I wondered how Ajax were getting on in the Eredivisie. 

They're joint top with PSV after 30 games tied on 74 points but Ajax have scored a ridiculous 106 goals so far. That's an average of 3.5 goals per game! 

1 hour ago, ForeverCarefree said:

I wondered how Ajax were getting on in the Eredivisie. 

They're joint top with PSV after 30 games tied on 74 points but Ajax have scored a ridiculous 106 goals so far. That's an average of 3.5 goals per game! 

All well and good but how many passes per 90 minutes and what’s their average possession? These are the important statistics!

25 minutes ago, EdinburghBlue said:

All well and good but how many passes per 90 minutes and what’s their average possession? These are the important statistics!

You're right, those are the important statistics to work towards if you want to be a big team and control games.

Take it with a pinch of salt but...

Speaking on the Transfer Window Podcast, Castles said: “I have been informed by a couple of sources that Sarri is not against being sacked by Chelsea.

He’s not enjoying his time in London, he’s not enjoying working at the club, he finds the distance between himself and the ownership immense and feels he has no proper say in the transfer market.

His argument is the way he plays football is fine, it’s merely an issue with personnel – if he had better personnel the results would be better – to the point where he would be happy to lose his job.”

Before adding: “But what I’m told by more than one person is he will not resist if Chelsea decide to dismiss him and would quite happily accept his severance cheque and then take one of the bigger jobs in Serie A and return to his home country.”

1 hour ago, EdinburghBlue said:

All well and good but how many passes per 90 minutes and what’s their average possession? These are the important statistics!

Banter alert

1 hour ago, JM7 said:

Take it with a pinch of salt but...

Speaking on the Transfer Window Podcast, Castles said: “I have been informed by a couple of sources that Sarri is not against being sacked by Chelsea.

He’s not enjoying his time in London, he’s not enjoying working at the club, he finds the distance between himself and the ownership immense and feels he has no proper say in the transfer market.

His argument is the way he plays football is fine, it’s merely an issue with personnel – if he had better personnel the results would be better – to the point where he would be happy to lose his job.”

Before adding: “But what I’m told by more than one person is he will not resist if Chelsea decide to dismiss him and would quite happily accept his severance cheque and then take one of the bigger jobs in Serie A and return to his home country.”

What makes this story far less credible/believable is that Sarri has always said that he had no interest being involved in the transfers.

I will say that I thought it was odd that Sarri came out and said that Zola talks to more often than he does.  

Plus, it can't make Sarri that happy that he is not well regarded amongst many supporters, and can't like the negative chants directed at him and his team's playing style.

1 hour ago, JM7 said:

Take it with a pinch of salt but...

Speaking on the Transfer Window Podcast, Castles said: “I have been informed by a couple of sources that Sarri is not against being sacked by Chelsea.

He’s not enjoying his time in London, he’s not enjoying working at the club, he finds the distance between himself and the ownership immense and feels he has no proper say in the transfer market.

His argument is the way he plays football is fine, it’s merely an issue with personnel – if he had better personnel the results would be better – to the point where he would be happy to lose his job.”

Before adding: “But what I’m told by more than one person is he will not resist if Chelsea decide to dismiss him and would quite happily accept his severance cheque and then take one of the bigger jobs in Serie A and return to his home country.”

What makes this story far less credible/believable is that Sarri has always said that he had no interest being involved in the transfers.

I will say that I thought it was odd that Sarri came out and said that Zola talks to more often than he does.  

Plus, it can't make Sarri that happy that he is not well regarded amongst many supporters, and can't like the negative chants directed at him and his team's playing style.

1 hour ago, JM7 said:

Take it with a pinch of salt but...

Speaking on the Transfer Window Podcast, Castles said: “I have been informed by a couple of sources that Sarri is not against being sacked by Chelsea.

By Castles I assume it's referring to Duncan Castles? If so the man is a no nothing twat of the highest order and is one of the last footie journalists I would expect to have any sort of inside knowledge of the inner workings at Chelsea. 

35 minutes ago, Boston Blue said:

What makes this story far less credible/believable is that Sarri has always said that he had no interest being involved in the transfers.

Which is a myth that can be put to bed following our signings of Higuain and Jorginho.  

 

1 hour ago, ForeverCarefree said:

 

Which is a myth that can be put to bed following our signings of Higuain and Jorginho.  

