Our "number 10s"

[benjii]

Our attacking midfielders are poor, in terms of goal output. This is a main reason why we are rubbish, particularly given that we do not have defenders or central midfielders who score regularly either (aside from the odd JWP free kick).

Djenepo, in particular, is utterly dreadful, as far as figures go. Same goes for Elyounoussi (should never have been brought back into the first team squad) and Tella, albeit with smaller samples. 

Figures are for Saints only.

Redmond: PL games: 172. PL goals: 20. Goals per game: 0.1.

Expected goals per season: 4.

Walcott: PL games: 23. PL goals: 3. Goals per game: 0.13. Expected goals per season: 5

Djenepo: PL games: 50. PL goals: 3. Goals per game: 0.06. Expected goals per season: 2

Elyounoussi: PL games: 20. PL goals: 1. Goals per game: 0.05. Expected goals per season: 2.

Stuey: PL games: 92. PL goals: 12. Goals per game: 0.13. Expected goals per season: 5.

Tella: PL games: 20. PL goals: 1. Goals per game: 0.05. Expected goals per season: 2.

These numbers would be OK if ONE of these players was on the pitch in a Steven Davis role but we play two of these every match, sometimes three.

I know people will say our strikers font score many either but that's an area where we have, at least, brought two new players in. These "number 10s" are the exact same bunch that are proven to be ineffective. 

We have made two big mistakes over the summer:

1) not trying to improve at centre back

2) not trying to improve at "10"

 

Edited 26 September, 2021 by benjii

[OttawaSaint]

Agreed. I did some napkin maths too in the game thread and we don’t have many goals in us at all. To have so many passengers in those #10 slots is killing us. It’d be fine if they threaded in passes and made assists but I think their assist record is worse than their goal record. 

RH will take off Redmond abs Ely but replace them with like for like and not Tella. Worrying times. 

[TWar]

1 hour ago, benjii said:

Our attacking midfielders are poor, in terms of goal output. This is a main reason why we are rubbish, particularly given that we do not have defenders or central midfielders who score regularly either (aside from the odd JWP free kick).

Djenepo, in particular, is utterly dreadful, as far as figures go. Same goes for Elyounoussi (should never have been brought back into the first team squad) and Tella, albeit with smaller samples. 

Figures are for Saints only.

Redmond: PL games: 172. PL goals: 20. Goals per game: 0.1.

Expected goals per season: 4.

Walcott: PL games: 23. PL goals: 3. Goals per game: 0.13. Expected goals per season: 5

Djenepo: PL games: 50. PL goals: 3. Goals per game: 0.06. Expected goals per season: 2

Elyounoussi: PL games: 20. PL goals: 1. Goals per game: 0.05. Expected goals per season: 2.

Stuey: PL games: 92. PL goals: 12. Goals per game: 0.13. Expected goals per season: 5.

Tella: PL games: 20. PL goals: 1. Goals per game: 0.05. Expected goals per season: 2.

These numbers would be OK if ONE of these players was on the pitch in a Steven Davis role but we play two of these every match, sometimes three.

I know people will say our strikers font score many either but that's an area where we have, at least, brought two new players in. These "number 10s" are the exact same bunch that are proven to be ineffective. 

We have made two big mistakes over the summer:

1) not trying to improve at centre back

2) not trying to improve at "10"

 

Excellent post. Attacking mid was such a massive issue in the summer and I thought we'd be looking for someone in as well as Walcott. The failure to sign someone who can improve our chance creation ment we can't score and the failure to sign a starting player to accompany Salisu means we have an error in us at the back. Bad combination that.

[OttawaSaint]

Walcott was a puzzling signing given he is about as ineffective as both Redmond, Elyanoussi and Djenepo.

We need a more dynamic player in there like a Tella.

Typically Redmond buried his chance today but was a mile offside.

[Nemi]

As terrible as Redmond has been he’s probably the most likely to produce something, which is an absolutely shocking indictment of our quality in this area (excluding Armstrong, but he’s a slightly different sort of player, and personally I’d keep him a bit deeper as we need a bit of drive in that position).

The fact that this area wasn’t strengthened is wildly neglectful. The other problem is how are we meant to expect any impact from our subs, when this is the sort of quality that we can bring on?

[SFC Forever]

Trouble is, who do we blame for the players that we have signed.

