Tottenham and our slow starts

[stevenurse]

Because:

1. Its annoyed me for ages
2. It's getting progressively worse
3. I'm a sad ****

Looking back at the last 2 seasons, and the beginning of this season. We've played a total of 115 games, in which we've conceded first 45 times (39%). I'd be amazed if that is anywhere near comparable with City/Liverpool etc.

17/18 - conceded first in 18 games (33%)
18/19 - conceded first in 24 games (41%)
19/20 - conceded first in 3 games (100%)

* I know this season is only young, which makes the stat kind of irrelevant, but we shouldn't be going behind to Villa or Newcastle. Especially at home.

A real bugbear for me is the lack of goals in the first periods of games. In those 115 fixtures we've scored 22 goals in 17 (15%) games within the first 15 minutes. I know the first 15 minutes is a measurement I've just plucked out of thin air, and there will be multiple factors etc but it shows we don't aggressively approach games from the first whistle

 

[fortworthspur]

our defense hasnt been anywhere close to the defense in Walker's last season. Walker-Toby-Verts-Rose is probably the best back line we will ever see. Everybody has high hopes for Sanchez and Foyth but Toby and Verts is a partnership that rarely comes along. That goal Sanchez gave up yesterday was pretty shocking. Frustrating.

 

[G Ron]

Couldn’t agree more. Had this discussion earlier on the phone with my old man. Liverpool and City always come out with a fierce intensity and often blow teams away early doors because of it. I can’t remember the last time we came out all guns blazing and scored early (United at home at Wembley when Eriksen scored in 10 seconds?).
We are very pedestrian in our approach which doesn’t help to ignite the fans and build the atmosphere at home matches.
I wanted the new stadium to be a fortress, sadly we just don’t scare teams like City, Liverpool and even Arsenal do with their attacking threat. Teams know we’re easy to defend against if they Bank up and they’re happy to come and frustrate while we fanny about with loads of backwards and sideways possession which fails to penetrate.

 

[Twizzle]

oh good, another upbeat thread to go with all the others

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Overall, for every premier league club, goals scored and conceded in the first 15 minutes of games according to soccerstats

2018/19
Goals scored in the first 15 minutes of games - 7
Only five clubs scored more goals than us in the first 15 minutes of games

Goals scored in the second 15 minutes of games - 14
Only ONE club scored more goals than us in the second 15 minutes of games


Goals conceded

2018/19
Goals conceded in the first 15 minutes of games - 4
Fourteen clubs conceded more goals than us first 15 minutes

Goals conceded in the second 15 minutes of games - 4
Fourteen clubs conceded more goals than us second 15 minutes

It’s worth comparing how we do against how other clubs start to see if it’s a misconception and I believe it is.

We don't do too bad really.

 

[Trotter]

Overall, for every premier league club, goals scored and conceded in the first 15 minutes of games according to soccerstats

2018/19
Goals scored in the first 15 minutes of games - 7
Only five clubs scored more goals than us in the first 15 minutes of games

Goals scored in the second 15 minutes of games - 14
Only ONE club scored more goals than us in the second 15 minutes of games


Goals conceded

2018/19
Goals conceded in the first 15 minutes of games - 4
Fourteen clubs conceded more goals than us first 15 minutes

Goals conceded in the second 15 minutes of games - 4
Fourteen clubs conceded more goals than us second 15 minutes

We don't do too bad.

Until you factor in that we scored 4th most, and conceded 3rd least in the league.

So being the 6th most scoring and 6th least conceding team above does back up the starts are not quite as good as other periods of the game for us though.
Given a choice would rather finish strong than start strong anyway.

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Until you factor in that we scored 4th most, and conceded 3rd least in the league.

So being the 6th most scoring and 6th least conceding team above does back up the starts are not quite as good as other periods of the game for us though.
Given a choice would rather finish strong than start strong anyway.

No it doesn't and why would that even be a factor. The comparison says that we are not much worse and do better than a lot of other clubs in the first half hour of games. Against who else should we be compared to see if it's an issue?

Or put it this way. If it IS a problem, every club suffers from it. But it isn't.

Agree about the finishing strongly part and out of interest only three (might have been four) clubs scored more than us in the last 15 minutes of games last season. You wouldn't say that was a problem 'for us' would you. It says we don't do too bad in that specific time period of games. Again.

 

[Trotter]

No it doesn't and why would that even be a factor. The comparison says that we are not much worse and do better than a lot of other clubs in the first half hour of games. Against who else should we be compared to see if it's an issue?

Or put it this way. If it IS a problem, every club suffers from it. But it isn't.

We should be compared against ourselves to see how we are doing in other periods of the game.
What is the point of comparing us to say Huddersfield, of course we will have scored more and conceded less than them,

If we are the 3rd or 4th best in the League, as our Goals Scored and Conceded in the League last season showed, being the 6th best at both scoring and conceding for us is under par for both elements in the early part of the games.

However as 1 goal either way could probably move teams quite a way either up or down any per 15 minute list as sample size is quite small, the point is reasonably irrelevant anyway.

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

We should be compared against ourselves to see how we are doing in other periods of the game.

If we are the 3rd or 4th best in the League, as our Goals Scored and Conceded in the League last season showed, being the 6th best at both scoring and conceding for us is under par for both elements in the early part of the games.

Seeing as this is a thread about so called 'slow starts' we also scored three times more goals than we conceded in the first half of games last season.

We don't do too bad. That's all, we just don't do too bad.

Not the best starters in the world and far, far away from the worst.

 

[Trotter]

Seeing as this is a thread about so called 'slow starts' we also scored three times more goals than we conceded in the first half of games last season.

