Our Away League Record

[jagfaelivi]

If you are like me you will be slightly fed up with the media perception that we are/have been poor away from home this season - how often have you heard in the last week "they've only won one away from home league game this season"?

 

I've compared our equivalent away fixtures last season (substituting Hibs for Dundee and Hearts for Accies - I'm sure you can follow my reasoning there though Hamilton have been much better than Hearts ever were last season, even on their late good run and our 3-3 at NDP was much better than our 2-0 at Hearts last season)

 

What I've found is that we lost to the teams , Celtic, Dundee United and Aberdeen who we would maybe expect to fall to in both seasons (but losing fewer goals this season) and we lost both times to Kilmarnock. So not a lot of difference including wins last season and this at Paisley and Inverness.

 

So really we are only a fourth minute of injury time equaliser at NDP different this time from having ten points like last season when the perception was that we were very good away. Eight points this time but losing only eleven goals as against last season's fourteen. Both seasons we've scored nine.

 

Soooo I would say on balance we have been MUCH better away from Firhill than last time AND we are only now getting our best team sorted out.

 

Huge reasons for optimism I think.

[read'n'yell]

I like this sort of stuff - sometimes it really takes a proper analysing/ fact finding mission to show the facts.

 

With Fraser, Osman, Bannigan, Seaborne and Stevo all playing well we really have a strong spine to the team and we can definitely look up rather than down. Getting over this consecutive win hoodoo will be massive.

 

[Jaggernaut]

There's definitely good reason to be optimistic. If only we can get a few wins on the trot.....

[lady-isobel-barnett]

I thought there was a marked change to our game plan on Saturday. Or more correctly what we've been trying to do re holding a lead coming to fruition. I'd start at the Accies game where I could see attempts to hold on to the 3-2 lead nearly pay off. We were defending higher up the pitch and indeed it took a shot from outside the box to beat us. in Paisley the closest St Mirren came to snatching a late equaliser was again a very good shot from outside the box. At 3-0 in Inverness they came closest to getting a goal back with the long shot that was disallowed.

 

I noticed we shaded possession on Saturday. After the fourth goal we played out the remaining 35mins with by far the lion's share of possession. I'd like to see the stats for first 55 mins but it stands to reason ICT must've had considerably more possession. I reckon it's fair to say that with our previous wins/draws away from home, certainly last season, we mainly relied on a highish ball retention to get a result. Saturday surely finally puts to bed the notion we don't have a Plan B.

 

What's even more refreshing is that our Plan B (certainly Saturday's) is far removed from bus parking. Surrendering possession and not defending deeply normally requires playing at a high tempo. That most definitely was the case at the weekend. Our energy levels and general fitness are obviously very high especially to play a team like ICT off the park.