Kel Varnsen

You don't think losing Partey and opponents adjusting their tactics to employing low blocks and doubling up on our wingers has anything to do with it?

      daredevil This opponents doubling up thing. We are talking like it's new. It's not. Its been going on since last season. And the boys were exploiting through the middle. That's part of why Odegaard got so many goals last term.

          Big Willie Theoretically speaking having more touches in the box may give you a higher probability of being awarded penalties, however in practice that's not necessarily the case.

          I agree with this. I don't know the correlation between touches in the box and penalties, but i suspect it to be rather low as there are generally very few penalties per match and therefore a lot of noise/random variation.

            There's the stats for last season vs this season they showed on MNF.

            flobaba

            Our metrics from this season are closer to those of the latter half of last season when teams started to take us seriously, rather than the first half when we took the league by storm. We aren't exploiting the centre of the pitch as effectively this season and it's because of Partey's absence. The last time he played, he lofted a ball through the centre to setup the winner against Man City.

            Partey was our single point of failure only last year. Now we are top of the table in his absence. I would give credit to the team and management for ensuring we are resilient without him, because we were once half the side without him.

              Gurgen I don't dispute be had a great season but one season doesn't make you elite in my view you've got to be able to constantly put in that level which was more my observation. The tail end of last season he dropped quite a bit and he hasn't done it enough yet this season in my view.

                Big Willie agree with this, the goals and chance creation from open play is where I would hazard you would see more of a degradation of the numbers and that is often more significant because the penalty aspect can swing and it's less within your control.

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