Asking for certain players is different than being involved in transfers.  And after what happened with Conte, and even Jose before him, Sarri can't have thought that he would actually have some say in the transfer market?

5 hours ago, JM7 said:

Take it with a pinch of salt but...

Speaking on the Transfer Window Podcast, Castles said: “I have been informed by a couple of sources that Sarri is not against being sacked by Chelsea.

He’s not enjoying his time in London, he’s not enjoying working at the club, he finds the distance between himself and the ownership immense and feels he has no proper say in the transfer market.

His argument is the way he plays football is fine, it’s merely an issue with personnel – if he had better personnel the results would be better – to the point where he would be happy to lose his job.”

Before adding: “But what I’m told by more than one person is he will not resist if Chelsea decide to dismiss him and would quite happily accept his severance cheque and then take one of the bigger jobs in Serie A and return to his home country.”

That's true if Sarri had a 15 to 20 goal striker to work with along side Hazard top 4 would of probably already been a given.

He brought in Higuain in January it failed, but at least he realises where our problems are.

Personally I wouldn't mind if he stayed another year,he'd get a full pre-season this time and if the transfer ban gets suspended he can bring in the players we need.

 

We are caught between two ways of doing things.

On one hand, we keep hiring established managers with certain styles who are used to having an influence over which players they get to bring in.  We want them because they have a pedigree, a track record, and a style of play that we are looking for.  A prestige name that could be an attraction to young players.  Jose 2.0 & Conte come to mind.

On the other hand, we have (more recently) been looking for someone to head a long term project, build something, develop and integrate some youth, and offer some stability over changing managers every 2-3 years.  A bit like the idea behind bringing in AVB, who clearly was the wrong man at the wrong time.  Jose's first spell was supposed to be that.  Maybe our board thought Scolari would be that...…..

I think many of us would love a Pochetino, but who knew he'd turn out to be what he has been when he showed up at Southampton?  I want us to hire a DoF, create a plan of how we want to play, find the next Pochetino who will play that style, work with the DoF to promote and/or acquire the players to play that style, and to have the trust to give him the time to build a team to that plan.  I know it's opposite to the way we've existed under Roman, and you cannot argue the success we have had doing what we've done.

I'm not advocating Sarri in or Sarri out with this post.  I fall on the Sarri out side of the argument, but if we hired a DoF and the plan we created felt that Sarri was the right guy to follow it through, I'm perfectly OK with him staying.  The bigger key for me is to change the way we do things so that we have an owner, a DoF, Marina, and a coaching staff that are all on the same page, working a plan to be competitive for years.

10 hours ago, Boston Blue said:

We are caught between two ways of doing things.

On one hand, we keep hiring established managers with certain styles who are used to having an influence over which players they get to bring in.  We want them because they have a pedigree, a track record, and a style of play that we are looking for.  A prestige name that could be an attraction to young players.  Jose 2.0 & Conte come to mind.

On the other hand, we have (more recently) been looking for someone to head a long term project, build something, develop and integrate some youth, and offer some stability over changing managers every 2-3 years.  A bit like the idea behind bringing in AVB, who clearly was the wrong man at the wrong time.  Jose's first spell was supposed to be that.  Maybe our board thought Scolari would be that...…..

I think many of us would love a Pochetino, but who knew he'd turn out to be what he has been when he showed up at Southampton?  I want us to hire a DoF, create a plan of how we want to play, find the next Pochetino who will play that style, work with the DoF to promote and/or acquire the players to play that style, and to have the trust to give him the time to build a team to that plan.  I know it's opposite to the way we've existed under Roman, and you cannot argue the success we have had doing what we've done.

I'm not advocating Sarri in or Sarri out with this post.  I fall on the Sarri out side of the argument, but if we hired a DoF and the plan we created felt that Sarri was the right guy to follow it through, I'm perfectly OK with him staying.  The bigger key for me is to change the way we do things so that we have an owner, a DoF, Marina, and a coaching staff that are all on the same page, working a plan to be competitive for years.

Good post. Regarding DoF, one can only presume that our absentee owner is happy without one, or is waiting for the right person to come available.

Do all big clubs have a DoF? It’s a comparatively new role, chiefly to fascilitate transfers which I believe is Marinas domain.

I wouldn’t be surprised is he employs a football adviser/ advisers off his own steam, who are not on the company payroll  to provide an overview.

