A TALE OF TWO TOWNS - PT.1 A NICE MAN NAMED GRAEME
A statistical review of Luton’s 2019/20 pre-lockdown Championship season under Graeme Jones - recruitment, the step up in quality, what went right and wrong and some of the numbers behind it all
KNOWING ME, KNOWING LU(TON), A-HA(NALYTICS)
Until April of last year I was almost entirely unaware of the incredible football analytics community on Twitter (which for someone who works at Twitter and loves football is baffling) - that was until I scrolled upon this Tweet from one of/if not the best in the business - @Blades_analytic
You never really know what things are going to change your life and in what way but it turned out what changed mine was a scatter plot charting the attacking creativity of EFL Full Backs under the age of 25.
This seemingly innocuous scatter graph confirmed two things:
We had the best set of attacking fullbacks in League One by a country mile with the numbers to prove it. And…
As with anything that demonstrates how brilliant my club is - I would cherish it and show it to anyone I thought would be even remotely interested. It had grabbed my attention - not least because of the fact that in the Twitter timeline Jack Stacey isn’t even visible unless you click in to the image to reveal just how much he stands apart from the rest (he was, at first glance, quite literally off the charts).
In January of this year, along with my brother, I decided it was time to set up @LutonAnalytics in the hope that at the very least it could be a place for amalgamating all the Luton data and analysis that was making its way to Twitter.
Fast forward to now and here we and you are. In terms of ‘proper’ analysis this is very much my debut - so please understand this is written as a fan analysis piece from someone with access to some (usually other people’s) numbers.
Please also bear in mind that I’ve never studied data science, I got the lowest mark in my whole university year for statistics and until recently I didn’t know my PPDArse from my eXpected Assists elbow. This is very much a fake it till you make it approach - with all constructive feedback welcomed.
Before we properly kick off I wanted to call out two incredible pieces that inspired me to pull something together about Luton’s Championship season.
Firstly this brilliant piece by @CreweAnlytics: “Ten Things: A Football Nerd’s Guide to the 2020 Crewe Alexandra Team” which is both the longest thing I’ve committed to reading for a good while and the best. It has a wonderful balance of fan(tastic) insight and data-led analysis of all things Crewe. Somehow the data doesn't feel heavy or distracting at all and the piece reads and flows so well.
Secondly, while thinking about what I’d cover in this season review I Tweeted out into the ether a request for any season wrap up type pieces - and the aforementioned account that launched a thousand Twits (@Blades_analytic) pointed me in the direction of his colleague @rramesss’ superb data-led piece entitled “Frank Lampard: Work in Progress - Examining Frank Lampard’s first season in football management”. I’d implore to have a read of those two articles if you'd like to see how this kind of piece is done at it's best.
Finally… a quick warning in case you think the appalling intro title pun was a one off and you’re not a fan of clumsily shoe-horned puns you might as well head to the digital bar at the top of your screen to close your tab now. They really don’t get any better from here on in and the QSPSP (Questionable Stat Per Shit Pun) ratio will remain high throughout.
WE ARE LEAGUE ONE AND ONLY... FOR ONE SEASON
The seven reasons I ascribe to our emphatic win of League One
Lets begin, properly, with a look at our 2018/2019 season in League One. When, at points, we played football so delicious that you could eat it with a spoon and us Hatters fans found out that the phrase ‘back-to-back’ isn’t solely confined to a childhood command from parents demanding to know which of you and your cousins is that little bit taller. It can also, apparently, relate to football teams who have managed to perform the little known miracle of back-to-back promotions (or as previously in our case back-to-back-to-back relegations when we fell hard from The Championship in 06/07 and ended up in the conference). In this case we somehow ended up being in League Two in the May of 2018 and in the Championship just 15 short months later in the Championship.
The final 2018/19 League One table and top 10 charts read (and felt) like a dream:
27 wins
90 goals scored
94 points
25 Goals scored by James Collins (Golden Boot winner)
19 Clean sheets for James Shea (joint top - golden glove winner)
28 game unbeaten run
And… we only lost 6 games all season
The end result felt all the more rewarding given the fact our much beloved chest-thumpingly-passionate-manager Nathan Jones (Nathan) decided to nip out for milk one frosty morning in the January of 2019 and never came back. Leaving us for someone not better looking but just a lot richer and with his kids (almost all of which he’d brought into the club and raised as his own). On top of that he buggered off mid-transfer window and with a game against parachute-payment-splurging and Netflix-documentary-starring behemoth Sunderland just two days away. Sunderland who, at the time, sat third in the table just one point behind the Town with a game in hand. (We drew the game - and to all of our disappointment they didn’t even mention it in the documentary).