 

 

[sydney_saint]

The conclusions are still going to be similar, but just saying using 'appearances' isn't really fair. The likes of Djenepo, Walcott and Tella are mainly getting their appearances from subs, whilst Redmond nearly always gets the full game.

If you take Djenepo, yes he's got 50 appearances. But he's only played the full match ten times. Likewise Redmond for most of his career here gets the full game. He has played the full 90 for 115/172 appearances.

For Djenepo, when you take into his minutes played, he's only played the equivalent of 28 full games for us. So his expected goals per game if he played every game in a season would be 0.1. Redmond's too would be higher, but not much higher at .14. 

It doesn't take away that both are dismal stats so the conclusion is still the same. But that Djenepo is closer than Redmond, which more shows how poor Redmond is than a positives for Djenepo.

 

[TWar]

10 hours ago, SFC Forever said:

Trouble is, who do we blame for the players that we have signed.

 

 

Personally I'm blaming Gao. I think money is being taken out of the club, as I can see no other reason why we would run a £15-20m netspend when previous windows we've made a £10m-25m loss when the team clearly needs quality. The most important roles to improve upon this summer were CB and AM (not including forced replacements like for Ings and Bertrand) and we spent £6m between them on Walcott and Lyanco. Then we lose because Bednarek makes a mistake and we can't create. I don't believe Semmens and Ralph couldn't see that, they were both very clear about the need to improve both roles, I think someone took the money away.

[Whitey Grandad]

1 minute ago, TWar said:

Personally I'm blaming Gao. I think money is being taken out of the club, as I can see no other reason why we would run a £15-20m netspend when previous windows we've made a £10m-25m loss when the team clearly needs quality. The most important roles to improve upon this summer were CB and AM (not including forced replacements like for Ings and Bertrand) and we spent £6m between them on Walcott and Lyanco. Then we lose because Bednarek makes a mistake and we can't create. I don't believe Semmens and Ralph couldn't see that, they were both very clear about the need to improve both roles, I think someone took the money away.

You have no evidence of this.

[TWar]

1 minute ago, Whitey Grandad said:

You have no evidence of this.

The evidence is we made a load of money in transfer fees and we also cut our wagebill and yet we didn't have the money to purchase a decent CB or AM. Why is that? We clearly wanted another AM hence why we were linked to Minimino and we clearly wanted a decent CB too. Where did the money go?

[Whitey Grandad]

54 minutes ago, TWar said:

The evidence is we made a load of money in transfer fees and we also cut our wagebill and yet we didn't have the money to purchase a decent CB or AM. Why is that? We clearly wanted another AM hence why we were linked to Minimino and we clearly wanted a decent CB too. Where did the money go?

The money was never there. Don’t believe all that you read about transfer fees. We’ve been through all this before.

[TWar]

4 minutes ago, Whitey Grandad said:

The money was never there. Don’t believe all that you read about transfer fees. We’ve been through all this before.

The money very much was there in previous seasons. We have objectively lowered our wage bill considerably and objectively sold a lot of players for good money. Where did it all go?

[Saint Garrett]

We have no money...

At the start of the window I'd have said, no chance would I take Minamino back, but given we lost him and didn't actually sign anyone, I'd have taken him back on loan for the season, despite him being poor. It's going to be a long season when we have to rely on Walcott, Moussa, Redmond, Elyounoussi to create enough chances for Armstrong to waste half of them.

[TWar]

56 minutes ago, Saint Garrett said:

We have no money...

At the start of the window I'd have said, no chance would I take Minamino back, but given we lost him and didn't actually sign anyone, I'd have taken him back on loan for the season, despite him being poor. It's going to be a long season when we have to rely on Walcott, Moussa, Redmond, Elyounoussi to create enough chances for Armstrong to waste half of them.

Not sure where this "Armstrong is really wasteful" thing is coming from. He has scored 1 goal from an xG of 1.52, so statistically he is only underperforming by 0.52 goals. Incidentally, he is underperforming his xA by 0.55 so actually it is more "Armstrong is creating chances and others are missing them" than the other way round.

[Rebel]

the money hasn't been taken out of the club

its been used to pay-off the managers we sacked (Puel, Hughes, Pelligrino) and their coaches,

and to pay-off the players we got rid of early and couldn't sell like Boufal, Hoedt, Lemina and Carillo

to pay the transfer fees, signing-on fees and agents fees for the players we have signed - Theo, Armstrong, Tino, Small, Lyanco, Broja, Simeu, Perraud

and probably to help pay the salaries of the players we are overpaying due to the loss of income from Covid - Forster, Theo and the rest

the problem is more that our owner isn't putting any money in - and the financial legacy of the signings made by Reed and Wilson and the contracts they gave out to the players we already had

we wasted the £75M we got for Van Dijk on Boufal, Hoedt, Lemina, Carillo and Elyounoussi - we'd be much better off if we'd been able to sell one of them for what we bought them for.  

