In many ways Orient’s performance up at Lincoln last Saturday pretty much encapsulated our start to the season in ninety minutes. Once again we dominated the opening period, didn’t really threaten Lincoln’s goal other than an effort from distance by Tom James that hit the crossbar, conceded two sloppy goals and found ourselves desperately chasing the game for the last quarter of an hour or so. This time we did manage to pull one back through Dan Agyei, but it all felt a bit too little too late.

Last week we looked at some of the areas where we haven’t been playing to our full potential (Orient Nerd Weekly Ramblings- Picking the bones out of Orient’s mixed start to the season) but there seems little point in going over old ground again, so let’s look at where we are now that we have played our first ten league matches of the season.

So, with ten games played we currently sit 19^th in the league table with 8 points, the same as Northampton who we play next (who mentioned a relegation six pointer?), and 5 behind a clutch of teams from 15^th to 18^th. Not exactly where we hoped we might be at this stage of the campaign!

Yes we have had a tough start to the season facing some of the teams already making the early running such as Birmingham, Wrexham and Lincoln, but at the same time there is an inescapable feeling that we have underachieved in terms of points on the board.

In most of the games we have played so far we have generally competed, if not been the more dominant side. Being something of a nerdy geek (the clue is very much in the name!), I delved into some key match statistics from our 10 league games so far to see if that could give us any insight into why we are seemingly underachieving.

In terms of possession we haven’t in fact been as dominant as memory perhaps tells us:

	LOFC	Opposition
Bolton	47%	53%
Charlton	44%	56%
Birmingham	40%	60%
Shrewsbury	73%	27%
Reading	46%	54%
Stockport	37%	63%
Peterborough	36%	64%
Wrexham	58%	42%
Exeter	61%	39%
Lincoln	65%	35%
	51%	49%

Over the ten league matches so far we have just shaded overall possession 51% to 49%, but if you look at the three matches where we have had a significant advantage (over 60%) in terms of having the ball (against Shrewsbury, Exeter and Lincoln), these were in matches where we lost to teams who set up to sit deep and try to catch us on the counter.

Against Shrewsbury and Exeter we failed to score at all, and against Lincoln Dan Agyei pulled a goal back after us being two down in the 80^th minute. Conversely in the two matches we have won (Reading and Stockport) we have scored relatively early in the game, and in both those matches had less possession of the ball than our opponents. Does this perhaps suggest that we need to score first to draw teams out in order to beat them?

A common complaint amongst the Orient faithful (yours truly most definitely included!)  is that we don’t shoot enough, and we don’t score enough goals. If we look at the stats for our shots compared to our opponents this season it seems that isn’t necessarily the case.

	LOFC			Opposition
	On Target	Total Shots	%age On Target	On Target	Total Shots	%age On Target
Bolton	6	11	55%	3	8	38%
Charlton	2	8	25%	4	11	36%
Birmingham	3	11	27%	3	11	27%
Shrewsbury	1	6	17%	4	9	44%
Reading	3	12	25%	4	11	36%
Stockport	5	9	56%	3	18	17%
Peterborough	5	13	38%	3	7	43%
Wrexham	1	9	11%	2	6	33%
Exeter	5	14	36%	2	9	22%
Lincoln	4	11	36%	3	10	30%
Total	35	104	34%	31	100	31%
Average	3.5	10.4	34%	3.1	10	31%

In actual fact we have averaged slightly more shots per match than we have allowed our opponents to muster, and our shooting accuracy (percentage of shots on target) is actually slighter higher as well. Having said that, logic of course dictates that if we were to shoot more that would almost inevitably lead to us scoring more goals.

The final statistic that I looked at was the number of goals we have scored compared to our expected goals for each of our matches so far this season. Expected Goals (xG) is a relatively new performance indicator in football that estimates “the number of goals a player or team should have scored when considering the number and type of chances they had in a match.”

	LOFC			Opposition
	xG	Goals Scored	Variance	xG	Goals Scored	Variance
Bolton	1.04	1	-0.04	1.00	2	1.00
Charlton	0.38	0	-0.38	0.86	1	0.14
Birmingham	0.69	1	0.31	1.16	2	0.84
Shrewsbury	0.28	0	-0.28	1.15	3	1.85
Reading	0.79	1	0.21	0.82	0	-0.82
Stockport	1.38	4	2.62	2.06	1	-1.06
Peterborough	0.92	2	1.08	1.16	2	0.84
Wrexham	1.14	0	-1.14	1.15	0	-1.15
Exeter	2.42	0	-2.42	1.93	1	-0.93
Lincoln	0.71	1	0.29	1.15	2	0.85
Average	0.98	1.0	0.03	1.24	1.4	0.16

The first thing to notice is that there are only two matches (Stockport and Peterborough) in which we have scored more than one goal. On average we score just one goal per game at best and in fact if we took Stockport out of the equation that average would fall to 0.66 goals per game. Our average Expected Goals is just below one per match and the only time it has been above 2 was in the Exeter match last week where we failed to find the net.

As the old saying goes you can prove anything with statistics, but this back of a fag packet analysis clearly seems to support the notion that Orient’s disappointing start to the campaign has been founded on not finding the back of the net enough. If we then combine that with a propensity to give away sloppy goals through defensive errors then it becomes fairly evident why we have won only two league matches so far this season and picked up just 8 points.

Obviously a significant part of the focus in trying to work out how we can develop much more of a potent attacking threat will centre on our front three of: Ollie O’Neill, Charlie Kelman and Dan Agyei, and it really does feel that we are not clicking in attack.

However, for me the tempo of our play (or lack thereof!) and this tendency we have to overplay and dwell on the ball and too often play in front of the defence, or even backwards, is a bigger issue.  We know our front line have pace, but we don’t really get in behind teams. Similarly given the lack of impact that DJ and Sonny Perkins have offered when coming on from the bench, we haven’t been able to change things up too much either.

If we look ahead to our next 10 games in which we face: Northampton, Rotherham, Wycombe, Blackpool, Mansfield, Stevenage, Bristol Rovers, Wigan, Burton and Barnsley, there is every reason to believe that we can be picking up more points from those and to start climbing the table. A key part of that will rest on getting our attack up and running, if we don’t then the rest of the campaign is likely to feel like a real struggle.

 Up the O’s!