But despite Nathan’s departure causing the frequency of the snake emoji (👉🐍) usage to go through the WhatsApp Group roof in the Three Counties it didn’t really affect our momentum and we ended up champions. In the end we finished three points clear at the top (and six clear of the playoffs). Thanks, in no small part, to club legend Mick ‘ah fuck it I’ll give it a go but I don’t want it long term’ Harford - who himself readily admitted he didn’t need to tinker with what was literally a winning formula. After Mick took over we won 12, drew six and only lost two games out of the 20 under his guidance (garnering the highest points total of any team in the league in that same period and establishing a goal difference of +23). The ship hadn’t just been steadied; it had been elegantly sailed to the shores of the Championship (a land, as I mentioned earlier, we hadn’t seen for over 12 long years).
You really don’t have to be the smartest analyst to realise what said winning formula was - for me it mainly consisted of seven key ingredients:
Our ability to not only create but score chances and score them we did - there were various points during the season when we were second only to Man City in terms of goals scored. Whilst the goals the previous promotion-winning season had been fairly evenly distributed in League One, Golden Boot and player of the year James Collins was to thank for 26 of them - this from a player who I was utterly convinced wouldn’t be able to make the step up to League One (shows how little I know!).
Having two of the best young attacking full-backs in the country in Jack Stacey (RB) and the ridiculously versatile and technical academy product James Justin (JJ) - #OneOfOurOwn* (who we mainly deployed at LB) - both of whom would go on to be signed by Premier League almost the instant the whistle blew on the final day.
The incredible xA stats on the pair of them correlate nicely with the fact they were responsible for no fewer than 15 assists between them (oh and eight goals too).
Statsbomb’s own Oli Walker (admittedly a Hatter’s fan himself) acknowledging in this Twitter thread of clips above that at time JJ had become indistinguishable to Brazilian legend Cafu in the way that he loves to bomb forward and pick out a peach of a pass.
Diamonds are forever (or in our case roughly 75%+ of the games we played) We had a set formation (and a style) of play that we knew inside and out - a relatively narrow 4-4-2 diamond 💎 (that sparkled bright having been polished fairly profusely during our time in League Two).
When Nathan did dare to deviate it from it, the results were mixed at best. With an attempted 3-5-2 against Peterborough sticking in the memory. It backfired so spectacularly that we were three goals down within 36 mins at the ABAX and hurriedly switched back to the diamond to stem the flow of goals.
“Shinnie bright, like our diamond” - I’d probably be remiss if at this point I didn’t mention the creative football stylings of one Mr. Andrew Shinnie - whose talent in the field of progressive passing meant that the Luton faithful giving him the moniker ‘Shinniesta’ was almost entirely justified.
If you were to look purely at the standard metrics Shinnie’s season might not have looked like much to the eye of the unknowing beholder (four goals and the same number of assists) but start to scratch the surface and you begin to see how responsible he was for pulling our midfield strings and getting us (and the ball) moving in the right direction.
As acknowledged by @Blades_analytic here - Shinnie achieved a total of nine “pre-assists” - a metric usually only even whispered in reference to the likes of Kevin De Bruyne - as there’s so few players for whom it’s so visually apparent that their build up play and cutting passes creates the optimum chance for the assist (usually over-indexing high on xA) and eventual goal.
Big Mac - Alan McCormack - in a subsequent Tweet again by @Blades_analytic McCormack is described as the most underrated midfielder on the planet - and that could well be true, but ask any ardent Luton fan and they'll let you know in no uncertain just how much they rate him. Both as a defensive ball winner, play disruptor and unspectacularly simple and accurate distributor of the ball. He and Glen Rea split the CDM role between them both providing excellent cover for the back four and distribution going forward. The fact he's gone on to rev his now 36 year old engine and be a defensive rock and driving force to help propel Northampton all the way through the League Two playoffs is no surprise at all (for him it's back-to-back-back when it comes to promotions - congrats Al!).
(this data also confirmed that fan favourite Pelly Ruddock-Mpanzu who’s been with us since the Conference is a bloody good CM)
The defence never rests your honour - we conceded the third fewest goals in the league (42 - only behind Barnsley and Charlton). Our back four of JJ, Sonny Bradley, Matty Pearson and Stacey featured in almost every game.