32 minutes ago, Ewell CFC said:

Good post. Regarding DoF, one can only presume that our absentee owner is happy without one, or is waiting for the right person to come available.

Do all big clubs have a DoF? It’s a comparatively new role, chiefly to fascilitate transfers which I believe is Marinas domain.

I wouldn’t be surprised is he employs a football adviser/ advisers off his own steam, who are not on the company payroll  to provide an overview.

It's marinas domain currently, but she's a negotiator not a scout. She wouldn't have a wider picture of our football strategy like a true DoF would have. Who would not just look at players we should be bringing in, but also tasked with understanding with youth prospects should be in the first team squad. 

My view of a DoF is that they pick the squad for the season, they are in charge of that. The manager has input and picks the match day squad and takes care of training. 

20 hours ago, JM7 said:

Take it with a pinch of salt but...

Speaking on the Transfer Window Podcast, Castles said: “I have been informed by a couple of sources that Sarri is not against being sacked by Chelsea.

He’s not enjoying his time in London, he’s not enjoying working at the club, he finds the distance between himself and the ownership immense and feels he has no proper say in the transfer market.

His argument is the way he plays football is fine, it’s merely an issue with personnel – if he had better personnel the results would be better – to the point where he would be happy to lose his job.”

Before adding: “But what I’m told by more than one person is he will not resist if Chelsea decide to dismiss him and would quite happily accept his severance cheque and then take one of the bigger jobs in Serie A and return to his home country.”

Is this Duncan Castles? 

We are caught between two ways of doing things.
On one hand, we keep hiring established managers with certain styles who are used to having an influence over which players they get to bring in.  We want them because they have a pedigree, a track record, and a style of play that we are looking for.  A prestige name that could be an attraction to young players.  Jose 2.0 & Conte come to mind.
On the other hand, we have (more recently) been looking for someone to head a long term project, build something, develop and integrate some youth, and offer some stability over changing managers every 2-3 years.  A bit like the idea behind bringing in AVB, who clearly was the wrong man at the wrong time.  Jose's first spell was supposed to be that.  Maybe our board thought Scolari would be that...…..
I think many of us would love a Pochetino, but who knew he'd turn out to be what he has been when he showed up at Southampton?  I want us to hire a DoF, create a plan of how we want to play, find the next Pochetino who will play that style, work with the DoF to promote and/or acquire the players to play that style, and to have the trust to give him the time to build a team to that plan.  I know it's opposite to the way we've existed under Roman, and you cannot argue the success we have had doing what we've done.
I'm not advocating Sarri in or Sarri out with this post.  I fall on the Sarri out side of the argument, but if we hired a DoF and the plan we created felt that Sarri was the right guy to follow it through, I'm perfectly OK with him staying.  The bigger key for me is to change the way we do things so that we have an owner, a DoF, Marina, and a coaching staff that are all on the same page, working a plan to be competitive for years.

Re. Pochettino

My memory may be faulty but I dont think he turned them around overnight.

We can get there - just look at Ajax.

8 minutes ago, EmeraldBlue said:

Re. Pochettino

My memory may be faulty but I dont think he turned them around overnight.

We can get there - just look at Ajax.
 

Of course he did he took over from Tim Sherwood !!. 

10 minutes ago, bluehaze said:

Of course he did he took over from Tim Sherwood !!. 

Think they should have stuck with Ray Clemence and Doug Liversausage.

6 hours ago, EmeraldBlue said:

Re. Pochettino

My memory may be faulty but I dont think he turned them around overnight.

We can get there - just look at Ajax.
 

True.  And the point that has been made is that he had time at Spurs because their expectations were well below what Chelsea's expectations were.  I think our expectations are still high, but we need to change the immediacy of those expectations.  We are in our second consecutive sub par season, but I don't feel we've built any kind of foundation for improvement.  You could say we are moving toward that with Sarri this year, but none of us can be sure that

A) The club are committed to Sarri beyond this season

B) If the club are committed to Sarri, will they bring in players better suited to his style (assuming our ban is lifted or delayed)?  And are they committed enough to Sarri beyond the next 2 years to bring these new players in and commit 3-5 year contracts to them?  Why sign these guys to 4 or 5 year deals if in the second half of their contracts they will be playing for managers who may not play a style suited to them?

I'd feel better about these sub par seasons if we were working a plan or philosophy like Spurs, City, Liverpool, Ajax etc have done.  

