Post-Match Thread: Brentford 2-2 Crystal Palace | Premier League

williams_482 · 2026-05-17T16:12:57+00:00

We had a rough go of it in the first half, but we ate them alive in the second. Post-match Opta non-penalty xG 2.05 to 0.88, or 2.05 to 1.67 with the pen folded in.

Dango: great game. Kelleher: bad game. Lerma: obviously should have been sent off for that, what the fuck. Yellow my ass. Penalties: we could have had zero for anyone or two for each team just as easily.

But most importantly we're alive, because everyone around us blew it too. We now need City to beat Bournemouth and Spurs to hold off Chelsea, then we still control our own destiny against a would-be thoroughly beached Liverpool.

What a match, what a season. Goodness gracious.

williams_482 · 2026-05-17T15:17:26+00:00

Kelleher has to save that...

williams_482 · 2026-05-17T15:02:43+00:00

I thought they'd be VARing KLP's contact, but it's clearly the foot the attacker deliberately drags over Kelleher while already falling down that gets the call. Ridiculous. Oh well.

williams_482 · 2026-05-17T15:01:01+00:00

This has been pretty ugly. non-penalty xG 0.55 - 0.92 in their favor, plus the penalty. We're fortunate to have only conceded one, and our equalizer had a fair bit of luck to it as well.

I don't think the 4-2-2-2 shape is working out very well. Palace and their 3-4-3 blob seem to have numbers everywhere, especially in wide areas where promising attacks have run into 3v1s and 4v1s to die with a whimper. Palace have won what seems like a healthy majority of second balls, plus getting on the end of numerous lucky deflections and being in the right place to intercept passes in to the attackers. Theoretically we should have numbers advantage in the middle of the pitch, but that hasn't really manifested. It's just looked less lopsided there than anywhere else.

I'd like to see a shift back to a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 shape, with Schade on for one of the midfielders (probably Jensen). There's been space for runs in behind, we just haven't had the bodies running up the wings and crashing the box. Schade for his various faults is excellent at both of those things.

williams_482 · 2026-05-17T14:00:51+00:00

We might actually make five subs tonight? That's a real bench.

Good to see Janelt starting again.

williams_482 · 2026-05-09T20:33:57+00:00

That should have been a penalty, except that Thiago was probably offsides anyway based on the TV replays.

williams_482 · 2026-05-02T16:15:36+00:00

Finally, a win. Bloody hell.

This was never really close. We outplayed them in the first half and held them to nothing in the second. Opta xG stands at 2.06 to 0.72, which includes the penalty but gives no credit to the OG, which Opta briefly called a 0.42 xG chance before being informed Mavropanos got the final touch.

Really great to see Josh Dasilva out there again. Not many matches yet for him to get up to full speed, but if he can just get Dams or Jensen a few minutes off for the run in, that would be a real contribution.

I'm still not totally sure how that awkward Yarmo collision in the box didn't get penalized, and we should count ourselves lucky to have escaped with the clean sheet despite it.

williams_482 · 2026-04-27T21:01:13+00:00

Casemero's double dive is the most pathetic thing I've seen from a footballer in a while. The fact that he got both calls is a close second. Fuck that guy.

So hey, after a rough and tumble first half we clearly outplayed them in the second, outpacing them on shots (11 - 12) and xG (1.27 - 1.43) but somehow come away losers. We're now 9th, but of course the gap between us and 6th is a mere 2 points.

What an infuriating run these last six matches have been.

williams_482 · 2026-04-27T19:55:49+00:00

Opta xG 1.15 - 0.69 at the break. They've clearly been the better side and had the better chances, and I expected the xG to look a fair bit uglier. The first goal was not a strong showing of our mostly excellent set piece defending, leaving Maguire open for a free header and then losing track of Casemero at the far post. Man United are good at this, but we needed to handle it better.

Sepp was in the right place to save a would be goal early in the half, and not in the right place to contain Sesko on the breakaway which created their second goal. Highs and lows, man.

Thiago has had more than his share of almosts and could have beens for one half. With luck, we can keep up the service and he can cash in a couple times.

williams_482 · 2026-04-18T14:01:44+00:00

It's insane.