Shea class - James Shea (GK) - Class is probably a bit strong as the former Arsenal U23s man has some absolute clangers sitting in his locker just ready to be unleashed (and by unleashed I mean placed in front of an opposition's striker as some sort of offering to the easiest goals ever scored Gods) and the accuracy of his kicking long left a bit to be desired but that said he was Mr. Reliable that last year in terms of bagging himself clean sheets. 19 of them in total. Whilst he's an excellent shot stopper & commands his box well - if you were to ask any Luton fan at the end of the season what positions needed strengthening - Goalkeeper would've been high on the recruitment shopping list.
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
Two days before the final game of the League One season the board announced that they’d hired Graeme Jones (Graeme) who had been waiting in the wings since February watching on and planning his recruitment strategy for The Championship. Graeme, at the time, was West Brom’s assistant manager and part of Darren Moore’s team who were let go when he departed. He was also fresh from being part of Roberto Martinez’s staff who got Belgium to the World Cup semi-finals. Whilst it certainly sounded like he had the pedigree, looked and sounded the part and seemed to be a good find from our board - I, like a lot of others, knew very little about him. Whilst, not wanting to start the season off already riddled with negative thoughts about the situation I had a number of concerns:
He certainly had A LOT of experience as an assistant manager and a coach however this was his debut season as a manager - in a notoriously tough league - this was throwing yourself in at the deepest of deep ends (it had worked with Nathan in League Two but this felt like a much bigger gamble)
They weren’t his players and they’d been playing brilliantly in a system / style that was not necessarily going to match his - in this respect he was almost damned if he did and damned if he didn’t change things
Arguably our three best players had gone JJ (Leicester £6m), Stacey (Bournemouth £4m - would’ve been higher but only had a year on his contract) and McCormack (released and snapped up by Northampton - even us fans had to begrudgingly admit that we knew his legs wouldn’t last a season charging round the Champo)
For someone who appeared to want to break out on his own and become his man(ager) in his own right - he sure did like to mention his old pal Roberto Martinez every couple of minutes (“Did I tell you about the time me and Roberto…” - yeah you did Graeme, you really did)
There were also some murmurings on Twitter from Baggies fans who, unlike the vast majority of the Wigan fans, seemed to suggest our astute-looking appointment might have some strange preferences when it comes to training and demanding players play out from the back. One Tweet in particular sticks out to me as it read something along the lines of “Luton fans remortgage your houses and put the money on the fact that you’ll concede the most goals in the league this year” - Spoiler Alert: we didn’t. But we sure as hell gave it our best shot - we conceded the second most 82 only beaten by Hull’s 87.
Graeme and the press - In his first press interview he said he wanted to win the ‘right way’ - scoring goals - music to our ears but also something we’d already got pretty good at - scoring 184 goals in the past two seasons (and having the highest goal difference). He said he wanted to make Kenilworth Road a hostile atmosphere and very difficult for the opponent - which bearing in mind we’d come off a 28 league game unbeaten run at home - it was perhaps not the heartfelt-motivational-rocket-science we needed to hear.
First big test up for Graeme was recruitment - by our calculations at the time we needed the following:
Replacement LB, RB and CDM - as aside from the three big departures we hadn’t really lost anyone else who featured heavily in our triumphant League One campaign (see churn rate below)
Side note - both my brother (@JCT) and I find squad churn fascinating (and love Ben Mayhew’s - @Experimental361 - charts as they provide such a fantastic instant visual snapshot of the change in squads). We had hypothesised, wrongly, that a squad who stayed consistent year-on-year and therefore had a low churn rate (especially ones playing well) would finish higher that next season. But we crunched the numbers and showed there was next to no correlation between churn at the beginning of a season and where teams end up finishing.
A GK who was decent with his feet (especially if Graeme was planning to play out from the back)
Perhaps some CB cover as backup / competition for the ever-present and seemingly impenetrable pairing of Matty Pearson (RCB) and Sonny Bradley (LCB) - as despite having club-favourite Alan Sheehan (LCB) we were all painfully aware that his best days were behind him
Some Championship experience - whilst there was some players with minutes at that level it wasn’t that many - cumulatively just 349 appearances in the Championship across the players who finished up our League One campaign. With the vast majority of those coming from just two players - LuaLua (163) and Shinnie (70).
