Billing’s Performance

I don’t think it’s fair to use every poor performance as a stick to beat our recruitment team with. It’s simply not true that we haven’t recruited good attacking players for the level of club that we are. You only have to look at their performances last season to see that:

Tavernier- 5 goals and 5 assists in 20 games

Sinisterra- 5 goals in 18 games

Billing- 7 goals

We have attackers at our disposal who are proven PL performers, to suggest that we recruited poorly just isn’t consistent with reality.

Our manager is getting the best out of Dom and to an extent Semenyo too, but the rest of our attacking players are performing more poorly under him than their past records suggest that they are capable of. That can’t really be argued against.
 
Waz afcb said:
I don’t think it’s fair to use every poor performance as a stick to beat our recruitment team with. It’s simply not true that we haven’t recruited good attacking players for the level of club that we are. You only have to look at their performances last season to see that:

Tavernier- 5 goals and 5 assists in 20 games

Sinisterra- 5 goals in 18 games

Billing- 7 goals

We have attackers at our disposal who are proven PL performers, to suggest that we recruited poorly just isn’t consistent with reality.

Our manager is getting the best out of Dom and to an extent Semenyo too, but the rest of our attacking players are performing more poorly under him than their past records suggest that they are capable of. That can’t really be argued against.
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Exactly. It's funny though because we have all bemoaned previous managers, Howe especially, for not just telling them to get a shot off and for trying to walk it in yet now we can see the other side of the argument that shooting from poorer positions doesn't always give you a better chance of success.
 
NWCherries98 said:
Can see that Billing is getting pelters across all forms of social media, on the forum, and as usual, in the ground. I thought he played really well, and was wondering if any of the stats or metrics would support this. So according to Whoscored, Billing:

- Had the highest overall match rating out of any of our players, with 7.64. Including Leicester, he was the 5th best player on the pitch going by this “score”.
- Won the most aerial duels (4), tied with Kerkez.
- Had the 4th highest pass accuracy (82%), which if you remove players that went off or came on earlier and played less minutes, is actually the second highest.
- Made the most tackles with 7.
- 4th most touches (so clearly not hiding, then).

Take or leave the statistics if you want to, but ignoring them doesn’t make them bullshit. It’s just the numbers of what went in in the game; it’s the truth. I don’t know what other sites there are to get some more detailed stats (@Matt Stevenson might know?), but I wouldn’t be surprised if he covered the most ground, too.

There was some bad crosses, a lack of effective shooting, and the press wasn’t quite as effective as it has been without him. He can do a lot better in terms of creating chances and goalscoring opportunities, on this side he was below par tonight. The whole team was pretty abject in this regard.

Having said that, considering it was 3 games without playing, and that he played the full 120 minutes, I thought he put a really good shift in. He’s not the reason we lost, and other than because he has a miserable face and it’s easy to do so, I have no idea why everyone’s focusing on his performance.

All of the usual suspects statistics (hiding, not winning headers, not putting effort in, not putting a tackle in) are objectively untrue. So other than being wasteful, which everyone was, what did he actually do wrong?
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He's just lacking a bit of match fitness and confidence. We know heading isn't a strength of his. He's said it himself. Other than that, he was no worse than anyone else. I didn't really like his body language, but could be lack of confidence/frustration. Am not sure Andoni has managed those not in the team very well in terms of encouraging them to be 'ready' and confident when their time comes.

As for the abuse Phil's getting, that's all about those directing abuse at him. I suspect Phil will return to form, and the same people will be insisting we find a way to make him extend his contract further when surprise surprise partly due to the abuse, he won't want to. Does that ring any bells regarding any other players? Some 'supporters' really do have the emotional intelligence of frozen peas.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Exactly. It's funny though because we have all bemoaned previous managers, Howe especially, for not just telling them to get a shot off and for trying to walk it in yet now we can see the other side of the argument that shooting from poorer positions doesn't always give you a better chance of success.
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That's a very good point Derek, although on balance, I do prefer the "shoot on sight" approach that we are currently employing. It does add excitement to the viewing experience.
Also, I feel that for some reason, we seem to have been very unlucky because normally, when you have a multitude of shots into a crowded penalty area, you tend to get the ball deflecting off a defender and into the goal, or somebody else gets a tap in from a second ball from time to time.
I certainly think that we can improve our following in once somebody takes a shot, because a few times we have had a sniff of latching onto a second ball but unfortunately nobody bothered to follow up.
 
