king_dezeeuw06
Vital Champions League
Since no one started one, i thought i might as well get the ball rolling for tomorrows game.
Burton come into this in horrible form with no wins, 1 draw and 6 loses in their last 7 games. Some of those games were 6 pointers too, so they really have been in free fall, but aren't in the drop zone.
They are one of the weakest teams away in the division withwith 4 wins, 5 draws and 11 loses. They are the 3rd lowest scorers in the division with just 31 goals from 39 games while the defence has been average conceding 51, which is only 3 less than us. Their top scorer Lubala only had 5 goals but he left in January leaving 2 central midfielders Joe Powell and Mark Helm their joint top scorers on 4 each. Incidentally both are frees in the summer and i could see us looking at them.
From recent games it looks like they'll set up as a 5-4-1 and sit back and try and make life hard for us. They are decent at defending a lead 60% of the time, while they struggle to equalise only 20% of the time. So as usual in these types of games where we expect them to sit back the first goal is crucial.
They have the lowest average possession in the league with 40%, their pass accuracy is lower than most, they put the fewest crosses in the box but play a lot of long balls. They also have a long throw but haven't been as dangerous from set pieces as you'd maybe expect with only 9 goals from dead balls which is one of the lowest.
The only team who averages less shots per game is actually us (we are 10.3 to their 10.4). They also concede one of the highest number of shots per game with 14.2, which is again only 0.1 higher than us. So in either box there are a lot of similarities but the difference is we are much more efficient at scoring from the chances we have compared to them.
Basically they aren't very good and if we turn up we should have enough quality to beat them. But they are in a relegation fight so i imagine they'll be up for it and we know our pattern by now, this is typically the type of game we so often don't seem up for. Maloney said in his pre match it's all about our mentality and attitude heading into this game and he's absolutely right -if we play with urgency and intensity and match Burton for effort we'll get the win. But getting the team to do that in fixtures like this has been our undoing this season.
Burton come into this in horrible form with no wins, 1 draw and 6 loses in their last 7 games. Some of those games were 6 pointers too, so they really have been in free fall, but aren't in the drop zone.
They are one of the weakest teams away in the division withwith 4 wins, 5 draws and 11 loses. They are the 3rd lowest scorers in the division with just 31 goals from 39 games while the defence has been average conceding 51, which is only 3 less than us. Their top scorer Lubala only had 5 goals but he left in January leaving 2 central midfielders Joe Powell and Mark Helm their joint top scorers on 4 each. Incidentally both are frees in the summer and i could see us looking at them.
From recent games it looks like they'll set up as a 5-4-1 and sit back and try and make life hard for us. They are decent at defending a lead 60% of the time, while they struggle to equalise only 20% of the time. So as usual in these types of games where we expect them to sit back the first goal is crucial.
They have the lowest average possession in the league with 40%, their pass accuracy is lower than most, they put the fewest crosses in the box but play a lot of long balls. They also have a long throw but haven't been as dangerous from set pieces as you'd maybe expect with only 9 goals from dead balls which is one of the lowest.
The only team who averages less shots per game is actually us (we are 10.3 to their 10.4). They also concede one of the highest number of shots per game with 14.2, which is again only 0.1 higher than us. So in either box there are a lot of similarities but the difference is we are much more efficient at scoring from the chances we have compared to them.
Basically they aren't very good and if we turn up we should have enough quality to beat them. But they are in a relegation fight so i imagine they'll be up for it and we know our pattern by now, this is typically the type of game we so often don't seem up for. Maloney said in his pre match it's all about our mentality and attitude heading into this game and he's absolutely right -if we play with urgency and intensity and match Burton for effort we'll get the win. But getting the team to do that in fixtures like this has been our undoing this season.