Who/what we got was:
Callum McManaman - RM/RW - Known by Graeme from his days at Wigan and West Brom, Championship experience in abundance, technically gifted and played Man City off the park playing for Wigan in the FA Cup Final (admittedly six years prior in 2013)
Martin Cranie - RB/CB/CDM - vastly experienced full/centre back had helped Sheffield United get promoted to the Prem the previous season and a lot of their fans were very sad to see him go
Ryan Tunnicliffe - CM - Rated by Millwall fans who were fairly gutted (looking at the Tweets) his contract had run down and we’d managed to snag a combative central midfield who according to most reports and footage of Millwall’s most recent games could hold the ball well and progress with it
Brendan Galloway - LB - Had been coached by Graeme during his time at West Brom - we managed to get him out of his contract at Everton and were looking to re-ignite the potential in the full-back.
Signing number 5 - which felt like it had Mick Harford’s (who also dabbled in a bit of player recruitment - his day job - whilst managing us to the title) fingerprints all over it. It was what I’d call a wild card keeper signing - Simon Sluga (GK) a Croatian International who was responsible for us breaking our previous transfer record joining for €1.5m. For Luton fans this was unbelievable. He was A. An International keeper, B. Our record signing and C. we paid for him in Euros - to Luton fans this was more exotic than that Tiger King guy on Netflix.
Jacob Butterfield - CM/CDM who had been on trial with the squad during pre-season joined from Derby. He came with bags of Championship experience contained within his massive beard - but he’d struggled to re-capture the form that saw him sign for Derby back in 2014 for £5m+ and had most recently been struggling to get a game for Bradford who had finished the season bottom and relegated from League One.
Then to deadline day and whilst we still felt short - namely of a young pacy RB - I for one didn’t expect much. The years under Nathan had got me used to getting our business done early and having a settled squad by the start of the season. Well we didn’t just get one young pacy RB, we got two! James Bree (RB/RM) and Luke Bolton (RB/RW) joined on loan from Villa and Man City respectively. Bree came with previous Championship experience having been signed by Villa from then Championship rivals Barnsley - young, athletic and in need of game time that he wouldn’t get at the now Premier League Villa. With Bolton it was similar yet with him he was even less likely to feature for his parent club and Premier League Champions City but had been with them for pre-season in the US and was a prospect they seemed to rate highly. This was turning out to be some window.
The icing on the over-excited and delusional “we’re going to finish mid-table!” cake was the loan signing of Izzy Brown (CAM/CM/ST) from Chelsea. Izzy who’d again been coached by Graeme at West Brown was, in no uncertain terms, one of the ‘wonderkids’ - referenced at the end of Michael Calvin’s must-read 2014 book ‘The Nowhere Men’ as a then 16-year old ‘prodigy’. He clearly had an abundance of talent which saw him snapped up by Chelsea and in more recent years had seen him help Huddersfield achieve Premier League status via the playoff final (despite Izzy himself missing an absolute sitter). The following year Bielsa had his sights firmly set on him for Leeds loaning him but despite flashes of what he was capable of, an injury-hampered season ended in disappointment. But now, to the disbelief of what felt like almost everyone in the Championship and to every single Luton fan, Izzy Brown was a Hatter. This was it! Despite only being a season-long loan, Izzy was Graeme’s statement signing. Much in the same vein as Hylton had been Nathan’s in League Two.
Add in the free agent Donervon Daniels (CB/RB) as potential CB cover on a short term one year deal (who immediately got loaned out to Doncaster) and our business was concluded.
Nine players in total - six permanent signings and three season-long loans - plus the re-signing of Kazenga LuaLua (LW/ST) who despite the best efforts presumably of his agent to string us along re-signed when he realised what was really good for him (us). Although by that time he’d missed almost all of pre-season. We also threw Harry Cornick (RW/ST), whose rapid pace is only rivalled by the stupidity of his many and varied haircuts**, a contract extension to ward off the speculative talent poachers.
We’d gone from having a tight knit squad where the starting XI team sheet basically wrote itself to a hefty squad (presumably set up to handle the relentless onslaught of games in the Championship) with a starting lineup and formation that was anyone’s guess.
A few things had become very clear in Graeme’s recruitment strategy:
He wanted players he already knew and had worked with - Fair enough, most managers do.
He wanted them to have Championship experience. From a meagre 349 Championship appearances within the squad we’d added a total of 942 appearances - 270% Championship experience growth (and that doesn’t even factor in the additional 92 Premier League appearances).
