Lets do some anoraking!

By: timmyg | February 10th, 2009

With all the international friendly’s and world cup qualifiers going on (go USA!) this week and the Premier League taking a break for the FA Cup Fifth Round (beat Swansea!) this weekend, lets take time to do some anoraking!

I really love that term. It means more than just tabulating, but isn’t the mouthful and as sterile sounding as number-crunching. And with a seemingly daunting but result-predictable fixture list rounding out the month (ManU away, WestBrom home, Arsenal away), some anoraking about this season is in order.

It should be official to say that if Fulham isn’t winning by half-time, then they’re not going to. Although twelve of their 22 goals have been scored in the first half — not enough to prove my statement — look at how much they’ve conceded in the second half.

Of the 19 total conceded, only 5 have come in the first 45. So that means 14 have been scored in the second half; 6 in the final 15 minutes.

Lets compare that to last year. You know, the year the club gave up leads Ad nauseam.

Of a total 60(!!!) goals conceded last season, 41 came in the second half and 16 in the last 15 minutes. Although on offense the numbers are a bit skewed considering the early season games against Man City and Tottenham, and amazing run the club went on to survive; Fulham still scored more goals in the second half (23) than the first (15).

Granted there’s still three months left to play, but we can still logically conclude that the second half in general still remains the club’s death knell.

Is this a case of things seemingly getting better but in actuality simply being less worse? I for one would attest that our defense is exponentially better than last, but the continuing stats of conceding late goals don’t lie.

So then is such a position of conceding late goals to be expected of a club of our status? I would think yes, but also say its been happening to similar clubs around the league.

Nonetheless its probably the main yet hidden thing that separates us not just from the big four, but folks like Everton and Villa. Needless to say, yes, but there’s still work left over from when Roy got here.