A Few Random Observations Of Our Season.....

 Just a few observations from our season that I may go into in a little more depth over the next few weeks.

 Despite our shocking league results only one team actually beat us twice – Fulham.

 There are only three teams we beat twice, two of them finished above us – Everton and Chelsea – and one finished bottom – Wolves.

 Of the seven teams that finished above us we knocked four of them out of cup competitions – the other three we didn’t play against in the cups.

 Of all of our cup victories against Premier League sides (excluding games at a neutral venue), only Chelsea away in the Carling Cup was not a better result than we achieved in the league, swapping our cup results for our league ones would have given us ten more league points. However those ten points would only have been enough to raise us one league position.

 Despite it feeling like we lost every week we actually beat eleven out of our nineteen league opponents this season, there were only eight who we failed to beat – Man City, Man Utd, Spurs,  Fulham, Swansea, Sunderland, Stoke and Wigan. Five of those teams finished below us and certainly fall into the category of sides we should be beating.

 We won fourteen league matches and we lost fourteen league matches. Out of thirty eight games that is far too many defeats and nowhere near enough victories for us, no matter how unlucky we were with hitting the woodwork repeatedly.

 Of the twenty four games we failed to win this season, we only lost four by more than a solitary goal. This means that in twenty of our matches (which is more than half) a single goal in our favour would have increased our points tally. Personally I think this is the most telling fact of our season, it’s not just that we’ve struggled to score goals, it’s that we’ve completely failed to score goals when we needed to. Compare that with what happened in injury time in Manchester yesterday and you see the difference well timed goals can make.