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...all wanting to leave at the same time for whatever reason, it put me in mind of this little scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. I wonder if Holloway got them alll in for a 'chat' and said if you don't wanna be 'ere, you're welcome leave.
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With so many first teamers... on 09:45 - Jan 13 with 1408 views
That was an excellent performance. After two fortunate wins that one was thoroughly deserved. Hard work and organisation capitalised on a very sloppy reading. credit to all involved. Hopefully this is a sign that things are coming together and we'll see further improvement against Fulham.
(Doesn't mean I don't think we and Holloway could have benefited from a more softly softly evolutionary approach)
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With so many first teamers... on 10:03 - Jan 13 with 1392 views
Team with vision, forward passing and quick counter attacks v team with lots of sideways passing, crowd getting on their backs and a late failed surge to try and rescue the game.
Sorry, which team was in the hoops?
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With so many first teamers... on 10:05 - Jan 13 with 1387 views
With so many first teamers... on 08:58 - Jan 13 by Rs_Holy
Stats are great and very much part and parcel of the modern game... But they can also be a bit deceptive. Reading had the vast majority of possession last night and therefore must have completed way more passes than us. But we all know that we should have won by more than 1-0! I've just had a look on Wiki (not the most reliable I know) to check JFH's early record with us. (Apologies if this has already been stated) He won 1 of his first 10 league games (amassing 10 points in the process). That was the time when he kept saying "It is what it is....We move on". I'm not slating JFH, I think he is a good manager! (He seemed to draw a lot of games which was progress at the time). But I was getting really fed up with people having a go at Ollie when he has only just re-joined the club. He has had 10 league matches and (comparing the stats) has won 3 more than JFH did. But putting the stats aside for one moment there was something about last night’s performance which was important to me. I've been waiting for something to click with QPR for a few seasons now. I looked at the various players amassed over several seasons and thought "one of these days it’s all going to fall into place... We're going to look like a proper team and win convincingly". Last night was the first time (for years) it looked like something had actually clicked… Partnerships were forming, we looked fantastic on the break for 60 minutes of that game. I'm not saying we are the finished article and there will be disappointments and bad runs to come (no doubt). Football can be a right bar-steward sometimes. But it was something to build on last night. We looked like a team. We looked like we could score some goals. We looked solid at the back (for most of the game), we beat a high flying (in form) team in their back yard. IT WAS REALLY ENTERTAINING!!!
[Post edited 13 Jan 2017 9:01]
I never did anything on Hasselbaink's stats from last season. Comparing seasons brings in too many variables; different teams, different times. I compared Hasselbaink's record of this season compared to Holloway's to show that a) Hasselbaink wasn't doing that badly and relegation wasn't yet a serious probability, and b) that Holloway wasn't doing any better.
This degraded into a subjective, qualitative argument about how much more attacking we were under Holloway so I used goals, shots and shots on target per game averages to compare the two managers, and again, Holloway came out worse, in both attack and defence. It wasn't a brilliant statistical exercise, but you use whatever is to hand in trying to get a less subjective view.
Adding in the comparison with last night's stats did something to vindicate my approach, in that they showed a team that was both attacking and defending better. I agree with you that the possession stats are remarkable: but I suppose that begs the question that what use is having the ball three-quarters of the time if you still cannot get close enough to take a shot and your opposition counter-attacks so spectacularly well?
As to what caused yesterday's improvement, well it obviously wasn't just the individual performances of two or three players: that was a whole team of improved performances, as well as a new confidence and different strategy to what we've seen before. I cannot but concede that Holloway has to be centrally responsible for those dramatic changes and congratulate him accordingly. I will go even further and say that, because he is an intelligent, experimental manager, I would have expected that Hasselbaink's performance would most likely have improved, but I would never have expected him to produce such a dramatic turn-around as we just witnessed.
With so many first teamers... on 08:05 - Jan 13 by isawqpratwcity
Quite the contrary. Credit where credit's due, that was a very good game. And the stats show it, too. Comparing last night to Holloway's previous 9:
shots for: up 30% shots against: down 42% shots on target for: up 9% shots on target against: down 85%
The stats aren't always right, dave, but they are a very useful aid to understanding, as I have just illustrated. But then, you're not interested in stats, are you, dave?
You can use whatever stats you want you won't convince me we were fine under Hasselbaink and have got worse since.
We were dropping down under Hasselbaink, from playoffs to 17th in 2 months, the performances in his last few games were awful and no numbers are going to convince me otherwise. I don’t really understand how you can say 17th place and 6 points off the drop under Hasselbaink was not a team in danger of going down but 17th place and 5 points off the drop is in danger of going down. To me both scenarios are teams in danger of going down.
Since Holloway has arrived we've got better imo, even in the games we lost I thought we played pretty well at Ipswich and for the first half at Brighton. Also played well against Villa and Derby, even at Rotherham we had a few decent spells in the game. The stats will show those games were all poor but I felt signs were that we were improving and we were playing better than in games we drew earlier in the season so the results would follow which they have.