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Yellow and Green

Improvements Next Season

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Now that Farke''s first season in the Championship has finally finished, he will hopefully have learnt several valuable lessons on how to succeed in England''s second tier.

Whilst he should have known many of these points already, the final game at Sheffield Wednesday should have really cemented them into his thoughts.

1) Physicality of the Championship - Whilst we need to learn to break down physical teams who park the bus when attacking, it is the defence''s habit of being bullied by big strikers that has caused concern (and embarrassment). The majority of the games when we have conceded 4+ goals has come when the back line have been dominated physically. The stat suggesting that we have only won 16.7% (on average) of our aerial duels per game (23rd best in the league) suggests something is not quite right with a back line that includes Klose, Zimmerman and Hanley.

2) Back-up for Tettey - The stats showing our record with and without Tettey highlights just how important he is to our team. As the Championship has such a busy schedule, he won''t be able to play every game - let alone avoid injury. Ben Godfrey is the main candidate to step up to provide competition in that area. With Hoolahan and Maddison leaving, I wouldn''t be adverse to see three central midfielders next season.

3) Creating chances - I was surprised to see that, on average, we were second in the table for shots on goal (14). The ''need for quality'', as Farke put it, is evident as only four of those shots are actually on target.

Quality of what though, Daniel? We ended last season as one of the top scoring teams with one of the best strike forces. Jerome and Oliveira are not bad players and should be netting around 15 goals a season in this league. My worry is that it is the quality of chances - not the quality of player - that has been lacking this year. Replacing our current strike force with inexperienced players from the lower reaches of Europe worries me.

4) Pace - The lethargic pace at which we pass the ball has been one of the main sources of frustration this season. Too often, we''ve had 70% possession, had two shots on target and lost. Murphy and Hernandez will hopefully be key players for the way we play next season.

5) No more transition - That''s it, it''s over. No more excuses - including the new signings. SW has chosen the path of buying foreign players and promoting youth so I don''t want to keep hearing them say ''they''re getting used to the league'' or ''they''re still learning the game'' as excuses when the team don''t perform. They can''t blame their own methodology if it isn''t working.

On a side note, whilst it''s positive news that Maddison''s injury isn''t as bad as once feared, I can''t help but feel that it has severely hampered our summer transfer plans. Thinking back to the January transfer window, Webber acted quickly in getting Pritchard out early in order to raise funds to get Srbeny, Hernandez and Leitner. One might think that he would have wanted to apply a similar strategy in order to get the majority of the squad in before the start of preseason.

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Physicality is a need against most but not all clubs but it is something we meed more of. Tettey brings some of that in the midfield but it is particulalry missing in attack, where the aerial threat is most lacking. The three cbs you cite all have a c50% success rate.

Cb is interesting and the three have similar records. Goals conceded per start is best with zimmermann and worst for hanley, similar for points won. Yet put zimmermann up against a matt smith or a nuihu amd the goals flood in. Hanley deals with the aerial and physical sides well but rarely performs as well against footballing teams. Klose is consistent. Perhaps rotate zim Hanley depending on opposition or bring in the more agricultural raggett for the battle games. 3 cbs is probably key.

Up top a committed physical pacy player who can linked up play is needed, can we afford that??

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There''s only two stats we need to improve next year - Score 20 goals more and concede 20 goals less.

However on a more serious note we must find more consistency next season. Personally I don''t see a quick fix that will be exciting to watch.

We have to trust Webber and Farke can/will find a solution... Hopefully sooner the better! OTBC

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This may be coincidence, but I doubt it is entirely  - after we had extra-time against Arsenal in the League Cup we lost the next three league matches, and overall in the next seven after Arsenal we lost five and drew two.. After extra-time and penalties against Chelsea in the FA Cup we lost the weekend game, at home to Sheffield United, then won two, but then dropped loads of points with five draws and a defeat.There has to be a limit to how far on you can keep blaming tiredness from 120 minutes-plus of cup football for bad results, but in the eight league games leading up to playing Arsenal we had won five and drawn three. We were in tremendous form. A pretty striking contrast with getting just two points from the next seven games. Perhaps a lesson for Farke for next season.