And finally he liked ‘high risk / high reward’ signings - this was potentially due to the fact our transfer budget was minuscule compared to most of the rest of the league. By ‘High Risk / High Reward’ I mean an undeniably talented player or player packed with potential who was either seriously out of form or fairly heavily injury prone - but if they could rekindle the form which had previously been witnessed and/or stay fit for a consistent period of time - we’d have a damn good Championship-level player on our hands (namely Brown, Butterfield, Galloway and McManaman).
All-in-all I’d say the fans (including myself) were happy - big names with big potential for a big league.
He had passed the first test with flying (Luton) colours.
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THE BEST LEAGUE IN THE WORLD
Being football fans you tend to only really focus on the league that you’re team is currently in (or at least I do) and whilst I’d catch the odd Championship game on Sky every now and again and hear people refer to it as “the best league” in the world - I hadn’t really mentally prepared myself for the league we were about to enter.
Looking up and down the empty League table before the start of the season and then to our fixtures list - it suddenly dawned on me that there were precisely 0 easy games. Even the teams who’d come up alongside us from League One, Barnsley and Charlton were bloody tough to play let alone beat the year before (we took just two points off them from a possible 12 - with Charlton ending our 28 game unbeaten run).
The games and the names (Leeds, Fulham, Brentford, Swansea...) just kept coming - 46 relentlessly tough games. I had figured it’d be a step up but this felt like a world apart from League One and even more so League Two where we’d been only 15 months prior. Over half the clubs we had to face during the season (13) had been in the Premier League in the last decade.
First up was Boro, the Boro of Juninho, Ravenelli and more recently and pressingly Gestede, Ayala and Assombalonga at home in our first game - spoke to how shit had, very much, got real.
Whilst I have no intention of breaking down each game of Graeme’s tenure to give a blow-by-blow account of the season - I will focus, briefly, on our opener against another manager making his debut in the dugout. Jonathan Woodgate and his Middlesborough team.
The big questions we were looking to have answered:
Would he play our beloved diamond?
How many of the new players would feature?
Would he start our new record signing Sluga?
Could we play “our football” - the football of the previous two seasons - in The Championship?
And the answers were:
He did play the diamond with Pelly Ruddock-Mpanzu sitting in the deeper role
Martin Cranie taking the place of Jack Stacey (not exactly like-for-like but we’ll go with it), Ryan Tunnicliffe on the left side of midfield and Callum McManaman partnering Collins up top
Simon Sluga starts - with every Luton fan desperate to see what 1.5 million Euzzas gets you these days
Well Graeme had said he wanted to win ‘the right way’ and we didn’t win but had Collins not missed a tricky chance (8% xG) in the closing minutes we might’ve nicked it. It was end-to-end chaotic madness and at that point I wasn’t sure my heart could take an entire season of it.
Whilst there were definite positives; Sonny Bradley nailing our goal of the season within the first 20 mins of the league starting (having failed to score any type of goal for the entirety of our League One campaign and not through want of trying). Cranie scored on his debut, McManaman was a handful, we were strong on attacking set pieces and Collins continued where he left off - taking a decent chunk of the chances that came his way. We looked fearless in the face of, what on paper, was much stronger opposition and even created the better chances having a 2.08 xG compared to their 1.50 (which included a missed penalty) according to infogol’s xG modelling (However the numbers vary slightly depending on which xG model you look).
Being there in person it felt very much like we could’ve and probably should’ve won the game.
BUT (WITH LUTON THERE’S ALMOST ALWAYS A BUT…)
There were some very worrying signs, even then. Signs that signalled that, whilst the first game itself was a ‘hands in the air and scream if you wanna go faster’ type affair, the rest of the season and maintaining our Championship status might be somewhat tricky.
WARNING SIGNS
Not convinced the formation will work - Whilst we were playing the formation both the fans and players knew and loved - we were doing it without two rapid, progressive, defensively sound fullbacks who can drive on with the ball to create chances - would it even work like this? Coupled in with the fact that although Pelly can cover at CDM, if needed, but it just simply isn’t his position.
Leaky at the back - Cranie was caught out at the back by his lack of pace (turns out the Championship is full of teams with rapid wingers - who knew?) and ended up conceding a penalty - which was luckily blasted over the top.
Not composed enough to play out from the back - True to form we tried to play out from the back - I mean if it worked for Graeme’s former employers Belgium with Courtois, Kompany, Alderweireld, Vertonghen and Chadli surely it could be replicated by Sluga, Cranie, Pearson, Bradley and Potts right?! Sadly wrong. Not used to attempting pass through their opposition from the back we ended up with this 👇
Shinnie getting bossed off the ball and given no space to create - Note how Shinniesta who, unused to not having ample time to get his head up and pick a pass in midfield, is pressed (well, bossed) off the ball.
