Villa does lead the league in shots, and it's a bit extreme. He has 40, Giovinco 37 and Espindola 33. Then BWP and Valeri each have 31, and everyone else is below 30. So you just drop to #4 to get an almost 1/4 reduction in shots from Villa.
NYCFC v Philly Postmatch
- Thread starter NYCFC_Dan
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Villa hasn't met a ball he didn't want to kick. Which is interesting when you contrast his style of play to Aguero's - who constantly makes lateral runs with the ball drawing defenders from the middle of the field so that his teammates can fill the void he left & more importantly where they are usually either unmarked or loosely marked by a DMid tracking back or the other CB sliding over. Aguero then finishes the sequence with a pass back to a player with a more realistic opportunity than he had with the initial CB tight to him. Keeps the defenders a bit more honest and disorganized rather than being able to collapse on the guy they know will shoot every chance he has.
Everything you said is true. However. Aguero can make that pass to Zabaleta, Kolarov, Toure, Fernando, Navas, Silva, or Iheanacho. Any one of those guys could maybe be a DP here, and that's just the starters from last week. There's a pile of others on the bench as well. This is why Villa takes those billion shots. Our team simply doesn't compare in any way to the quality that Man City has. Aguero can blast one into the upper corner of the net any time he has an opening, but if he doesn't get that opening he has six or eight other options that Villa simply doesn't have.
Ask me again in a year or two though as I'm hoping our youngsters can learn, improve, and step up.
I've never seen a GK hug his near post as much as Saunders does
You can post as many photos of Saunders as you want to but the plain fact is that Iraola is behind his man. For me that's kind of the end of the story. Wouldn't blame either one of their goals on Saunders to be honest. We need a better defense.
I have to disagree there, Iraola is the right back, no shame in getting boxed out trying to come all the way in from his position. Saunders doesnt even move as the cross comes in. He is horrible this year
My problem with Iraola is not so much that he got boxed out, but that he didn't track the runner generally. Earlier in the play, he starts to cut towards the center of the pitch while Pontius moves forward. I'm not quite sure why he did that, but even after getting behind Pontius, he has another opportunity to get in front of him but sort of lingers in the box and that's why he is ultimately in a spot where his slight frame is a real disadvantage because he cannot move Pontius off the ball when the cross finally comes in and he's behind the play.
I'm not sure there is a player that I've more wanted to come good over the past year, but I am starting to give up hope that his offensive contributions will ever outweigh the defensive limitations, at least on this team in this league.
None of this is to defend Saunders generally, though I'm more neutral on him than others. I'm curious to see EJ just because he is virtually an unknown having only played some preseason games and the USOC match last year. It would be fun to see something different, though I'm also inclined to think that his limitations, whatever they are, would become apparent after he played a few first team matches.
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Can we all agree that Hernandez whiffed badly on his clearance attempt making everyone scramble?
Did he whiff or is that his typical clearance and when he makes solid contact it's more of an accident?
Well, more like a foul ball
If he had been kind enough to fully whiff, it would have been a tough play for Sapong to get his feet straight and turn that on goal from that angle, plus Brillant was covering if it had run through both of them. Instead he played it back to the center of the pitch rather than just putting it out for a corner or out towards the side.Bad goal to be sure.
Great charts. I can't believe no one has commented yet that our second leading shot taker has yet to place a single shot on goal. Ouch.
Guys. Guys. Stop fighting. It's Saunders fault. It's Iraolas fault.
We're all friends here. The answer can be both.
Sure there's a difference in team quality, but if Villa makes the lateral run to open up the middle, there'd be a guy filling the space that'd have a great look on net. And the guy defending him wouldn't be EPL quality either. Villa has to trust his teammates because the alternative seems to be he's shooting it off target.
I've been unable to watch the game until tonight. As disappointed as I am with the result, I think that we showed some promise. Lopez and especially Shelton were too deferential to Villa and should have taken more shots. Mattarita and Mendoza are staring to gel. Tomorrow's games going to be tough but I remain positive.
It turns out that although we're #1 in shots/game, we're ranked 17th in the league in SOG%. The average team in the league has 36.5% of shots on goal; we have 33.6%. If we were able to shoot as accurately as an average team, we'd have an extra 0.5 shots on goal per game (3.5 extra shots on goal for the season). (This would only be good for ~1 extra goal so far this season... not much.) Our offense does take a lot of shots, as people have pointed out, but not particularly good shots... this ends up in an overall average offense (we're 10th in goals scored per game).
I was frustrated that "nobody besides Villa shoots", just because he shoots so much more (5.7 shots/game) than anyone else on the team (Mendoza is second with 2.3 shots/game). But I was wrong - they're taking shots. So what's with Villa? It's not because nobody else shoots... maybe he's a greedy player, or maybe he just doesn't trust his teammates to take good shots...
In terms of SOG, we're probably better off with Villa shooting. If you look at shot accuracy for the team, Villa, even with all his shots, has average accuracy (they average player has ~37 SOG%, Villa has 38%).
It's Mendoza that has been the problem... 14 shots, 0 on goal. Probably because he usually shoots from midfield. Bravo is 0 for 5. Tony Taylor is 1 for 7. (These are just to get a shot on goal, not even to score.) Shelton just doesn't shoot (as we've seen, he doesn't seem to know what to do with the ball once he dribbles it down to the final 3rd).
true everyone in my section either wished me good luck before the game or thanked
Is there a video of Vieira's post-match press conference? I saw the transcript of a portion of it but no video/audio. Seems to be the only one NYCFC hasn't posted on their website, the other 7 matches have at least a portion of it
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