I think this is more than just about Sarri, think RA is now looking to sell. Saw recently other groups in US and Asia being mentioned as well as Ratcliffe.

Then we have the ruling against us, if we can't overturn that then we can only be reactionary ran than laying foundations. Of course if we do need to bring back the loanees and they were to perform well then by chance the foundations develop naturally with just the odd positions needing reinforcing a year later.

I'm still not convinced Sarri can alter a game tactically when needed. He has one way of playing, when it works like in the first half its a joy to watch, when the system fails though it's spectacular. 

There's times where you blame the players and the manager. I think tonight is a night like that. But i'm not going to blame him for the second half performance, 11 players for a top 6 team shouldn't need extreme motivating when they're 5-1 up on aggregate and 4-1 up in the first half to Slavia Prague.

Sarri at half time;

”Ok we scored 4 goals but we didn’t play 4,000 passes between the backline and the keeper which is not good enough. You need to so go out there and play backwards and sideways!”

I've heard a fair bit of talk about the 'Sarri half time team talk' over the past couple of games, and I was curious to see whether the stats actually backed this up, or whether it was one of those strange observational fallacies. I also remember a lot of talk in the first half of the season that we are/were particularly proficient at scoring late goals, so we may as well check that out too. Bear in mind that I've only gone through this quickly and am by no means a statistician. I've split the 90-minute match into 6 15-minute segments. So general consensus appears to be that:

- Chelsea score a higher proportion of their goals between the 76th and 90th minutes;

- Chelsea concede a higher proportion of their goals between the 46th and 60th minutes.

Considering our downswing in form since the New Year, I thought it may be useful to have a look at both halves in isolation. So for goals scored in the PL (pre-01/01/2019) (20 matches):

For a total of 38 goals in 20 games (1.9 goals per game)

 

And post-01/01/2019 (14 matches):

For a total of 18 goals in 14 games (1.28 goals per game).

On the surface, the general consensus appears to be correct. In both halves of the season, the final 15 minutes are our most lucrative scoring period, both featuring an almost identical percentage of total goals scored over the 90 minutes (with the caveat that we scored far fewer goals per game in the New Year.

I thought it would also be interesting to see how many of these goals were actually crucial to us winning points in any of these games (admittedly arbitrary - Luiz vs Man City and the Trippier own goal vs Tottenham for example don't count for this despite effectively securing the result):

11/08/2018     Pedro vs Huddersfield    3-0
18/08/2018    Alonso vs Arsenal    3-2
26/08/2018    Hazard vs Newcastle    1-1
26/08/2018    Own goal vs Newcastle    2-1
01/09/2018    Hazard vs Bournemouth    2-0
15/09/2018    Hazard vs Cardiff    3-1
15/09/2018    Willian vs Cardiff    4-1
07/10/2018    Morata vs Southampton    3-0
20/10/2018    Barkley vs Man Utd    2-2
28/10/2018    Loftus-Cheek vs Burnley    4-0
24/11/2018    Giroud vs Tottenham    1-3
02/12/2018    Loftus-Cheek vs Fulham    2-0
08/12/2018    Luiz vs Man City    2-0
-
02/02/2019    Luiz vs Huddersfield    5-0
27/02/2019    Own goal vs Tottenham    2-0
10/03/2019    Hazard vs Wolves    1-1
31/03/2019    Azpilicueta vs Cardiff    1-1
31/03/2019    Loftus-Cheek vs Cardiff    2-1
08/04/2019    Hazard vs West Ham    2-0

Only 4/13 from before the New Year, and 3/6 from after - 7/19 total. Only around 36.8%.

So while the stats do very much back up the general consensus idea (hypothesis?) that we score a higher proportion of our late goals in the final 15 minutes, less than half were actually meaningful in result terms.

On 17/04/2019 at 13:15, RIP Mourinho said:

You're right, those are the important statistics to work towards if you want to be a big team and control games.

And how old the players are! That's really, really important. You don't want too many youngsters!

Edited April 18, 20197 yr by just

On 17/04/2019 at 05:38, ForeverCarefree said:

I wondered how Ajax were getting on in the Eredivisie. 

They're joint top with PSV after 30 games tied on 74 points but Ajax have scored a ridiculous 106 goals so far. That's an average of 3.5 goals per game! 

Ajax has the philosophy of “Offense is the best form of Defense.” They let in a lot of goals but they also are a scoring machine.