Thought Billings started well he seemed affected by the fact we didn't take any of the chances that were created, my concern is the fact we've started getting sloppy and giving the ball away too much and back to tippy tappy passing around the box also puzzled at the timing of the subs, thought Billings looked tired midway through the second half and should have been replaced earlier.
 
Cherriess said:
He's just lacking a bit of match fitness and confidence. We know heading isn't a strength of his. He's said it himself. Other than that, he was no worse than anyone else. I didn't really like his body language, but could be lack of confidence/frustration. Am not sure Andoni has managed those not in the team very well in terms of encouraging them to be 'ready' and confident when their time comes.

As for the abuse Phil's getting, that's all about those directing abuse at him. I suspect Phil will return to form, and the same people will be insisting we find a way to make him extend his contract further when surprise surprise partly due to the abuse, he won't want to. Does that ring any bells regarding any other players? Some 'supporters' really do have the emotional intelligence of frozen peas.
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Spot on second paragraph. As for Phil he's not really doing himself any favours if he wants to force his way back in. Gets a chance in the league - gets sent off and a three game ban. Last night was ok but it needed to be a lot better than that if he wants to play more. Saying that he enjoyed not playing due to his ban is not a good indication his attitude to forcing his way in to our side.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Spot on second paragraph. As for Phil he's not really doing himself any favours if he wants to force his way back in. Gets a chance in the league - gets sent off and a three game ban. Last night was ok but it needed to be a lot better than that if he wants to play more. Saying that he enjoyed not playing due to his ban is not a good indication his attitude to forcing his way in to our side.
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Yes. That's a strange thing to say. Maybe that's his way of sticking his fingers up at the officials, but it's a silly thing to say.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Exactly. It's funny though because we have all bemoaned previous managers, Howe especially, for not just telling them to get a shot off and for trying to walk it in yet now we can see the other side of the argument that shooting from poorer positions doesn't always give you a better chance of success.
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Think we have generally been creating pretty good scoring chances to be honest, just not taking them. The worry for me last night was that we looked totally lost as a team without Dom as the focal point.
 
Waz afcb said:
Think we have generally been creating pretty good scoring chances to be honest, just not taking them. The worry for me last night was that we looked totally lost as a team without Dom as the focal point.
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Yep, it should've been 3-0 by half time but the finishing was absolutely woeful. The only decent shot on target was Kerkez's, the rest were unbelievable for professional footballers let alone PL players. If it had gone to penalties I think we'd have still lost.
 
Johnny Comelately said:
Yep, it should've been 3-0 by half time but the finishing was absolutely woeful. The only decent shot on target was Kerkez's, the rest were unbelievable for professional footballers let alone PL players. If it had gone to penalties I think we'd have still lost.
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The performance was down to having to rotate the squad and the fatigue factor after the Man City game. In any game, if you field a weakened side for whatever reason one will suffer the consequences.
 
Herbs said:
I actually thought Dango did ok last night and looked our most dangerous player going forward, just needs an end product but plenty worse than him.

On a brighter note, Cook and Zabi were immense last night.
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He is a crazy footballer. He looks a world beater one minute Sunday League the next. Ultimately he needs to produce match winning moments if he wants to end up being the next Jordon Ibe.
 
Mdl said:
First half I thought he wasn't bad at all.
Second half though he looked absolutely out of it, every time we prepped a sub I assumed they were coming on for Billing, he looked absolutely shattered.

His efforts at pretending to challenge for a couple of headers were quite comical though.
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I was laughing at that too,
I know he doesn't like to head the ball but why was the tallest player on the pitch taking corners? He should of been standing in front of their goalkeeper who was catching everything.
 
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