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"This may be coincidence ..... "

I do not think it was coincidental.

I certainly thought that Farke''s team selection for both these games was likely to be detrimental to our league campaign .... before the games, during the games (especially Chelsea) and after the games.

The contrast in performances and results is very stark as well.

Old hands like Mick McCarthy had played youngsters in these ties, especially the League Cup game and, although he got heavy criticism from the 1p5wich support, this decision was to subsequently be justified by league points gained.

There is a balance in this respect .... lesson for Farke.

Amongst other strange decisions over the course of the season (the initial ignorance of Tettey, Ragett''s sidelining, his persistence with Oliveira and the okey-cokey with Sbreny, to name some) I consider that playing young Maddison for the "beach" game in sunny Sheffield and the subsequents to be another lesson profered.

DF needs to improve above all else, including the acquisition of a pair of goal-scoring strikers.

I am inclined to think he''ll come good as there are a lot of positive signs within the man, but it''s very difficult to be totally convinced of this.

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That would be a huge stretch Purple. The Arsenal game happened on the 24th October, we didn''t win again until the 9th December. There was even an International break in the middle of that run.

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[quote user="king canary"]That would be a huge stretch Purple. The Arsenal game happened on the 24th October, we didn''t win again until the 9th December. There was even an International break in the middle of that run.[/quote]We got 18 points out of 24 (75 per cent) from the eight league games immediately before we played Arsenal and two out of 14 (14.2 per cent) from the seven immediately afterwards. Based on that it doesn''t strike me (or Broadstairs either) as much of a stretch at all to believe the 120 minutes against Arsenal took something out of us in the aftermath.

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I think it is a huge stretch to claim an extra 30 minutes in October was affecting results in December- and if it is I''d suggest it reflects pretty poorly on the management team.

It also doesn''t stand up to much scrutiny when you factor in the similar situation with Chelsea- after our extra time loss there we only lost 1 of our next 8 games.

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Correlation is not causation Purple.

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"I think it is a huge stretch to claim an extra 30 minutes in October was affecting results in December."

May be yes, may be no but there are such things as winning runs and losing runs.

If the extra toil of that 120 minutes effected some players sufficiently enough for it to reflect negatively upon the results that immediately followed then confidence might have been shattered enough to stretch into such a run.

Of course it''s all hypothetical guesswork, but I, for one, would hope that DF strays a bit more from his preferred league team next season when selecting his squads for future early days cup fixtures.

There is also the extra risk of injury as well as burn out to be considered.

The games against Arsenal and Chelsea ranked amongst our better performances last season but I feel that they did cost us in other ways.

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I thInk the Arsenal game, particularly coming so close to the Binner game, undoubtedly had an impact. That said, had we had the rub of the green on the next game (v Derby) I''m sure the impact would''ve been much diminished but it seemed to set a poor run going.

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2 from 21 if you’re using 7 games Purple, a truly terrible run.

Why stop after 7 though? Had we suddenly recovered enough from the Arsenal game to beat Sheffield Wednesday but then became so tired again we lost the next two?

No doubt the extra 30 mins did take something out of the players. A poor result for a game or two after could have been contributed to that.

However, there was a fortnights international break three games after Arsenal. For a bunch of professional footballers who have been playing twice a week for a number of months, I expect a fortnight was enough to get over an additional 30 minutes of football.

As for the points in the original post - the defence looks shaky. Aerial strength required and ideally a leader to pull everyone around. Too often players don’t track or are out of position, yes it’s the individual’s job to do it but it doesn’t hurt to have a vocal centre half reminding them.

As for the efforts, many are long range and we do need to create more in the box. But there have been quite a few games where we’ve missed at least a couple of ‘good’ chances (if not absolute sitters). A decent striker to put those away and you turn a few of the draws into wins and a few of the losses into draws. I’m not a huge fan of Farke’s style and probably won’t ever be, but I don’t think we’re too far from seeing results on the pitch. A decent striker having a good season could be the difference between finishing mid table and getting promoted.

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