Points make prizes. (A match thread)

Professional football writers seem to be watching the same games I am. If our players could finish chances we'd be flying high.

I was there last night and just caught up with the highlights. How we didn’t score at least three is beyond me. I don’t see a lack of confidence or effort or evidence of anything the manager could have done better. Interestingly, those there regularly sang pro Glasner songs so he certainly hasn’t lost the support of the hardcore away fans. My glass is still more than half full although a few small sips of ale have evaporated.

Leaving quotes in quotes is the new thing now?

At risk of ridicule for excessive use of xG in a post,

Our shots against Ipswich:

Delap - 3 shots, xG 0.36
MGW - 2 shots xG 0.76
Williams - 2 shots xG 0.30 (1 goal)
Ndoye - 2 shots xG 0.25
Murillo - 2 shots xG 0.19
Jair - 1 shot xG 0.13
CHO - 1 shot xG 0.11
Milenkovic -1 shot xG 0.10
Others - 3 shots xG 0.09

Why aren't you picking on MGW? He's scored the same number of goals this season as Delap, and didn't put away our best opportunity by far? To date this season both have equal xG and failed to finish. We are creating chances, last season we had the same issue, creating chances but not scoring them. Delap will get there, MGW will get back to form, if they can get some confidence. That's where the support comes in, confidence doesn't come from people talking you down.

edit: just noticed Jim made the same point, without the use of xG.

We also gave away very little, apart from the massive howler.
Apart from Wood's wonder year, Big T's occasional streaks, and MGW hot and cold, scoring has been a problem every year. This year feels worse because we're actually creating chances for a change.

TBH I’m totally bored of moaning and talking about all the chances we miss. It’s week after week.

It’s not bad luck or anything else for it to go on for so long. It’s just pure incompetence

There seems to be a bit of money to spend so hopefully the right players are brought in during January.

Has there been any info on Neco? What did he do exactly?

The concern i have is that teams don't usually play well (or badly) for all of a season. They have good runs and bad runs of form. There's an argument that, in general play, we are in a pretty good run at the moment and we'll be in the relegation places after 8 games. So what happens when we start actually playing badly?

Yep. I can get on board with that argument. It's a concern for sure. Though perhaps when we're playing badly, we actually score the odd chance we get, and still get some points. Fuck knows.

Yeah my concern too. The talk is all about it will come good, but it seems like blind hope that we will suddenly learn to shoot better and stop making stupid mistakes.

After a while surely that is just the level we operate at.

Actually Spurs need a point at Chelsea or Sunderland to beat Leeds to put us in the bottom three, so probably won’t happen.

Bottom 3 guaranteed !

What I'll say about Delap which does worry me a bit, is that we're making lots of chances, and they aren't falling to him. Is he not in the right place? I'm up for getting Jesus into the team once fit either as NDoye replacement or Delap rotation and seeing if he can finish some of these changes we're making.

Equally as. What difference will it make if we don’t create anything? We can’t put them away anyway.

He said he was fine on his Instagram. Whether that means playing next week is a different thing.

Because not creating anything suggests your whole way of playing is shit, whereas not finishing them suggests it's down to individual moments of skill. Which you can work on in training and try to improve.

If you aren't making anything AND not finishing anything it's two problems rather than one to try and fix.