Wes Tender

Watched Question Time from Glasgow last night and the matter of David Cameron's reluctance to enter more than one Televised debate arose. It was acknowledged that he had accepted the debate with 7 party leaders but declined the face to face debates with Red Ed. As it is the debate featuring the 7 party leaders is unjust for excluding the Democratic Unionist Party which holds more Parliamentary seats than 4 of the other parties that are represented. Scotland and Wales will have their say, but Northern Ireland won't. I thought that the reasons put forward for not having the face to face debate between Cameron and Red Ed were perfectly valid, that it tended to turn the election into a Presidential style beauty competition, more to do with style rather than substance. Anyway, why the need for these debates when the parties have their own Party Political Broadcasts and manifestos to put across their policies and indeed they have questions put across to them in programmes such as Question Time where representatives from other parties can debate the current issues that concern the electorate. As they said, on the programme, they had a debate about the debate. I was surprised that the programme was quite balanced between those in the audience representing the left and right of the political spectrum, I was expecting there to be a bit more hostility towards the Scottish leader of the Conservatives, Ruth Davidson and Toby Young from the Observer. But both of them impressed with their convictions expressed strongly and seeming to gain respect from the audience, whereas, Labour SMP Kezia Dugdale often sounded weak, especially when she proclaimed that Labour would pay for more Nurses in Scotland via the expedient cure-all Mansion Tax. This drew groans from the audience, most of whom were clever enough to see that there were more Nurses required than Mansions on which to levy tax which was to be directed towards the financing of other major policy expenditures already. Humza Yousaf came across well for the SNP, but failed to satisfactorily answer the question about what they would do in the event of a hung Parliament and I was surprised that nobody in the audience pressed him on the West Lothian question. The next programme from Leeds should be a corker, with Ian Hislop and Natalie Bennett included. That should be good sport for Hislop, turning the screws on the accident-prone foot-in-mouth Greens' leader.

Durham enhances his chances of getting the "Tw*t commentator of the year" award.

Might it be the case that most of those players you have listed are strikers, whereas J W-P is a midfielder?

And generally finding favour with the majority. There is no reason to believe that there would not be a consensus among most fans at most clubs, so why shouldn't it be possible for pressure to be put on the authorities to introduce these measures?

I like the idea of a clock used in the same way as in Rugby. Stop it when there is an injury. Stop it when there is a substitution and there would be no point in a player ambling off the pitch at a snail's pace. Stop it when the ball is out of play. As suggested, have the countdown minutes remaining displayed on a big screen.

It rather depends on who is doing the shooting as there are 10 outfield players and presumably those statistics are for all players not just strikers. One assumes that in general strikers ought to be more capable of hitting a longer shot with more accuracy than a midfielder or defender. Regarding the rest of my post, why is my point superfluous suggesting that shots from distance might result in goals from deflections, own goals, penalties, etc? There have been quite a few matches won recently on the back of deflected shots, penalties, own goals, so they cannot be statistically that rare.

