25 points gained from losing positions

FatTails

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When I watch us, the word that consistently comes to mind is chaos. We’re a good team with a lot of talent and a deep squad, which takes you a long way, especially this year.

The issues are that we don’t ever really control games, we give the opposition a lot of chances and time on the ball in the final third, and one that is quite obvious, we try to play out from the back and we are poor at it (which often leads to good chances for the opposition).

This stat, to me, is a function of that. If we were a team the prioritized controlling a game and limiting the opposition’s chances, games like yesterday would be a lot more likely to end with 1-0 or 2-0 wins. If we weren’t so deadly on the counterattack, we’d probably see more points dropped from winning positions than we have seen this season (7 points only).

I don’t want to sound overly negative because regardless of all that, it is still a good sign that the players don’t let their heads drop and claw their way back into games.
 

Dr. Dwayne

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You make it seem like we're close to them :lol:

Arsenal, Sheffield, West Brom, Palace off the top of my head all points lost with teams scoring ahead of us
Well, that's the difference at the moment, not sure why it's so funny. Four draws is eight points dropped and the loss is three, we currently have a game in hand.

Palace beat us handily at the start of the season. If anything I'd say it's the four 0-0s against Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and the most recent game against Palace that have hurt us the most. Maybe we'd have done better if we'd gone behind in those fixtures?

3-3 against Everton was frustrating, though, but I think those were points dropped from a winning position.
 

SAFMUTD

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Depends on how the team is doing overall. If we are winning trophies, then the narrative would be "that's champions mentality, never gives up".

If we don't win anything then it means "we are very poor at the start of the game and players and coaches should get their head from their arse".
Cant agree more, this is exactly it.
 

MadDogg

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Yes we did. Fred and Pogba both started the game sitting in front of the centre backs. Their goal came from a bad Pogba pass from that position, and an unopposed cross from one striker out wide to the other coming in from the other flank. Brighton were killing us in the first half because we were defending the wrong area.

We did also have our attackers pressing high, but thats why we often struggle, because it relies on Bruno to link the defence and attack on his own. They are miles apart on the field.
Pogba was getting forward plenty at the start of the match. I distinctly remember thinking that he might be sitting too high and leaving too much of the playmaking and setting the tempo to Fred by himself (kind of the the same result in the opposite way as what Matic does when he sits in the defence).

Once we lost control after they scored it might have happened like you said for a while, but that wasn't really our deliberate tactics since it's not how we started.
 

lysglimt

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Our center defence needs to defend better. We repeatedly give away goals when there is no danger.
The problem is generally not our central defence.

Against Brighton - Pogba gave the ball away cheaply, Shaw did a poor job blocking the cross and Welbeck outsmarted AWB. You could say that the ball should not have gone over the head of Lindelof but that was a small mistake compared to the other 3
 

lysglimt

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You make it seem like we're close to them :lol:

Arsenal, Sheffield, West Brom, Palace off the top of my head all points lost with teams scoring ahead of us
Yes and no... in terms of the football played we are not Close.

But there are many games this season we could (and should) have won if we had a striker like Kane or Haaland - but yes you can turn it around and say, that goes for City as well.

But a good striker could easily have turned 4-5 of those Draws into wins and we would be closer - but if City had that striker they would be even further ahead.
 

cyberman

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Our center defence needs to defend better. We repeatedly give away goals when there is no danger.
To be fair, I think its something like 12 goals from open play in the league since the Spurs game. We seem to be in a good place as a defensive unit. Add in that a third of our goals conceded game during that 3 game period when we werent fit, it looks a lot better.
Cut out the silly goals we concede first and our defence would be fantastic. You can see why Ole can convince himself we arent far off.
 

Marwood

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We started fast but can you think of a time we really carved them open? We didn’t have a shot on target first half.

There’s a difference between huffing and puffing but doing very little (which we did first half) and having the right mindset.

The most simple and logical explanation for why the 1st half was so bad compared to the second when we lined up the same way is that it’s a mindset issue. That and Brighton have zero depth so when Trossard went off we took control.
But your point was the initial set up and mindset caused us to concede and chase the game.

We might not have carved them open in the first 10 min but we were playing quite well. There was nothing there to suggest we were about to conceded.

Pogba just did that thing he's likely to do. Which in my opinion is how we mostly concede, sloppy in possession.
 

kouroux

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Yes and no... in terms of the football played we are not Close.

But there are many games this season we could (and should) have won if we had a striker like Kane or Haaland - but yes you can turn it around and say, that goes for City as well.

But a good striker could easily have turned 4-5 of those Draws into wins and we would be closer - but if City had that striker they would be even further ahead.
The football played is one thing that surely needs to be improved, however too many points were lost stupidly. Could have made this title "race" a bit more interesting even if the end result would probably have been the same. I think it would have set things nicely up for next season
 

kouroux

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Well, that's the difference at the moment, not sure why it's so funny. Four draws is eight points dropped and the loss is three, we currently have a game in hand.

Palace beat us handily at the start of the season. If anything I'd say it's the four 0-0s against Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and the most recent game against Palace that have hurt us the most. Maybe we'd have done better if we'd gone behind in those fixtures?

3-3 against Everton was frustrating, though, but I think those were points dropped from a winning position.
Start of the season is still part of the season. Whatever we're arguing about, I just one thing, trailing against teams shouldn't happen that often to a so-called big team
 
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The problem is generally not our central defence.

Against Brighton - Pogba gave the ball away cheaply, Shaw did a poor job blocking the cross and Welbeck outsmarted AWB. You could say that the ball should not have gone over the head of Lindelof but that was a small mistake compared to the other 3
Lindeloff missed an easy ball to not miss.

Maguire was no where in the picture.

AWB was ball watching.

