But the Sheffield Utd team we drew with at home were beatable. We missed two clear cut chances and they created sod all. They had little purpose with the ball and we held them off comfortably. Our crowd booed as loud as I’ve ever heard for a league draw at the end, so let’s not pretend it was some sort of marvellous result against the odds.
We gave it the big time when we did well, especially at away games and rightly so, nothing better than rubbing it in!
I don't "hate" him, I just think he's an utterly useless excuse for a Premier League striker, and our fans ridiculous blindness to his horrible performances and limitations and their insistence on continuing to relentlessly rim him no matter what irritates me. Again, I'm referring more to the Facebook dribblers more so than a huge deal of people on here. I'd honestly rather play Success. Ideally, neither, but at least Success could potentially improve and has some pace. Deeney is getting worse and worse and worse.
The 120 odd goals albeit most some time ago and in a league lower might give him some leeway with some? In a funny way his best part of the game is defending from set plays rather than any attacking performance! Success could be good and improve but even last week he came on and first thing he did was give the ball away., Very frustrating..
I find it strange no-one else has mentioned Ben Fosters absolutely horrific distribution. How many times have we seen him waste a solid 2 minutes taking a goal kick that is inevitable sliced off left for an opposition throw on... How many times has he hoofed it up-field towards Deeney’s bonce only for the other team to regain possession and hit us on another attack. Foster really is an amazing shot stopper but his distribution is letting us down big time. This is a problem when we struggle to get upfield as it is.
You went on and on and on about Sheff. Utd. at home, a match that we had every chance to beat them in and they still haven't lost away all season. And you'd now deny it?
I would rather play Deeney than Success. Success is a worse mirror image of Delefeo and Sarr. So that would be 3 players picking the ball up outside the box and trying to dribble towards the box for a possible assist. If you want someone running into the box with occasional mistouches outside the box it's Gray. If you want long balls to the front man with decent penalty taking and the odd trek into the box it's Deeney. That's all we got to choose from at present.
Every PL season there are between 1 and 3 teams that end up with more points away than at home. For example, last season Crystal Palace averaged 0.48 points per game more from their away matches than their home ones. Meanwhile, last season we only averaged 0.21 points per game more at home than away. So for us vs Palace last season we'd have had a better chance against them away than at home. As for this season, so far Sheffield Utd have 0.27 points per game more away than at home, while we only have 0.18 ppg more at home than away (and this is after the Man U win). Sure, it's not every team in every circumstance, but there usually are a number of fixtures every year in the PL when "statistically" one might expect the away teams to have a better chance of winning than when they play at home in the reverse fixture (and us vs Sheff Utd this season appears to be one of them).
Sample size is too small to draw your conclusions. Over a proper sample no team is more likely to win away over home.
Mmm. But if we keep banging on about stats week in and week out, March and relegation will have arrived and we can move on.
"Over a proper sample"? Half a season, or even a full season, is plenty. In fact, it's typically the exact "sample size" things in football are most commonly used to measure with. If leagues can determine who is worthy of being champions across one season, and who is worthy of being relegated, then the same length of time can certainly also be used to assess who was better away from home or at home. No one says: "Man City won the League last season, but they weren't the PL champions because they haven't got the most points over the last 30 years", or "Watford have the fewest points in the league this season, but they should stay up because they did alright in the previous four", etc. Also, as a side-note, Crystal Palace have performed better away from home in 3 of the previous 5 seasons.
Wanting an upgrade on Deeney is fine, thinking that could be Success is just plain deluded. We've looked more purposeful up front since Deeney has come back - do you agree? Now he does some of the physical work GD & RP are too cowardly to do it allows them more freedom to play.
Nope it isn’t nearly big enough. If you were a bookie would you have Sheff Utd more likely to win at Vicarage Road or at Bramall Lane if we played tomorrow?
I've yet to see you actually provide any data or evidence yourself which actually renders my analysis invalid; just claiming "it isn't nearly big enough" is lazy and not really an argument. At the moment the odds would likely be about the same (which would still make it odd to be happy about drawing one of them and angry at drawing the other). Although at the time we played both matches I would have given Utd better odds for our home match than our away match.
The evidence is that obviously Sheff Utd would be shorter odds at home than away for the same opponent. The reason being you have a sample size of decades showing home advantage is a beneficial factor. If you don’t agree with this then we will have to agree to disagree.
Except I've shown you already that this isn't always the case for all clubs across each season. You can't just summarise the 10 years and say that because it is more typically the case it means it is always the case, because as I have shown it evidently isn't.
Agree to disagree. The evidence is in the odds. Your short term trends are frankly irrelevant to the fact that Sheff Utd are more likely to win at home than away.
Except all the data for them in the PL shows that not to be the case. You've not even given the odds as evidence (it's tricky to find retrospective odds though I know). A whole season, or half a season, really isn't a "short term trend". I'm not agreeing to disagree because you've still not provided one shred of actual evidence to support your vague generalisations.
This is pointless. I’m not arguing with a man who has observed 5 heads in a row and declared that it invalidates the long term trend of statistics. It’s a waste of my time. Believe what you want.
Winning football games is not the same as a random coin toss. You really don't seem like someone with any decent grasp on "statistics" whatsoever.
It’s an analogy. I’m conversing with a person who doesn’t understand sample size so I’m not surprised you feel this way. I’ll let you have the last word and then we can move on, you sure in your belief that Sheff Utd should be shorter odds on the road than at home which is blindingly obviously incorrect
I do understand sample size, you're just being very selective in choosing to only refer to data which supports your presumption (while not actually providing any numbers to back it up), and ignoring that the data isn't entirely uniform or relevant, and that that exceptions do occur (which any statistician would be churlish to ignore). In addition, odds (as you're now trying to push the argument towards) will include form and betting patterns in them - people bet based on how teams have performed over recent appearances and subsequently what their expected result might, not how they did 10 years ago (otherwise they'd still be backing Arsenal and Man Utd to win the vast majority of their matches). P.S., even if Sheff Utd were very, very marginally better odds at home than away (which I don't think they should have been), then that also wouldn't explain why drawing both of them would result in such wildly different reactions, of either being happy with the point or angry about it (as hornetboy displayed).
Well the different reaction may have been because when we played them at home, we still considered ourselves to be an underperforming mid table team whilst they were a newly promoted side with what looked an average group of players benefiting from a promotion bounce. A few months later and they've continued their good performances and beaten better teams than us. Bearing in mind we were bottom when we played them away a draw on boxing day looked half decent. It's all about context. Plus agree with others, when you have 2 even teams the trend of wins is normally with the home side.
You're rewriting history there. Many on here, myself included, said it would be a very tough game at the time. There were a few who had the attitude of still casually dismissing them, but it was misguided (and maybe based on not actually having watched much of their early games?). Also, if anything Sheff Utd were overall playing better for the first third of the season than they have been in the last few weeks. I agree with you that it is "all about context", which is way it is silly to ignore the fact that every season there are usually 1-3 teams that, usually by virtue of the tactics they deploy and how opponents set up against them, play slightly better away from home.