It seemed that Pardew's plan was to sit back and stay solid to frustrate us in the first half and then try and sneak a goal on the break the second half. The first half we had most of the possession and were in command of the midfield, winning most of the 50/50 balls. But as usual, the problem was in cutting through a sturdy defence in the final third. There are no easy games at this level nowadays and Crystal Palace are a very reasonable outfit having a solid enough defence and some very quick attacking wide players in Bolasie, Gayle and Saha, with Puncheon a tricky player too, and we were fortunate that Chamakh and Jedinak weren't playing. We on the other hand were pretty well back to full strength, apart from Toby being only on the bench. In the second half, Palace came out with much more intent and for the first time in the match we were a bit on the back foot on occasions. The game was much more end to end, but luckily our defence never really allowed their quick wide players to break through, because Clyne and Bertrand had the pace to contain them. We had as many corners as I can remember in quite some time, but when was the last time we scored from one? Palace gave us a couple of very nervous moments when with more luck they could have scored. Forster dropped a catch and they pounced right next to the post, but thankfully Forster just did enough to keep it out. Then they had a shot that was parried out and the returned shot hit the bar a fraction from the inside of the post and away, much to everybody's relief. Elia had been largely anonymous in the second half and the introduction of Tadic produced an improvement in our approach play near the box. I would have preferred to have kept Pelle on with Long, but Koeman replaced him with Long and Long duly obliged us with his usual passion and commitment to the cause. The third substitution brought on J W-P for Djuricic, who I thought had a good match. He is developing nicely as he gets to know the PL pace and he showed some good dribbling skills and trickery, although for me he goes down too easily. He needs to perfect that craft to fool referees, as he isn't convincing at the moment. Thankfully we finally made the breakthrough with just 7 minutes remaining thanks to a pass from J W-P, a shot and a quick reaction from Mane scoring from the rebound with a lovely dink over the keeper. At last the drought was over and the relief among the crowd and the players was palpable. There were a few very nervous minutes to the end when Palce threw everything forward, but we held firm and not only have the three points, but a clean sheet too. On balance it was well enough deserved and hopefully the confidence boost will enable us to get something from Chelsea before pressing on to a more winnable series of fixtures after that. It would have been terrible going on a 4 day break to Switzerland on the back of a goalless draw or even worse another defeat, but spirits now will be a lot higher and the team should come back more relaxed and rested. As an aside, I thought the referee was excellent for a change.

What a load of b*llocks comparing the respective managers' performances during the second half of the season, despite Rogers also having been at another club during the time scale and Van Gaal not even having managed in England before this season. Comparisons only have any validity when one is comparing apples with apples, not oranges. And I for one am delighted that we have been removed from the equation, as that reduces the pressure on us and we can sneak back in under the radar when the other contenders take points away from each other.

Presumably you mean that you would prefer the shot that produced a goal from one yard out than 10 shots from 30 yards that didn't? The way that you tried to explain that makes you look a bit simple too. Pelle can shoot from one yard out and miss as he did recently and Clyne can score from 35 yards out. The value of a goal is equal despite where it is scored from, but one is expected to be far easier than the other, therefore the chances of success from shooting from distance are naturally lower. But we have suffered by gaining no points during the past few matches because we have not scored, whereas Berahino and Coutinho have both won matches for their teams by scoring from well outside the box. I have already made a case for shooting from distance more often, because of the ancilliary repercussions that might ensue from deflections, one goals, penalty awards, etc. If only we scored every time we shot, eh, regardless of where the shot came from. Then we could afford to have a much smaller number of shots and still win the league.

I'm with you on this, but having suggested on another fred that the more we shoot, the higher the likelihood will be that we score, I have had this opinion challenged and labelled as "agricultural". Furthermore, statistics apparently prove that depending on where the shots are taken from, it might well be the case that having fewer shots could actually result on scoring more goals.

How idiotic of all those people taking Winter holidays in the snow when they could be sunning themselves in the Caribbean. A chance to lift the players' spirits, recharge batteries and build up cameraderie away from familiar surroundings, staying in five star hotels in beautiful scenery, what an idiotic decision, eh?

Shylock, thanks for putting some context to the figures, as otherwise one could only guess as to what they referred to. As you say, the data is imperfect for numerous reasons and you don't appear to have any statistics for what number of goals might arise as a result of deflected shots, or free kicks and assists resulting from shots outside the box. And even though shots are made from outside the box, penalties can arise from them if they strike a hand, or if a player is pulled down attempting to shoot, but you don't seem to believe that there is any sense in that argument. Your bugbear is about decision-making, the effective time to shoot and the movement of the striker in the box before shooting. My bugbear is that we try to walk the ball into the net when an earlier snap shot might be more productive. Also I agree with Captainchris that Pelle ought to move around the box much more to pull defenders about and make space for others to exploit, and we need to get the ball into the box much earlier instead of the slow build-up that allows the other team to pack the box. An amusing tactic, to infer that anybody who desires the attacking players to shoot more has an agricultural mindset. If I'm to be considered a bit more cerebral like you, then I obviously ought to be espousing the sort of nuances that you believe will improve our goal-scoring figures and that it is possible that we could actually score more goals from shooting less.