Sluga’s confidence taking a hammering - In the same clip I’d like to draw your attention to, incase you somehow managed to miss, Sluga’s massive fuckin’ howler! In which his Lucky Lurpak™, that he lovingly applied to his gloves before the start of the game, comes back to haunt to him. In terms of confidence shatterers, conceding that kind of goal on your debut in the first match of the new season, they don’t come much bigger. That said and somewhat miraculously (I think because we love an underdog - what with us being one too) after a couple of great saves and seeing how much the fact their penalty hadn’t gone in meant to him - chants of “Sluuugggaaa Sluuuuggaaa” rang out around Kenilworth Road. You could almost feel the first semblances of cult status beginning even then.
A reluctance to close down crosses - We seemed reluctant to close down crosses into the box and conceded within 7 mins of kick off as a result.
Cornick not taking his big chances - Harry Cornick missed a sitter (well not quite a sitter but a decent chance - probability of 36%) in the 92 minute that would’ve seen us taking all three points.
One final thing from that game that stood out for me in comparison to the previous seasons was just how physically fit and big all the Boro squad were. Like when a rival school turned up to play your team at school and for some reason despite being the same school year as you they were all absolutely massive and the game had effectively been won the moment you saw them hit their heads as they got off the coach. Despite the fact that the Luton team weren’t as wimpy as I was at school and we went on to draw the game there was a real element of them feeling bigger, stronger and more aggressive.
They (Boro) notched up 21 fouls (to our 14) and it felt like they used fouls well (if you know what I mean - I say this with a begrudging respect rather than moaning) - they broke up play and made their physical presence felt. A trend that continued throughout our season - we ended up being the team that drew the joint second most fouls in the entire league (that’s just over one every seven minutes of football - #Bullied) and committing the third least - in terms of the fouls drawn vs committed ratio ours was by far the highest.
To say these warning signs were indicative of our season would be an understatement.
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The Good, The Bad and the Sluga-y
Under Graeme - the good:
We really didn’t lack commitment - we had comprehensive spirit-raising comebacks against Huddersfield, Charlton, Wigan and Derby (despite all of Wayne Rooney’s protestations to the ref that it was unfair).
By far our finest game under him for me was Bristol City at home in October - in which despite the fact we slightly rode our luck defensively we dispatched the playoff hopeful Robins with ease winning three nil. Izzy Brown pulled the strings, Pelly scored a banger, Cornick scored his big chance, a breakaway one-on-one and Tunnicliffe was unlucky not to get an assist as the Bristol City player helplessly converted his cross into his own net.
‘Good’ might be a stretch for this but… We also organised ourselves and fared relatively well against those at the top of the league namely Leeds, Fulham and Brentford - we were unlucky against both Fulham and Leeds to lose in the away legs and despite getting absolutely destroyed by a rampant Brentford side 7-0 at Griffin Park (their biggest win in over 25 years) we then went on to beat them 2-1 in the home leg and take point at home on Boxing Day - this really hit home the “in this league anyone can beat anyone on their day” mantra.
He recruited well in January. Understanding that Bradley and Pearson were struggling - he brought in Cameron Carter-Vickers from Spurs on loan - a move that would go on to play a massive part in survival (now this could be more down to Mick Harford as head of recruitment than Graeme himself - but either way it would turn out to be a very shrewd move).
Izzy Brown (note: he also appears in ‘the bad’) - despite picking up a few injuries along the way - It was clear for all to see how much Graeme rated Brown - and with good reason. Taking almost every set-piece and topping the League charts for chances created. In the 25 appearances under Jones he racked up seven assists (the team’s highest) and one goal.
Corners - it was fairly clear from the outset that chances would be relatively hard to come by against the calibre of opposition we were facing - so a lot of onus was put on set piece. And slightly surprisingly corners came into play for us. In late January Stuart Reid (aka @From_The_Wing) pulled the data (which sadly I don’t have access to - to run it for the entire duration of Graeme’s tenure) - which put us 6th in the table in terms of corner conversion having scored 7 goals from 136 corners (a conversion rate of 5.15%). As I’ve often read that Graeme focuses heavily on set pieces it was pleasing to see it being a result of that or… perhaps that Izzy Brown whips in a decent corner and that we’ve got decent sized CBs who knows.
