It's the attack, stupid!

[northnorfolkwolf]

Looking at the table tonight defensively we are 1 goal worse than Burnley and WHU, 3 goals worse than Leeds, 4 goals worse than B'mouth and 6 goals worse than Fulham and Forest (aggregate -21). But up front v the same bottom 6 sides we have scored 6 less than Forest and Leeds, 8 less than Burnley and WHU, 12 less than Fuham and 14 less than B'mouth (aggregate -54). I accept this is not scientific but it is clear where we are most deficient - the attack. At a (big) push I could live with our defence and I think as a unit they would keep us up (just) IF we had a decent attack. It's old news now but the lack of a creative mf, and wingers and any strikers who can put the ball in the net, perhaps just 3 or 4 decent players, will relegate us. Possibly controversial but our defence with say J Gomes BUT with Neves, Jota and Jimenez and we stay up?

 

[brianm]

Wolves don't even kind of have the money to fix this problem. The club need to get someone in who has any idea how a football team's resources should be balanced to make a functional team. This ain't it.

 

[CelebrityWolf]

Whilst I agree our attack is a problem I do think the stats don't show the whole story. All those games so far where Munetsi has occupied a key position in an attacking sense has undoubtedly cost us several goals. No surprise that on Sunday we began to see some hint of us actually building an attack or two and suddenly seeing JSL look a little more threatening, just flash back to games prior to Sunday where the only form of attack we had was hopeful balls into the box and literally nothing else.

That said, the massive issue during the window was not signing any kind of forward with some pace, we are so slow in general it is frightening.

 

[Oh When the Wolves]

No players that are fast in wide areaa

No players except Bellegarde that can dribble

We are so far behind every other team in this area. People gave a go at Andre and Gomes but there is never a player with pace running into space as an option going forward. Mane has to start games as at least he has pace

 

[JohnB]

Conceding 2 goals a game when you cannot score 1 is not exactly a recipe for picking up points. Our attack under creates and under scores our defence offers up a bottom 5 number of opps but is woeful at keeping half chances out.

Based on XG table we’d be third from bottom and sat on 12 points.

 

[Minimalist]

With the players on our books I’ve said for a while the only way I can see our attack being effective is to sacrifice a cb and play an extra forward minded player (4231).
Million dollar question to that idea is would it do as much/more harm to our defence as benefit to the team potency.

 

[Slothmonkey]

I saw it somewhere Coady and Carragher were talking about this on Sky. Our big chances created and big chances converted is practically 0.

 

[Chisels_n_ommers]

With the players on our books I’ve said for a while the only way I can see our attack being effective is to sacrifice a cb and play an extra forward minded player (4231).
Million dollar question to that idea is would it do as much/more harm to our defence as benefit to the team potency.

Exactly

There's a phrase they use called "opening up".

If we opened up we would get rinsed.

GON was more in that camp. VP was in the other camp.

But either way, we lose - because our playing side as a whole isn't good enough.

Thanks Jeff

 

[Woburn Wolf]

Whilst I agree our attack is a problem I do think the stats don't show the whole story. All those games so far where Munetsi has occupied a key position in an attacking sense has undoubtedly cost us several goals. No surprise that on Sunday we began to see some hint of us actually building an attack or two and suddenly seeing JSL look a little more threatening, just flash back to games prior to Sunday where the only form of attack we had was hopeful balls into the box and literally nothing else.

That said, the massive issue during the window was not signing any kind of forward with some pace, we are so slow in general it is frightening.

I generally agree with this. However against Villa Jackson showed how quick he is and also how effective he can be when playing him in with balls to run onto, he is also a decent crosser so this is something we should exploit more. He is not great running with the ball and he is lacking defensively but if he is being selected we should seek to capitalise on his strengths.

 

[DJLWolf]

I guess it's hardly a surprise when you don't have a single quality proven winger or number 10.

Players like Hwang, Munetsi and Arias should never be anywhere near a premier league squad.

The likes of Bellegarde, Lopez, Roddy etc should be bench/squad options.They aren't genuine premier league starting players.

Our players just aren't good enough.

It's is what it is.

 

[DanishWolf]

Its worth adding, than looking at XG we're on par with Villa and Sunderland (on 12). Burnley (10) are the only team worse.
Now obviously it means Sunderland’s and Villa’s converting rate is extremely good, while ours is extremely poor. They outperform their XG by 5 and 6 goals, while we've scored 5 less than our expected goals.

When it comes to expected goals against, it's an interesting story. We've conceded nearly the same as Burnley, but their expected goals against is much higher (29 vs our 19).
An XG against of 19 isn’t catastrophic at all. It’s better than five other teams in the league, and only 3 worse than most teams, who sit around 16.
Yet we’ve still conceded 28.
In other words:

1. We create too little overall – but the main issue is converting what we do create. The gap between our XG and actual goals is now too big to be brushed off as bad luck alone. It points to deeper issues in decision-making, confidence, shot selection or simply quality in the final action.

2.The gap between XG against and goals conceded strongly suggests structural problems rather than simple bad luck.
Typically, this points to a mix of:
Goalkeeping underperformance
Individual defensive mistakes not fully reflected in XG
Weak box defending and second balls
Poor organisation on set pieces
XG measures the quality of the shot – not the chaos, errors or poor decision-making that often come before it. If you consistently over-concede compared to XG, it usually means you are being punished far too easily when things break down.

 

[DanishWolf]

Its worth adding, than looking at XG we're on par with Villa and Sunderland (on 12). Burnley (10) are the only team worse.
Now obviously it means Sunderland’s and Villa’s converting rate is extremely good, while ours is extremely poor. They outperform their XG by 5 and 6 goals, while we've scored 5 less than our expected goals.

When it comes to expected goals against, it's an interesting story. We've conceded nearly the same as Burnley, but their expected goals against is much higher (29 vs our 19).
An XG against of 19 isn’t catastrophic at all. It’s better than five other teams in the league, and only 3 worse than most teams, who sit around 16.
Yet we’ve still conceded 28.
In other words:

1. We create too little overall – but the main issue is converting what we do create. The gap between our XG and actual goals is now too big to be brushed off as bad luck alone. It points to deeper issues in decision-making, confidence, shot selection or simply quality in the final action.

2.The gap between XG against and goals conceded strongly suggests structural problems rather than simple bad luck.
Typically, this points to a mix of:
Goalkeeping underperformance
Individual defensive mistakes not fully reflected in XG
Weak box defending and second balls
Poor organisation on set pieces
XG measures the quality of the shot – not the chaos, errors or poor decision-making that often come before it. If you consistently over-concede compared to XG, it usually means you are being punished far too easily when things break down.

To add to this, the good news is that if we become more clinical and cut out the obvious mistakes, our XG at both ends suggests we should do better.

 

[northnorfolkwolf]

If that half does not prove that it's the attack, stupid, then nothing will? We need to go to a 4 (and hope) and get another attacker on and go for it. Stick with a 5 and we won't score and draws are no good for us.

 

[Ches78]

We had one touch in the opponents box that half, which went on for 50 long, long minutes. Surely even a conference level team would achieve more than that.

 

[Dan G WWFC]

When you have no wingers and have your most creative attacking midfielder as Bellegarde your always going have an issue with attack .

But let’s not buy a winger and instead get a 6ft6 target man who can’t jump and is still no fit enough to play after months

 

[northnorfolkwolf]

It's the attack that let us down again. Our defence was OK(ish) apart from the 1 goal. We literally have nothing going forward. Our FBs are not WBs, our MFs are defenders in this system, we don't have any wingers, literally no ****ing wingers to deploy and no strikers worth the name. This is beyond desperate.