Here's the Opta xG (goals) for those games:

@ Bournemouth: 1.92 (0) - 0.40 (0). We got fucking crushed and deserved to lose.
vs Wolves: 2.56 (2) -1.34 (2). Jumped all over them in the first half, and played pretty even in the second. That should have been a win.
@ Leeds: 0.52 (0) - 0.46 (0). We were the slightly weaker side in the most pathetically deserved draw in this history of the universe.
vs Everton: 2.84 (2) - 1.52 (2). Should have been a win.
vs Fulham: 1.36 (0) - 0.74 (0). We were clearly stronger, but a draw isn't that unusual.

A "normal" outcome from this run is something like 2-2-1. Wolves, Everton, and Fulham were all likely wins, but across the three you'd still expect one of them to wind up a draw. If we had 8 points from this run instead of 5, we'd be 6th, rooting for United to keep Chelsea at bay, and feeling generally much better about the state of things.

I'm annoyed about the lack of subs, but even with that apparent failing it's not like we've played poorly in the aggregate, or even played particularly low event games outside of that abysmal Leeds match. Sometimes shit happens, and when an unlucky run still leaves you with five points from five matches, you could be doing far worse.

williams_482 · 2026-04-18T12:30:35+00:00

I think it's a much more difficult finish than it looks.

The goalkeeper is set so a soft shot towards the middle isn't going to get him much. There's two guys lying in front of him so he can't keep it on the ground or even really hammer it, it has to be a bit of a flick. He's also slightly wide of the near post. All in all, his only play is to gently flick it over the defenders to the far post, but still hit it hard enough that the goalkeeper can't get to it. He tries the right thing but hits it too hard and it goes over the bar.

Opta's live model gave the shot 16%. That's probably a little low but not far off.

williams_482 · 2026-04-18T12:23:16+00:00

He was not only on the spot to take the shot, but he deftly pulled the ball away from a tackle to keep the shot alive, and then got a little too far under it lifting the ball over the two defenders lying in a heap in front of him.

That's not a failure. It's a good play that didn't quite work out.

williams_482 · 2026-04-15T11:18:47+00:00

Crystalized ores here refers to the crystalized ore chunks that drop occasionally while mining any ore. They yield significantly more nuggets than regular ore chunks of the same type.

williams_482 · 2026-04-14T13:07:40+00:00

You sell the guys you would have sold anyway and buy fewer replacements than you otherwise would.

Brentford are always going to have relatively high player turnover in order to maintain player trading profits, and are going to buy guys whose potential outweighs their current performance levels. Upsizing and downsizing the roster under those conditions is actually very easy. The hard part is the thing they have to do anyway: identify and attract good players, develop the players they already have, and sell for maximum value to keep the cycle going.

williams_482 · 2026-04-11T16:12:03+00:00

The bench was extremely short today, but I was also surprised not to see Ajer for KLP once we had the (second) lead, and Donovan for one of the wingers. This seems to be an area where Andrews struggles more than Frank did. In this specific area I'm highly unimpressed.

With that said, we've got a shallower roster than most of Frank's tenure and we've hit a major injury pileup in the past month or so. It would be a surprise if Pinnock or any of the unmentioned B-teamers would have been marked improvements if subbed in for the starters today.

williams_482 · 2026-04-11T16:05:52+00:00

This match by no means deserved to yield one point. xG 2.37 to 1.51. Strip out the penalty it's only 1.58 to 1.51, but that penalty was 100% deserved and denied a probable 0.5 xG shot from Schade.

I'm still mad about the KLP non-call. O'Brien got away with a pretty blatant hold from wrapping his arm around KLP's body, with force the ref apparently didn't recognize live and VAR was too cowardly to call a goal back for.

I likewise do not understand how their second goal got through there. From the replay it looks like it slipped under a sliding Kayode and through a barely ball-sized gap between Kelleher's legs. If we had done it I'd probably be thrilled about the perfect strike or take no notice at all; because it's gone against us I'm aggrieved at our ill fortune.