Championship corner table (for) for 19/20 so far. Quite a high conversion % this season so far (last years average for the league was 3.11%). If anyone working for one of the teams near the bottom of this table needs a hand, feel free to drop me a DM and I'll be happy to help.Side note: I once read that we’re one of the only nations that applauds corners - as others understand the probability of scoring from them is so low - needless to say after seeing the numbers above I cheered every single one for the rest of the season.
The Bad:
Home form - whilst still better than our away form, we won just 30% of our home games across the season compared to 70% the season before. Kenilworth Road had gone from being a fortress to a nice park which other teams definitely seemed to like to walk in.
Playing out from the back - Against Championship opposition with a lot of whom like to press high, a not un-dodgy keeper - a pair of centre backs who are both better blocking shots and clearing chances than they are with the ball at their feet and no set defensive midfielder regularly dropping deep to give the additional option - it was a recipe for “errors leading to goals” disaster.
Conceding from crosses - under Graeme we seemed incapable of blocking or defending from crosses - according to our count (@theEFLscout and us) we conceded 38 of our 52 in all comps under Graeme from crosses (that’s 73% of all the goals we conceded under him).
The Brentford game - it was what it was - a hefty 7-0 loss. We were dispatched by a rampant Brentford side who had very much turned up on that day. Can’t even fault Sluga for this one as Shea conceded all seven goals in this one having been drafted in to sort out our keeping calamities.
Izzy Brown - our reliance on Izzy as the main creative outlet was apparent for all to see - and if we’d had an injury free Izzy Brown who could go a whole 90 mins in every game I don’t think we’d have been worrying about relegation come the end of the season - but the truth was we didn’t. Izzy on his day is unplayable and not on his day he’s un-playable and the team’s performance seemed dictated by which Izzy had turned up. It didn’t help things for me that Graeme on multiple occasions kept insisting we could only compete in this league with “our best players fit” by this he specifically meant Izzy. Whilst it was true he was our best performing creative player it did nothing for team morale - acknowledging that you’re screwed unless you’re perenially injured (loan) player is fit - seems naive at best and fuckin’ stupid at worst. A lot of fans really struggled with Izzy because when he didn’t turn up in games he really didn’t look arsed at all and would usually be subbed off. He managed just 17 starts and a total of 1,455 mins. Would I re-sign him if given the opportunity - yes - is it the end of the world that he’s now opted to go on loan to Sheffield Wednesday over returning to us - no - as at times he felt like a luxury player that we couldn’t quite afford.
Playing James Bree out of position at left back - not entirely Graeme’s fault as Potts got injured and Galloway was out for the count. Possibly naive that we didn’t draft in back up in Jan as it was clear from the get go that Bree couldn’t cut it at left back and the performance stats backed that up.
We failed to find a solid replacement for McCormack (and the injured Rea) in the deeper lying CDM role. Butterfield, Tunnicliffe, Pelly, Berry and Cranie all had spells there with the latter probably looking the most comfortable.
He favoured his new guard over the previous season’s heroes - the likes of Luke Berry, Shinnie and in particular Elliot Lee got little game time under him (with the latter appearing to celebrate on Instagram Stories when the news broke of his departure from the club). Whether this is a bad thing is up for discussion - Lee is a decent goal scorer but would he get in at CAM over Brown - probably not. It could also be argued that he was right not to use Shinnie after a few very lacklustre and sloppy displays as he struggled to get to grips with his return to Championship life at the start of the season.
Harry Cornick’s finishing - Cornick’s growth as a player has been one of the most exciting things for Luton fans to witness - Graeme moved him out of the second-half-impact-sub-driving-down-the-wing shadows into the starting CF spotlight. It’s easy to identify why; he’s a decent out ball, he runs his socks off every game, offers a decent press and can hold the ball up well when he is used. His pace is also electric. However until now - he hasn’t been used as an out-and-out striker. The primary reason being his finishing - as alluded to in the brief look at our opener against Boro. Whilst it’s by no means poor (a goal conversion rate of 20% just shy of his strike partner Collins) - choosing this season for him to learn his striker’s trade might have proved costly as his finishing isn’t consistent. He racked up a total of 12 ‘big chances’ missed (see definition of ‘Big Chances’ below) - the same number as the league’s 26-goal golden boot winner Alexander Mitrovic. It leads almost every Luton fan to spout the wonderful words of footballing wisdom - that “if he could finish (on top of everything else he can do) he wouldn’t be playing for us (a club at the bottom of the Championship)”. I think Harry is one of our top prospects and it feels harsh to ascribe too much blame to him over others as we created very few chances all chances season and he actually outperformed his xG (nine goals vs 7.89xG). It’s just that he had a tendency to miss some big chances at crucial moments that would’ve sealed games and more importantly points at the front end of the season (the one that sticks in my mind the most is his one-on-one against Preston - see video clip below) - maybe they were all the more apparent because we were judging him in his new position too.
