[Albion] Brighton - "more ruthless, less ballet"

[Stat Brother]

3. Burnley and Leicester have exposed us at corners quite brutally but we have somehow got away with it both times. It's hardly a new thing that needs fixing either and is an odd problem with Burn and Duffy in the team.

The oddity is that Duffy isn't allowed to attack the ball.

GPott can reinvent corners and over think it all he wants with the other 9 players.
But he needs to copy his predecessor, with t'other:-

"and Shane, Shane woowo Shane, Shane come here boy,
Shhhhannnnne ball"


You don't bring Albert Einstein back to life and then get him to paint your fence.

 

[dazzer6666]

Great thread……..

So many contributing factors for me - crowd helping at home, Duffy rejuvenated, Trossard in great form and in a freer role that suits him (his speed of foot, Lallana’s speed of brain and Biss’ speed of challenge is a terrific combo), Sanchez settled and instilling confidence in the defence, Maupay full of confidence, Welbeck’s vast experience………etc, plus increasing competition within the squad for starting places.

Add all this to an intelligent, studious, deep-thinking coach who seems pretty balanced, very honest with himself and very prepared to adapt style and formations to suit the opposition, including during games - sure he’d admit himself he’s still on a steep learning curve in the PL but he’s getting far more right than wrong (and personally I’d rather have someone prepared to experiment than a rigid style/formation, accepting it’ll lead to some beatings).

Can’t wait to see a starting lineup including Lamptey and Cucu - ideally against someone like Newcastle. Bruce’s fat head will explode just thinking about how to deal with it

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

Great thread……..

So many contributing factors for me - crowd helping at home, Duffy rejuvenated, Trossard in great form and in a freer role that suits him (his speed of foot, Lallana’s speed of brain and Biss’ speed of challenge is a terrific combo), Sanchez settled and instilling confidence in the defence, Maupay full of confidence, Welbeck’s vast experience………etc, plus increasing competition within the squad for starting places.

Add all this to an intelligent, studious, deep-thinking coach who seems pretty balanced, very honest with himself and very prepared to adapt style and formations to suit the opposition, including during games - sure he’d admit himself he’s still on a steep learning curve in the PL but he’s getting far more right than wrong (and personally I’d rather have someone prepared to experiment than a rigid style/formation, accepting it’ll lead to some beatings).

Can’t wait to see a starting lineup including Lamptey and Cucu - ideally against someone like Newcastle. Bruce’s fat head will explode just thinking about how to deal with it

It's that flexibility that keeps us guessing and must do the opposition too. When they were lining up before kick off, it looked for a moment like Veltman was going to make up a 3 with Cucu and March as wingbacks, but quickly shaped as a 4, but it was a lopsided 4 as while Veltman had March in front of him, Cucu only had Welbeck on his side who was much further forward. At first I thought that was a mistake as Söyüncü would deal with Welbeck allowing Pereira to keep getting forward

However, after that early pressure, suddenly Cucu just burst into the spaces Leicester left on that side which arguably led to our best work in the first half. Whether that was Potter out thinking Rogers by design, or they underestimated the threat Cucu could pose I don't know, but Rogers reacted immediately at HT bringing Lookman on to try to peg Cucu back which I think was instrumental in swinging the flow of the game back to them.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Re Sanchez, he's doing brilliantly, and can only get better.

One thing we need to sort out is teams blocking him off at corners, negating his ability to get to the ball. Burnley did it very well, but against Leicester we might have made a change to respond, which is to place that player offside by removing the players on the posts, but Bob himself needs to work out a way to overcome the physical challenge directly as well.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

This is worth a read - as it covers a lot of what we're discussing here:

https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/news/2264045/albion-analytics-debrief-leicester-city

 

[KeegansHairPiece]

We certainly are being talked about, and like many poster's, agree with this article; it's been coming for a while.

https://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/premier-league/2021-2022/brighton-hove-albion-have-been-building-their-rise-for-years-you-just-didn-t-notice_sto8550964/story.shtml

 

[Stato]

We got a mention in today's 'Knowledge' column in the Guardian and amazingly, it was because of a match in which we outperformed our Xg: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/01/the-knowledge-premier-league-xg-expected-goals. Tross's last minute peach at Brentford came in the match with the lowest Xg of the season.

After 2020/21's Xg frustrations, I wondered whether there was anything in the impression that we had reverted to the mean, so I checked Understat's Xp table: https://understat.com/league/EPL. In terms of expected points in 2021/22, we would have finished 9th. We are still underperforming a bit in terms of putting away chances, but the over-acheivement in actual vs expected goals conceded balances that out a bit.

One of this season's big underacheivers in terms of expected points are Crystal Palace. They actually outperformed their expected goals scored, but underperformed on goals conceded. This could be a worry for us as this may be easily rectified for next season. Either they could buy themselves a top class goalkeeper, or Vieira could spend the summer making all his feted young England defenders practice advanced methods of not letting it bounce.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

We got a mention in today's 'Knowledge' column in the Guardian and amazingly, it was because of a match in which we outperformed our Xg: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/01/the-knowledge-premier-league-xg-expected-goals. Tross's last minute peach at Brentford came in the match with the lowest Xg of the season.

After 2020/21's Xg frustrations, I wondered whether there was anything in the impression that we had reverted to the mean, so I checked Understat's Xp table: https://understat.com/league/EPL. In terms of expected points in 2021/22, we would have finished 9th. We are still underperforming a bit in terms of putting away chances, but the over-acheivement in actual vs expected goals conceded balances that out a bit.

One of this season's big underacheivers in terms of expected points are Crystal Palace. They actually outperformed their expected goals scored, but underperformed on goals conceded. This could be a worry for us as this may be easily rectified for next season. Either they could buy themselves a top class goalkeeper, or Vieira could spend the summer making all his feted young England defenders practice advanced methods of not letting it bounce.

BLOTD so far