesterday, don't know if you missed it, i just wanted to understand what you meant in the last sentence above?

 

I took it as he predicts us to lose every game.

 

The way I read it was that we would no longer play "entertaining" football as per his index, but we would start winning.

That's why I asked to see if I had misunderstood.

 

The scores for the previous three games. Would they have us winning under normal circumstances? Was a win or defeat expected v Derby?

 

Context is everything, dear boy!

 

Don't you attribute a score to these statistics which you devised? Do you also decide which statistics you use and which you don't? Would it be possible for any one of us to take the exact same statistics from the same match but apply a different formula and return completely different results? In which case, in what way wouldn't they be our statistics?

 

Sorry, I did miss your question.

First I must tell you how I arrive at the Performance Index Scores. I have described how the Entertainment Index works. I score the key statistics for each game with a number, weighted to indicate the importance of that statistic to the outcome of the game. It is fair to say that many other disagree with the scoring system, and indeed the selected statistics. The basic scores are as follows (there can also be bonus scores. For example Barnsley earned an extra 10 points against Derby because they won from 1 goal behind):

Yellow Card -5 each
Red Cards -10 each
Possession +/- 1 each each % above/below 50%
Territory (time spent in opponents final third) +/- 1 for each % above/below opposition score
Shots at Goal +5 for each shot
Shots on Target +5 for each shot on target (+10 in total)
Goals +10 for each goal (+20 in total)
Corners +1 for each corner
Fouls -1 for each foul

Those points are totaled for both teams and that represents the Entertainment Index score for both.

The Performance Index comes from adding all one teams scores, and deducting from that total all the opponent scores. Some scores are already deducted (possession and territory) so it is not quite as simple as netting the Entertainment Index totals for each team. Therefore, the scores for both teams are exactly the same, except one team has a plus score and the other a minus score. The team with the plus score had the better statistics, and should have won the game, but as we know, that is not always the case because strikers have off days, and other strikers hit 'worldies' out of the blue. When the scores a very close, there has been little to chose between the teams according to the statistics and anything below the value of 1 goal (20 points) probably falls into that 'too close to call' area. However, when a team consistently has a better PI score, but is consistently losing, I believe it is an indicator that the team is very close to turning things around, and that is why I said the PI score is a predictor of the future. In order to calculate the PI score, I do not have to have seen the game, because I use the scoring system above along with published statistics (mainly BBC). I score all Championship games, and that includes Barnsley away games. Markus Schopp's Barnsley had a favourable PI score in 3 of his final 4 games, the exception being Middlebrough where the team score was -122. I sincerely believe that, along with the return of most of his injured players, this indicated the team had turned the corner, and better results were on the way. Hence my comment, the PI score is a predictor of future results.

 

Of course it would.

I have listed the scoring system and the statistics in my last posting. Please feel free to use your own scoring system and your own statistics. I would be extremely interested in your results. Frankly, it is what I have been urging others to do, but no-one was willing to take it on. You know how it goes. Your scores are not representative and you have selected the wrong statistics, but no I am not going to tell you what is wrong, specifically.