‘Big Chances’ are defined by Opta as: A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range when the ball has a clear path to goal and there is low to moderate pressure on the shooter. Penalties are always considered big chances (note: Harry Cornick is not our penalty taker).
Despite singling out Cornick it’s worth noting that overall our attacking effectiveness in general under Graeme definitely falls under the ‘languidly clinical’ - see below.
‘The bad’ - Side note: A section (well alright a fair few) of the Luton fans will want me to include Ryan Tunnicliffe in the bad - Graeme’s third signing in the summer who appeared 37 times (almost every single League game) while he was at the helm. Now, I don’t think Tunnicliffe is as bad as a lot of Luton fans make out and have a feeling I may write up a piece defending or at least taking a closer look at him (probably called something like “It’s a little bit Tunni” or something like that). But for now I’m not including him.
The Sluga-y:
Simon Sluga - Record signing. New team. New league. New language. New manager (who likes playing out from the back). All suggest you’d need time to settle and he really did. The howlers, which came thick and fast in the early games, did not help one bit and Graeme stuck with him - only switching to the more dependable James Shea in November when the pressure to drop him became too much. In fairness to Sluga, Shea didn’t fare a whole lot better - out of 13 starts he managed just the one clean sheet and conceded 28 goals.
The real lowlight being the two-nil loss away at Derby in which he not only lifted his foot over a simple back pass (watch below if you can bare it) to concede the first goal but also flapped at a cross-cum-shot completely missing it for their second resulting in him receiving the lowest Whoscored.com rating I’ve ever seen of 3.76.
Under Graeme he managed just four clean sheets and committed six errors that led directly to goals - but you have to also wonder how confident the defence was in his ability and how that may have affected their mindsets too.
So with the bad far outweighing the good we found ourselves languishing second from bottom of ‘best/hardest league in the world’ six points from safety with nine games to play going into lockdown. We’d conceded the most goals in the league by quite some distance, lost or drawn 27 of our 37 league games played but our last six games prior to this form had started to pick up with three wins, two draws and a loss (11 points from a possible 18). Our xG performance had us only one position higher (21st) than the reality (22nd) and still very much in relegation territory.
And as you can see from our league position chart it was pretty much all downhill from day 1 - with the highest position we managed to reach after that being 15th (on matchday 6).
Then one quiet Thursday night in April, when football had been almost entirely absent and the world didn’t seem like it could get any more bizarre, the club announced that it had parted ways with Graeme Jones and his staff. The discussions were described as, much like the man himself, amicable.
Whilst surprised by the timing, the distinct lack of a replacement and the ‘reduction in cost base’ reasons given, there weren’t many Hatters fans who were overly disappointed by the announcement.
What was left for manager-less Luton was the monumental task of defying the odds (which as you can see from the chart below - taken the game before our final pre-lockdown 0-0 draw with Wigan - were looking stacked against us).
The Graeme Jones Era
Summarised best for me by a fan on Twitter (Nick Squire) who simply said:
“Graeme Jones is a good coach and not a manager, it’s so clear.”
This mainly showed itself in his naivety with the press/fans and his inability to make the peripheral squad members feel included. Plus his unwillingness to budge from his passing out of from the back philosophy - even in games where it’s clear we were getting punished for it.
Graeme has now returned to coaching as part of the first team setup at Bournemouth and I will be intrigued to see if/when he ventures back into management.
END OF PART 1
Massive thanks to the following people who I’ve ‘borrowed’ data/analysis from - you should definitely follow on Twitter - I’ve made this handy Twitter list for you.
Footnotes:
*in reference to James Justin - He’s so much #OneOfOurOwn that when he scored against us this year in the Carabao Cup in Leicester’s 4-0 demolishing - most of us actually all cheered! First time in my life I’ve seen that happen on a football pitch.
**in reference to my comment on Harry Cornick’s hair style: My God I sound like my Dad - who once asked me if my new haircut was, and I quote, “your version of self-harm?”
A TALE OF TWO TOWNS - Part 2. Nathan Jones has been gone too long - coming soon…
This was great. Look forward to reading part two and anything else you write for that matter!
Great work. I enjoyed that immensely. Next part highly anticipated.