Shaw allowed the cross because he wasn't concentrating.


If you have a center defence that a) is switched all the time and b) don't do identical things when defending, Pogba's harmless loss off possession never develops into a goal.

For:
One of the center backs would be on shaw to deal with the cross.
If a Lindeloff misses the header the other would be right there to cover instead of the rb

The defensive line would have been much further upfield in the first place. Making it hard for a cross to end up in a clear cut chance on goal.


So no. I don't buy "it was the (insert position here) fault" excuse any longer. With our current starting pair every loss of possession in midfield is liable to lead to a goal. which is straight up ridiculous.
 
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To be fair, I think its something like 12 goals from open play in the league since the Spurs game. We seem to be in a good place as a defensive unit. Add in that a third of our goals conceded game during that 3 game period when we werent fit, it looks a lot better.
Cut out the silly goals we concede first and our defence would be fantastic. You can see why Ole can convince himself we arent far off.
We aren't far off it's true. We just have 2 structural issues. A center defence that can't operate comfortably in a high line nor behind one dedicated defensive oriented midfielders. Plus a right wing that can't consistently stretch teams like the left flank does.


We sort those 2 out in the summer
We will be ready to really compete.
 

Counterfactual

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It's a bit of a theme with us...

1: Go behind in games, come back strongly.
2: Ole looks like he's going to get the sack... pulls out a great result or goes on a run.
3: That night in Paris!

We seem to like being the underdogs.
 

Dr. Dwayne

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Start of the season is still part of the season. Whatever we're arguing about, I just one thing, trailing against teams shouldn't happen that often to a so-called big team
The point about the Palace match was that they spanked us. It wasn't one of these situations where we had a chance to take points from a losing position.

Teams play their best against us because of our recent history and coming from behind is part of our DNA. That we're executing well on that is a good thing.
 

kouroux

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The point about the Palace match was that they spanked us. It wasn't one of these situations where we had a chance to take points from a losing position.

Teams play their best against us because of our recent history and coming from behind is part of our DNA. That we're executing well on that is a good thing.
Technically it was, any game we're trailing falls into that category.
 

kouroux

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You must not remember that game well because we never looked like taking anything from it, other than an hiding.
I do remember it very well. All I'm saying is that this team won't seriously compete for big trophies if it has to turnaround scorelines that often. It's a great watch when it happens but it rarely leads to trophies
 

Dr. Dwayne

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I do remember it very well. All I'm saying is that this team won't seriously compete for big trophies if it has to turnaround scorelines that often. It's a great watch when it happens but it rarely leads to trophies
For other clubs, sure, but we're Man feckin United, mate. We do what we want. :devil:
 

The White Pele

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Just to break this down a bit more. We’ve been behind in 13 out of 30 PL games (43%). Out of this 13 we’ve won 8, drawn 1, lost 4.
So 25 points out of a possible 39 (64%).

Out of the 13 games we’ve been behind, we conceded the first goal in 12 of these games (Spurs the exception) taking 25 points out of a possible 36 (69%). So have conceded first goal in 40% of our PL games.

Conversely we have scored the first goal in 12 of our 30 games and taken 29pts out of 36 (81%) in these games.

To summarise:
Concede first P 12 W 8 D 1 L 3 Pts 25 Pts % 69%
Scored first P 12 W 9 D 2 L 1 Pts 29 Pts % 81%
No goal P 6 D 6 Pts 6 Pts % 33%

For me the key takeaways here are:
1. We have conceded the first goal of the game as many times as we have scored the first goal this season (12) which is quite staggering for a team that is 2nd in the league. Something we have to improve on next season.

2. However, recovering from first goal conceded has been incredible. In fact, if we had instead scored the first goal in all 12 of these games and converted at the points ratio when we score first (81%) then the difference is only 4 points.

3. Therefore, what has been more costly is the 6 nil nil draws (20% of our games) If these games had been more open with either side opening the scoring then we may well have had an extra ~7 points from these 6 games alone.

Edit:

Comparison to City:
Concede first P 4 W 0 D 2 L 2 Pts 2 Pts % 17%
scored first P 26 W 23 D 2 L 1 Pts 71 Pts % 91%
No goal P 1 D 1 Pts 1 Pts% 33%

A starkly different profile. City have scored the first goal in 84% of their games compared to our 40%. And they have won 23/26 when doing this. Their recovery when conceding first is much worse than ours but this happens very rarely. Only one nil nil.

It shows that City are much more in control of their results, rarely conceding the first goal and converting well when taking the lead. With United it’s more like you flip a coin for the first goal and it has little influence on the result.
 
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Raveneye

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The great thing about coming from behind this much is that the players all *know* they have it in them to make a comeback any time they fall behind. It's a frighteningly resilient and aggressive mentality to have.

However, odds and points aside, it does mean our players often have to work much harder for our comeback wins. Comebacks, as everyone acknowledges, are very difficult. We're phenomenal at it, but we have to do it so often and that demands a lot from players. Fatigue sets in, their performances are more likely to drop off, and injuries are more likely to occur.
 

Hansi Fick

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how does this work - is it a losing position only if you concede first? Or, if you go 1-0 up, then 1-2 down, then end up winning 3-2, is it 3 points from a losing position after all?
 

Amarsdd

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how does this work - is it a losing position only if you concede first? Or, if you go 1-0 up, then 1-2 down, then end up winning 3-2, is it 3 points from a losing position after all?
Losing position means losing position.
 

Hansi Fick

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Losing position means losing position.
so being down for any amount of time counts - I'm asking because I want to count the points Bayern gained from losing positions this BuLi season to compare

edit: it's 22 points. And the situation I inquired about never even happened..
 
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Raveneye

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I get more confident that Manchester United will win when we concede the first goal.