Cod Almighty | Diary

Stat attack

20 September 2022

Saturday was Basque Diary's first time seeing the Mariners in the flesh since the opening day at Orient. Since then, the O's have remained unbeaten and top of the league while that is our only loss, but we have constrasting form home and away. 

Three home draws in the league, four lovely wins on the road. Key to all of that is one of our own - Harry Clifton. He popped up with a lovely lob on Saturday showing quick feet to control Taylor's excellent through ball and then loft it over the stranded Colchester keeper.

It was the highlight of an otherwise drab game. One in which we were limited to shots from range while we treated our opponents to similar pickings. This was reflected in xG Data's analysis of the match. 

From my own back seat view, most our of games seem to follow a similar pattern. We start slowly but solidly, during which time we are likely to allow the opposition a chance or two, before growing into the match, creating chances of own and finishing strongly, often with a goal.

This is very well demonstrated by Ben Mayhew's excellent scatter graphs, that he produces periodically throughout the season. Our busy attack mantra is supported by how many shots we take per goal. True to Hursty's word during the summer - we're giving it a right good go this year.

Naturally, these statistics can be intepreted whichever way you want to see them and I've gone for the positive spin. What can be seen on paper does not always live up to the hype in person - maybe we're really wasteful.

Nevertheless, with nearly a fifth of the seaon gone already we only have a single digit in the loss column and I think it's safe to see everyone is looking up rather than down, so well down to Paul and the team.

UTM.