You could add Djneppo and Vestergaard to that list of bad signings.  

plus the contracts for Long, Forster and Stephens.

that's our real problem

At least we seem to have spent the money from selling Ings and Vestergaard slightly better than we did the Van Dijk money.  The problem here is we didn't have the money to go and buy another decent striker or a creative No 10 - or a first choice centreback.

but they are still making mistakes - giving Long 2 more years and signing Theo for 2 years.

the only light is that we will sell Tino for a good amount of money next summer - probably back to Chelsea. We just need to hope we spend it wisely.

 

[S-Clarke]

No denying that the 10's are the issue. In an ideal world they'd step up and pop up with goals and provide a source of the missing goals, but none are good enough.

The club have put way too much trust in Redmond, Moussa, Elyonoussi and Theo. None of those players are good enough to make any difference for us and are probably out of their depth at this level. 

We need to bench all of them, put Tino right side ahead of KWP and Tella left side as the two 10's. Very inexperienced, but I'd prefer that than having to be put through the pain of watching Moussa or Redmond try to play football.

[Saint Garrett]

2 hours ago, TWar said:

Not sure where this "Armstrong is really wasteful" thing is coming from. He has scored 1 goal from an xG of 1.52, so statistically he is only underperforming by 0.52 goals. Incidentally, he is underperforming his xA by 0.55 so actually it is more "Armstrong is creating chances and others are missing them" than the other way round.

I'd partly agree with you, that his "xG" is low, but what those stats dont take into account, is where he's shooting from stupid places, shooting when he should pass, etc. He's wasteful in the specific part of the play because he makes wrong decisions, but hopefully he can improve on that.

I'm absolutely not writing him off, I just find him a bit frustrating.  Hasn't done anywhere near enough in general play so far for me, and we'll always measure him against Ings who is far better than him. All in my opinion of course.

[skintsaint]

On 27/09/2021 at 04:02, OttawaSaint said:

We need a more dynamic player in there like a Tella.

not for me, we need some bloody creativity in there, not another fast direct player. Hard to find a player like that who also does the tracking down though.

A no10 who can split a pass through the back lines would make a massive difference.

[nta786]

23 minutes ago, adriansfc said:

What we need is Tadic. But there's not much we can do about that.

What we can do is stop rewarding rubbish form. Redmond, that's just ridiculous. Djenepo is younger and still could improve, although I wouldn't start him. Moi has improved, some don't like him but I think he's done ok given the fixtures. What he needs is a decent option in there with him though. It's no use having him if Redmond is playing as Redmond will always turn back, dally on the ball and leave us without any space to attack. 

Tella deserves a run and we look a better team with him in it IMO. Until Armstrong is back I'd play Livramento there too. If we MUST play this formation, at least play two fast young players who might actually do something. The predictability of not creating anything when we see the usual no10s play is just annoying now. 

 

We definitely need someone like Tadic but unfortunately our scouts wouldn't really look out for players in that profile anymore because we are so fixated on Ralph's 4222.

I don't see anyone in our squad who can play a central No. 10 role, or anyone who can play there effectively and that in effect hampers our ability to switch to a 4231 or a 41212 diamond or similar

[rudi7s]

I would actually say it is and has been our weakest area (maybe bar GK) for some time and Ralph's devotion to the current shape relies on so much more output (creatively) from these positions. Oriol and JWP are also not 'creative' CMs and do not see passes early or bypass opposition midfielders. It's a big cause for our severe lack of penetration.

I would argue some of our better spells across all combined games have come when we've abandoned the 4-2-2-2, and we need to do it more.

[verlaine1979]

Our entire front line is static, with players holding unthreatening space so they can safely receive the ball. A good central No.10 who can carry the ball or pass between the lines would create movement around them. At present, our pace of attack in possession is so slow that our players either have to be running in acres of empty space or standing still waiting for the ball to receive a pass. God it's depressing to watch, and aside from a handful of games last season where they seemed to learn the purpose of passing and moving, it's been that way for years now.