Town’s win over Nottingham Forest settled many Town fans’ nerves at the weekend. It doesn’t guarantee safety but it’s a huge stride towards it.
There were good things and bad things in the match but ultimately, Town took their chances and Forest didn’t, and that was the main difference between two fairly poor sides.
Here are a few of my thoughts on the match.
We could have been out of the game in the first 20 minutes
Town were really bad in the opening stages of this game. We played like we were half asleep for twenty minutes and could easily have conceded two or three goals purely from silly mistakes at the back.
I’m not completely sure what the problem was. I think nerves came into it, as the players looked scared and that made many play within themselves and be too afraid to take risks. I don’t want to sound like a cheesy motivational poster but not taking any risks is the riskiest thing you can do. By trying to play it safe we actually opened ourselves up to Forest. We couldn’t keep hold of the ball because we had nobody making runs or showing for the ball, instead we just coughed up possession whenever we got the ball back and it looked like a training exercise of attack vs defence.
The commentary team commented on the length of the grass and while I don’t want to make excuses for a poor start, it’s possible that there was some sneaky tactics at play from the Forest management and their groundsmen. Underhit passes were a huge problem and may have been because the grass had been allowed to grow to intentionally flummox our defence. I’ve limited patience with this theory though, as professional players that warmed up on the same surface minutes before kickoff shouldn’t make so many basic errors.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
Town started the game very badly but finished it the dominant team and deserved their lead. In between these two distinct passages there was a funny transitional period where Town killed the game with long spells of dreary, passionless possession play where they tried to stroke the ball around the back but rarely risked a forward pass.
While this may have been because the players in front of the defence were just being rubbish, I have a theory that we intentionally killed the game off in this period to take away Forest’s momentum and get ourselves into the game.
After a poor start it was almost like we rebooted the game by making it boring for a while. So Keogh being stood just inside his own half with his foot on top of the ball might have been a deliberate tactical choice to wrestle control of the game back in Town’s favour and Hogg’s refusal to drop in to pick up possession was because his job at that stage was to occupy Forest’s midfield and stop them pressing the defence.
This kind of negative, anti-football isn’t the best to watch but if it helped us get these vital three points then I’ll not complain. I will acknowledge that I may be overthinking things here and Town were just a bit rubbish but it’s interesting to me that there could have been a deliberate ploy to kill the game for a few minutes.
Taking chances
In the Championship you often don’t have to play well to win the game, you just need to be able to produce opportunities and have the quality to finish those chances off. Our two goals both came from Forest being sloppy with the ball but the encouraging thing is that we made them pay for their mistakes, something we’ve struggled at in other games this season.
I know talk of xG (expected goals) makes many people groan but I think it’s useful to illustrate how well Rowe and Bacuna did with their chances. Bacuna’s shot was given an xG rating of 0.05, meaning the model thinks that chance would result in a goal around one out of twenty times. Rowe’s was considered more likely at 0.35 but would still only be expected to lead to a goal in just over a third of the time.
To give you some context to these stats, neither goal was the best chance of the game. That one fell to Richard Keogh when he failed to connect with the free kick that dropped to him on the box but he couldn’t angle on target. That chance had a 0.65 score, meaning it should be scored more often than missed.
These numbers don’t tell the whole story but it does help to illustrate that we made the most of two of the opportunities that came our way and both Rowe and Bacuna showed that they have the ability to finish off chances when the fall to them.
Are Town safe already?
Town are currently involved in their eighth relegation battle in the last nine years. So I’m pretty familiar with the stage we’re at now, it’s the staring at the league table phase where I spend far too long puzzling out the table and playing out imaginary scenarios to try and make it tell me something it can’t possibly tell me.
This season brings a bit more uncertainty to the table because Rotherham have had lots of games in hand. So Town aren’t close to being mathematically safe yet but they could be if other results go our way.
Rotherham need to either win three of their final six games or win two and draw two. That’s assuming we don’t pick up another point. While that target might seem modest for Rotherham, they’re in the middle of one of the most punishing fixtures schedules ever and their players must be dead on their feet. So I have a feeling they’ll not reach our current 47 point total.
That shouldn’t matter though as we shouldn’t be relying on Rotherham’s failure, another win will take us to 50 points and then we can be fairly certain of our safety so the flip flops and sombreros can be pulled out of the cupboard (figuratively – travel restrictions may limit their practical use).
What now for Town?
The fact there’s still a possibility of relegation may help Carlos to keep his team honest, to borrow a much over-used expression. So I suspect we’ll not see any taking our foot off the gas in the short term until we’re definitely safe. Team selections should still be the best players available and the tactics are likely to be somewhat safety first for now.
Once we’re safe I think Carlos will completely change tack and treat the remaining games like friendlies for next season. Senior players that won’t be here next year will be bombed out and youngsters will be given a chance to lay down a marker.
A few dead rubbers wouldn’t be such a bad thing from my perspective. I don’t like the drama of relegation battles and it would be nice to see Town playing with a bit more freedom for the last few games. I’m not expecting much from Town next season but it would be nice to see some glimmers of hope, whether that’s from promising youngsters or going back to a more full-throttle style of play. Following Town since Christmas has been pretty grim, so it would be nice to have a few positive performances before the season ends.