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Law of Diminishing Returns

Being of an analytical bent, I thought I'd take a look at our performance this season in 'chunks'.

As we're now 27 games in, I had a look at the season broken down in three groups of 9 games since the beginning of the season. (I'm also of a logical bent!)

The results are hardly earth shattering or even surprising for those who follow the fortunes of our team as rigorously or passionately as the people who contribute to this site but they do provide a sort of context I suppose.

The stats are shown in chronological order, by group, from the beginning of the season.

Group 1 W4 D4 L1 Pts 16
Group 2 W3 D5 L1 Pts 14
Group 3 W3 D3 L3 Pts 12

Then there is the goals scored and conceded over the same groups and time scales.

Group 1 GF 17 GA 11
Group 2 GF 13 GA 11
Group 3 GF 11 GA 12

As I said, this merely confirms many of the opinions and concerns expressed on here, and I realise it's hardly a scientific analysis, but you could call it a trend, and a worrying one at that, as most of what you could call 'vital signs' are deteriorating.

This is a quantitative analysis but it is the qualitative issue that concerns me and most of the people on this site.

When was I last really enthused by an Everton performance? For me, it was the Southampton game at home when there was one of the most scintillating 30 minutes of play I've seen from Everton under Moyes. It was breathtaking and effective. 3 goals did not do that passage of play justice.

That was at the end of what I've called Group 1 in the tables above.

The quality of the football played has deteriorated as the season has gone on. The style of football has changed too, and not only is it less attractive but it's less effective. And it's getting worse by the look of it.

The way things are now, we need to score a minimum of two goals to have a chance of getting a result. The only time we have come close to that was also in Group 1.

I'm going to the Oldham replay with my son tomorrow and I feel really pessimistic, at least at this current moment.

I hope I feel better come 10pm tomorrow night.

Chris Williams, Neston Posted 25/02/2013 at 12:07:57

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Dave Whitwell
543 Posted 25/02/2013 at 16:21:38

Interesting comments Chris,

I was at the games away to West Ham pre-xmas and at home to Chelsea just after and in both particularly the 1st 25 mins against Chelsea I thought we were exceptional.

The biggest problem we face always is that when we have a 30 min spell of dominance in a game we only tend to score 1 goal and sometimes not even that, while most of the teams around us can kill off teams in the same period.

Consequently unless our game is in the last 30mins we allways invite teams on to us and to such a degree now you can always see the fear in our players

Mick Wrende
584 Posted 25/02/2013 at 18:43:54

Your figures confirm Moyes's change of tactics in that he became concerned about the goals we were conceding. So he went more defensive and left Jelavic isolated up front which has destroyed his confidence and consequently his goals. Now if we do get a goal ahead, Moyes loses his nerve and drives the team deeper inviting the opposition to attack us. This has disastrous consequences as illustrated by the Oldham and Norwich games.

Your stats show this clearly and Moyes's negativity is further shown by saying the ref added on too much time on Saturday rather than hoping there would be more time so we could go for a winner. A trip to a psychologist to try and resolve this negativity might well bear fruit.

Mike Oates
628 Posted 25/02/2013 at 20:30:38

If you look at the goals scored in the first 9 games, Jelavic scored 4 but the total was spread around 8 players, whereas in last nine games, Jelavic hasn't scored and our highest scorer is Baines with 3 and only 6 players scoring in total. The weakness is glaring, we just cannot make chances as we did before and when we do we miss. This puts the defence under pressure not to concede.

Around the 60 min mark the team goes defensive as it just knows we not going to score and we drop back and back. It's not Moyes who makes them do this, it's just the players lose all confidence and the natural thing is to tighten up – and we not good enough at the back to stop the chances.

We need another good lucky day where we put 3 or 4 past someone and we might just might turn things round, but the longer we don't score the more likely we will collapse and finish midtable.

Dickie Langley
766 Posted 26/02/2013 at 07:05:28

If we get 14 points from the next 11 games (I think we will), then we've done as well as last season...

Stuart Gray
788 Posted 26/02/2013 at 10:00:18

If we do as well as last season, bearing in mind how well we played at the start, we can consider the season a failure.

Thomas Windsor
851 Posted 26/02/2013 at 13:39:51

Since the away game at Newcastle, we have been terrible to watch.

Why didn't he buy or loan somebody in January?

Peter Barry
062 Posted 27/02/2013 at 03:04:06

The Moyes sycophants always point to the number of shots Everton have been making as if that is something to be proud of. But to me the number of shots and the pathetic number of goals produced by them is not a measure of strength but of WEAKNESS!

A perfect example of this are the POWDER PUFF attempts by Osman which are little more than a 'pass back' to the opposition goalkeepers, along with the countless scuffed attempts by Jelavic and others yet they are all counted as 'goal attempts'. Oh for a man who can strike a ball cleanly and powerfully like Bale.

Ian Bennett
073 Posted 27/02/2013 at 07:23:47

I thought this was going to be an article about getting to mid table is easy. But moving up the league is harder using maths logic. I.e moving from 5/6th costs a lot more to get to 4th, since the quality is better, and the other teams will risk the £20m bounty of champions league to maintain their position. That paying £60m in wages is not enough to change the dynamic. What do the maths nerds put on that?

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