Turning games around..

I've always had this down as one of my biggest gripes with the guy in charge. It's on par January tinkering which leads to poor form and his desperately negative style of play (which sort of links in).

So I thought I'd do a bit of research into it, see if there was anything in it, more out of interest than much else.

So since Hurst from the 6th September 2013 it reads a little bit like this (league games only);

In the interest of fairness I've not added games in which 90th minute winners/equalizers were scored by the opposition.

Games we've been losing and drawn

Stands at a grand total of 7, just 7 times in Hurst's spell here have we rescued a draw from a losing position.

Games we've been losing before the 90th minute and lost

16 times, out of his entire spell here, we have lost games on 16 occasions where we have been losing at some point before the 90th minute. The majority of these games were having being 1 goal down before the 90th minute, the 5 exceptions to this came in the 4-0 battering at Halifax and the 3-1 defeats at the hands of Lincoln & Gateshead (in the play offs) and the 2-0 defeats against Torquay & Kiddy this season.

Games we've been losing and won

So in his whole time at this club, just over a year now, Paul Hurst has masterminded a grand total of THREE turnarounds from a losing position. So in the 26 times we've gone behind under Hurst, we have managed 3 victories. So whenever we go behind, we generally have an 11% chance of turning that around. Alarmingly however not one of those turnarounds came this season.

So let's compare that to the team we're all chasing, Barnet. I've taken their record this season as a sample, as we don't exactly want to replicate their form from last season.

This wasn't so easy to draw stats against as they don't go behind very much. Looking through they do seem to win a lot after being pegged back during the game.

However in the 8 times they've gone behind this season, they've lost 4, exactly 50%. However, they've rescued points twice and won twice, giving them a 25% chance of winning a game from a losing position, double ours since Hurst has been in charge and way above ours this season.


Now on the flip side you could say we don't go behind in many games, though 26 games out of a possible 70 league games isn't great. But the worrying inability to really turn games on their heads is one of the numerous things costing us being a lot better off than we currently are.

As I said before, I researched this purely out of interest to see if there was anything in it, which there does seem to be.

It's probably because Hurst is very inflexible when it comes to making substitutions and tactical changes mid-way through a game. He usually waits until very late in a game to make substitutions, and typically only ever substitutes like for like (e.g. a big striker for a big striker, a central midfielder for a central midfielder). I think his lack of adventure in terms of changing things during a game when Town have started poorly is directly to blame for our poor record when it comes to rescuing points from a losing position. Maybe if he was more open to sacrificing defensive players for attacking ones when chasing a game, or was more capable of making tactical changes to counter our opponents we'd do better in this area. It's disappointing to see this isn't really something that's improved during his time in charge.

I like the research and I agree with your points, however my counter argument is that there will always be stats that highlight problems if you look for them. I bet even Luton and Cambridge fans saw deficiencies in their teams last season!

Let's say we're really good at coming from behind to win. Fans will then complain about us always falling behind (it's a shock that we don't do this more often, given our slow starts).

Let's say we're scoring goals for fun... chances are, we're probably leaky at the back. Hurst signs great players (on paper) but then fails to get the best out of them. The opposite of that would be signing nobodies but getting the best out of their limited talent.

What I'm saying is, you can highlight whatever area you like to make a perfectly valid point. It helps to show we as fans can identify the areas where we need to improve. And then, if we improve in those areas, we'll only find new areas of deficiencies popping up... conceding late goals, conceding early goals, the number of yellow/red cards go up, penalties given away, lack of penalties earned etc.

There will always be things to pick at, but I guess that's part of the 'fun' of football, where it's difficult to be universally perfect.

Did i read somewhere that prior to Macclesfield on NYD we had only lost once and drawn once, this season after being in the lead?

Quoted from BIGChris

Did i read somewhere that prior to Macclesfield on NYD we had only lost once and drawn once, this season after being in the lead?

That wouldn't look too far off the truth after reading through the results today. As I said, there are counter arguments to it, because we are very good at defending 1-0 leads. However coming back from going behind shows some real champions metal, something we should be aiming for yet something we are quite a way off achieving.

As I said, it was researched purely out of interest.

I have to admit that I never really expect us to come back when we fall behind and haven't for some years.

Thinking back, the only time I had confidence we could turn things around when the game was going badly was back in the Buckley Mk I and II eras. Coincidentally (well, not really), these were the times when we were actually pretty good. Since then, not so much.

There's lies, damned lies and statistics as someone once said.

I think this is a great stat and just confirms what we probably already know regarding a Plan B.

Quoted from Chrisblor

It's probably because Hurst is very inflexible when it comes to making substitutions and tactical changes mid-way through a game. He usually waits until very late in a game to make substitutions, and typically only ever substitutes like for like (e.g. a big striker for a big striker, a central midfielder for a central midfielder). .

This

Just check out the goal difference in the league table currently for equally telling stats...

Barnet have  16+ GD on ourselves, have scored 20+ goals more than just about every other team in the top half of the table while letting in only 5/6 more than the best defences in the league. For anyone who hasnt noticed as a result they are top of the table, have won more games than anyone else and equally crucially have drawn less than anyone else in the top half.

Score plenty of goals...have a fairly tight defence......win games.

Hurst focusses on the defensive meanness while forgetting you cannot actually win a match unless you score a goal and the more the better. It doesnt matter when we fall behind, scoring two is something we struggle with.