I disagree,Shylock. Only you could argue that the fewer shots a team makes, the more goals they might score. As you say, the statistical data must be imperfect when it quotes an average figure with a maximum range that is nearly double the minimum. When they are talking averages, what they must mean is actually 21 shots. What would be more interesting would be statistics that give an average number of goals resulting from shots which end up as being scored by deflections, penalties arising from shots, (handballs/shirt pulling,etc), goals arising from rebounds off defenders, etc. Any goals picked up in that way would be preferable to pussy-footing around the box trying to pass the ball into the net only to have it hoofed upfield by a defender.

Was Countinho in a good position to shoot against us? Was Berahino? When fans scream for a shot, it is usually because they can see a gap in the defence and an opportunity to exploit it. They don't urge the shot just because it amuses them.

Why would Koeman tell the team to avoid taking shots from outside the area? I'm a bit nonplussed by even the suggestion of that.

Exactly. Don't shoot, don't score, it's as easy as that. Even if the striker scores one out of five shots, it follows that the higher the number of shots attempted, the higher the number of goals will be. We seem to have stopped the shots from further out, the type that is going into our net from Berahinho, Coutinho, etc. We have scored some great goals from outside the box earlier in the season from the likes of Clyne, Schneiderlin and Wanyama, but I don't remember us having a go recently, preferring to attempt to walk the ball into the net. Shoot and there is always the chance of a handball, a deflected goal, a rebound into the path of one of our players, a corner, indeed several opportunities to gain some sort of advantage.

Here is the info on Nils Petersen, which frankly leaves me a bit underwhelmed. He has been shunted from pillar to post, not deemed good enough to settle with any one team, his transfer value dropping like a stone. http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/nils-petersen/profil/spieler/42936 OK, he might not have suffered the knee ligament damage with us, but had he done so, we would be back to square one, with no particular reason to expect that he would become a goal-scoring revelation in the PL. As others have pointed out, we have probably the best facilities in place in the PL and possibly the World for indentifying players who could do a decent job for us with the right attitude and at the right price. It is said that the black box idntifies and assesses every player in the World's major leagues, so I very much doubt that we have failed to cast an eye over this bloke.

And I have also covered why we had only one striking option following the closure of the January transfer window and those reasons are the ones why we didn't feel the necessity to bring in another striker during the window. However, we did add significantly to the attacking options by bringing in Mane, Elio and Djuricic, so it isn't as if we weren't seeking to improve our attacking threat.

If it wasn't April the first, I'd suspect a massive spoof and that all the people who claim that they see it as white and gold are just pretending to see that, to kid those who see the colours for what they truly are.

Agreed. The blue has a hint of mauve about it

What polling? Presumably it was just a small sample of a thousand or so, comprising also those whose sympathies lie with the Green Party, who tried to put a sympathetic spin on the poll outcome, because the fact is that Bennett was a disaster in those interviews. No reasonably intelligent voter would trust her party with the economy based on their GCSE standard grasp of economics; not that the Greens stand any chance of being elected, except as part of a coalition with a senior partner that does have experience of how things are in the real world. Whereas the aims of this organisation are laudable that people should vote for policies not personalities, it is quite naive. People vote for a basket of policies from a party's manifesto, because they support the majority of them. It would be rare for a voter to support every policy of a party. Also, loads of voters are going to vote tactically for parties whose policies they don't support in the main, in order to decrease the chances of a candidate being elected from a party they like even less. That tactical voting allied to the emnity that many voters feel towards the main parties gives the best hope that the Greens have of gaining a few seats. I suspect that this election is going to be less about the party manifestos basket of policies than any previous one in our history.

It's a reasonable assessment. The only bit I disagree with is the use of "Logic suggests". There is little logic involved in such forecasts, otherwise the bookies wouldn't be as wealthy.

Is this you, Pompey Lass?