Now that stat I can get behind to disprove, or at least counter the opening post.
Full record was

First half last season P 38 W 19 D 11 L 8 F 31 A 11
Second half last season P 38 W 16 D 12 L 10 F 36 A 28

so shows we were better in first than second half, although not necessarily first 15 mins of game

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Now that stat I can get behind to disprove the opening post.
Full record was

First half last season P 38 W 19 D 11 L 8 F 31 A 11
Second half last season P 38 W 16 D 12 L 10 F 36 A 28

so shows we were better in first than second half, although not necessarily first 15 mins of game

How on earth did we manage 76 games last season?

Our second half stat (goals for and against) looks atrocious but when you look at the stat for every club it actually compares OK, but yeah, you're right we are a lot better in the first half.

 

[AnotherSpursFan]

i used to like seeing us go behind, because thats when we play with any sort of urgency, but last Sunday...my God...worst sports disaster ever

 

[Sandros Shiny Head]

In 2019 only Huddersfield and Brighton scored in fewer first halfs than us.
We also only scored in the first half of 8 of our 32 games in all comps since new year which is less than the other top sides did in just the league games

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Yet overall we compare favourably in the league games over the entire league season, not just a portion selected specifically to twist the knife.

I bet if I thought about it I could come up with any number of stats that show a positive and all that would happen is someone with a nuclear hard on for being negative will wheel out a bastardised stat to nullify it.

Nobody is saying performances or results haven’t been as good as we’d like but why this need to make something out of not very much, it’s a positive. Occasionally, just now and again it’s allowed to let one slide

 

[Gassin's finest]

We've played 3 games. We've won, drawn (against the best team in the galaxy playing the best football I've seen them play), and lost our customary stupid home game to a team that we thought we'd roll over but oh look our complacency bit us on the arse... again.

Yeah Saturday was atrocious, the worst I've seen us since... oh when we lost 1-0 at home to West Ham last season. But lets not pretend we haven't been pulling those kind of games since forever. Happened under Jol, Harry and Poch. Its not the end of the world.

I'm glad we didn't have some of you lot in the trenches.

 

[coys200]

15 pts from 15 games. Just a continuation of last seasons poor league form. We had the best away record in Europe last season till Xmas.

 

[stevenurse]

Granted

Overall, for every premier league club, goals scored and conceded in the first 15 minutes of games according to soccerstats

2018/19
Goals scored in the first 15 minutes of games - 7
Only five clubs scored more goals than us in the first 15 minutes of games

Goals scored in the second 15 minutes of games - 14
Only ONE club scored more goals than us in the second 15 minutes of games


Goals conceded

2018/19
Goals conceded in the first 15 minutes of games - 4
Fourteen clubs conceded more goals than us first 15 minutes

Goals conceded in the second 15 minutes of games - 4
Fourteen clubs conceded more goals than us second 15 minutes

It’s worth comparing how we do against how other clubs start to see if it’s a misconception and I believe it is.

We don't do too bad really.

All those points are valid, but I have to clarify that the goals conceded first was over a game as a whole. The point regarding that is that we go behind in over a third of our games. This is not only a problem against our rivals in terms of ability, but those that would have been happy with a point anyway (like Newcastle). The added complication is exactly what we found on Sunday. They just become even more stoic in defending.

We can't keep waiting for the opposition to score before we wake up.

 

[McFlash]

I'm going for option 3.

 

[DCSPUR64]

We've played 3 games. We've won, drawn (against the best team in the galaxy playing the best football I've seen them play), and lost our customary stupid home game to a team that we thought we'd roll over but oh look our complacency bit us on the arse... again.

Yeah Saturday was atrocious, the worst I've seen us since... oh when we lost 1-0 at home to West Ham last season. But lets not pretend we haven't been pulling those kind of games since forever. Happened under Jol, Harry and Poch. Its not the end of the world.

I'm glad we didn't have some of you lot in the trenches.

Sunday

 

[Lighty64]

15 pts from 15 games. Just a continuation of last seasons poor league form. We had the best away record in Europe last season till Xmas.

we also played the 3rd most fixtures

like Man C (i think) we had 9 players involved in the final weekend of the WC, but we actually had more players involved in International matches with something important involved in the results ENC and Asia Cup/games

we had the worst injury list in the top 6

Liverpool went out in the 1st round of both domestic cups

Henderson and Allison where the only 2 players to play more than 5 games, and Henderson was subbed off in 2 of them

Firminho came on as sub 4 times

both Mane and Salah came home after the groups, Salah only played in 2 games, and never joined up with the squad till the WC kicked off.

Shaqiri played in 4 matches, but was mainly a sub through out the season, and Lovren who only played 13 PL matches is the only other player to make the final weekend. TAA only played in 1 game.

we had

Lloris played in 6 out of 7

Rose played in 2 out of 7 and came on as sub 3 times

Trippier played in 6 out of 7 did come off once

Jan played in 6 out of 7

Toby played in 6 out of 7

Sanchez played 4 he was even involved in our 3 inter Champ cup matches also

Dier played in 2 out of 7 and came on as sub 3 times

Eriksen played 4, he was also involved in our 3 inter Champ cup matches

Dele played in 2 out of 7 and came on as sub 1, subbed off 2 was injured after the 1st game

Kane played in 6 out of 7 and came on as sub

Son played 4 he was even involved in our 3 inter Champ cup matches also, along with playing the Asia cup and Asia games

and even Dembele started 1 and came on as sub twice.

all that with no transfers in, as mentioned the worst injury list and uncertainty about moving back to WHL. the reason why we suffered was BURNOUT.

Those are the stats that I asked @shelfboy68 to find during a discussion last season, he was encouraged to find them by @Archibald&Crooks but he couldn't be bothered