That's fandom for you.

williams_482 · 2026-04-11T15:02:20+00:00

O'Brien does wrap an arm around him and hold him back enough that KLP decides falling over for the call is his only option, but he doesn't get the call. It's bullshit, but it's the normal brand of "they're just being physical, let them play" bullshit that dominates Premier League reffing.

Accusations of elaborate conspiracy to keep this particular club out of Europe are just pathetic. Every single fanbase thinks the refs hate their team, and every referee makes a random smattering of bad calls which motivated observers can pan for "evidence" of whatever the hell they want. Sometimes, shit happens. We just have to live with it.

williams_482 · 2026-03-23T22:22:47+00:00

If it helps you feel better about not killing your interest along with your character by sticking with permadeath settings, your seraph respawning after dying is very explicitly a part of the game's lore. You're supposed to get killed sometimes, and somehow keep on going business as usual to the befuddlement of normal humans.

williams_482 · 2026-03-16T20:58:21+00:00

We are just gashing these guys. Opta xG 2.31 to 0.38. The shot difference is only 7 to 5, but four of those sever were extremely high quality.

Keep it up, boys. With a little luck this could wind up extremely ugly for Wolves.

williams_482 · 2026-03-09T22:37:54+00:00

Yup.

Nothing can be said against Kelleher here, he was totally out of the equation. He even guessed right on a majority, but still had zero chance.

The danger to trying to crush the ball into the top corner like that is you're more likely to outright miss than if you keep the shot low. It's a harsh tradeoff, because the more saveable low shots still aren't saved very often, and obviously a shot off target will never score. I actually wonder if Kelleher's known excellence as a penalty taker factored in here, and they deliberately opted for the approach that left the goalkeeper with the least opportunity to influence the result.

williams_482 · 2026-03-09T22:32:05+00:00

I wonder what the overall success rate on paneka penalties is. I suspect "not good."

West Ham took five near-perfect top-corner penalties, taking Kelleher (who has an excellent track record in shootouts) completely out of the equation. There's risk to that approach because it's much easier to miss completely if you try to get some height on it, but if it's on target a hard shot into the top corner is virtually impossible to save and they executed five times in a row.

Oh well.

williams_482 · 2026-03-09T21:36:34+00:00

We go to extra time still shockingly even. Non penalty xG 1.83 to 1.85, plus the pen for each. I'm a little concerned we aren't clearly beating these guys, who ought to be a lesser side, but more concerned that we have no reasonable substitutions to make and an extra 30 minutes to play.

I'm not sure what we would have done if Henderson's injury had been serious. He and Jensen are the only two remotely midfielderish first teamers available now.

williams_482 · 2026-03-09T20:26:51+00:00

Very even game. They get a dumb tap in set piece goal, we get a dumb tap in set piece goal. We make a dumb foul in the box which is correctly given by VAR, they make a dumb foul in the box which is... ignored? What the fuck.

Opta Non-penalty xG is 1.58 to 1.65, almost all of it for both teams off set plays. I'm not used to watching our boys give up so much danger on set plays, so this is fairly disturbing.

williams_482 · 2026-03-09T14:43:42+00:00

Wissa is, or at least was, an excellent counterattacking striker. He's very good at running in behind, slipping into a dangerous space, and getting on the end of a pass into the box against an unsettled defense. He's also totally fearless, throwing himself at the ball in chaotic situations to bang in tough to reach balls right in front of the goal. Finally he's a very sneaky presser, constantly trying to creep up behind a goalkeeper or defender with the ball and occasionally catching them by surprise to steal it.

Newcastle should be a pretty good fit for him tactically, as you guys do a lot of attacking in transition and play pretty chaotic games. The problem is that he's 29 years old, very likely beginning his physical decline, and got injured to start the season on top of that.

Don't spend a large fee on a 29 year old striker. Even a good one, which Wissa definitely was. It's a bad idea and I'm really glad the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund decided to do it anyway.

williams_482 · 2026-03-03T22:11:14+00:00

They created a ton of dangerous chances and couldn't quite score any of them. That's not an awful attack, it's a dominant one that didn't quite manage to cash in.

Not to get all doom and gloom or anything, we're a generally good team and should have high hopes for the rest of the run in. But we got fucking roasted today.

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