Dorking Wandering
The Dorking Wanderers FC Fans Forum
Let's face it - we are f'king awful at this. Really, really bad.
I've looked at the stats, and this is what I have found:
- We've failed to hold on to a lead (to the full result) 11 times in the league
- This is a total of 21 lost points
- 7 of these 11 games have been at home
- 6 of these 11 games, the lead has been lost in the last 10 minutes
I can't stand it when we try and sit on these slender leads, it feels very negative, and seems to hardly ever work. The tactic seems to be bring off Alfie, leave JP isolated up front on his own, and then pack the midfield a bit more. What seems to actually happen is JP is so isolated up front, that any headers he wins just goes back to the opposition and we are back defending again. Momentum is therefore 100% with the team trailing, and it's just attack against defence for the last part of the game and we are just so fragile as it keeps on happening, so it invariably just happens again.
Last night was the classic version of this. The last 10 mins we barely had the ball, it never stuck up front and as soon as they scored the overly familiar late equaliser, it was just Battle of the Alamo again and it was only ever going to be Maidstone who were going to win it, and luckily we got a point.
I'd love to see us be more positive, and try and get a second goal or whatever to put games to bed, rather than sitting on leads, as it seems that we are very very shit at that. Sure, we'd drop points this way as well, but I think we'd probably win more games than we are currently. 21 points is a lot give up when you are chasing a single promotion spot.
Disclaimer: I only went over the results once, so might be slightly incorrect, but I think the point stands!
35% of our goals conceded are in the final 10 mins of the game - sounds alarmingly high!
According to this website - https://www.soccerstats.com/timing.asp?league=england - 22.2% of goals in this season's Premier League have been scored in the 76-90 minutes (including injury time), so we are massively above that average (especially as the Prem stat includes 76+ rather than our 80+ goals). No idea what the NLS average is, but I guarantee we're leading it!
That is terrible . Crawley have a lost a lot of points in the last 15 minutes, and would probably be safe if they managed games better , but their % is 23.5%, so much lower than Dorking.
Crawley's defence is the second worst in the Football League with 81 conceded, and in my view due to a lack of experience at the back, only playing 3 at the back, passing around too much. Also get caught on break by fast counter attacks.
I would think Dorking's issue is similar, but although experienced, a lack of pace at the back does not help, when opponents are going for it. In Crawley's case this issue has probably relegated them, in Dorking's case, it has probably denied them promotion (unless they win playoffs). If they had just defended slightly better in the last few minutes, they would be top. On my reckoning, they have lost 7 points in the last 10 minutes in the last 6 games.
I do not need a statistician to tell me that teams that ship bucket loads of goals late on in games rarely go up via the play offs.
Play offs are the clutch of all clutch moments in a season.
The group we have consistently fails to come through those clutch moments in lesser games, despite being at an advantage due to having better players that train more often.
This is the reason why I have in my own mind written off us going up via the play offs. I just cannot see it.
An urgent point to address before the play offs is this point, even if at this point its too late to fix.
@matthewpont Even more shocking is that the team makes a point of time wasting and being shit houses, to try and see games over the line. Its clearly working in the reverse. Before the play offs as I say in my earlier post, this needs to be addressed.
Obviously no way to ever know, but I just feel that if we'd spent the season trying to kill games off by attacking teams (like a team that is expected to win the league should be doing), then I think we would have won the league by now.
Who knows, I might be completely wrong, and we may have lost even more points, and in this alternative timeline I would be posting on this forum moaning about why we don't try and kill the game off by defending and holding the ball in the corner!
If you compare with our 21/22 promotion season, we scored 101 goals in just 40 matches that year (plus another 6 goals in the 2 play off games). This season we have 82 in 43 matches.
We didn't care if we conceded that season as we knew we would win 7-2, 4-3, 5-1, etc most weeks.
Only difference in top scorers between this season and 21-22, is that Alfie is not scoring as many.
Is the team we have this season weaker than the one we had back in 21-22 season? Or has the level of NLS just improved and we are about the same as we were back in the 21-22 season?
21-22 top scorers
Alfie- 30
McShane- 13
Briggs- 9
Prior-8
McMannus- 5
Wheeler- 5
Josh Taylor- 4
Bobby Joe- 4
24-25 top scorers so far..
Alfie-18
Prior- 13
Carter- 11
Muitt- 10
Camp- 7
Murphy- 5
Briggs- 5
Young- 3
Poor Alfie gets subbed off every game at 65 minutes!
Also have to remember that this is Alfie's first full season back since his ACL/heart surgery so might not be at the peak of his powers yet. 18 goals is very respectable though and puts him near the top of league's top scorers chart.
We have done a better job of sharing goals around this season compared to last time as we have 3 players on double digits already (Muitt is actually on 9 goals) but at the same time we have obviously lost the goals of McShane, as he is only just back from his ACL injury. You would have also expected more goals from Murphy at the start of the season but he has been restricted to just the 1 league start. Injury has probably reduced the amount of goals you would expect from Josh Taylor and Norville-Williams as well.
Side note, did McManus really score FIVE that year!? I only remember that volley against Welling...
I notice apart from Nicky Wheeler, all the top scorers from 21/22 are still here. As Tom says in 21/22 we won a number of highscoring matches particularly at home. This year we have struggled at home, and conceded a lot of late goals. These two things have probably cost us, but with a lot of the top sides to still play each other, 3rd is still not beyond us.
