The good performances in recent weeks were followed on Saturday by something we were all hoping we wouldn’t see - a drop in the level on the pitch. This seems to have changed Oliver Glasner’s thoughts (at least publicly anyway) on the current state of this Forest side.
“The reality is we are outrun by the opposition in every single game. We have to change it. And if you can’t change it, we need different personnel. And if the club doesn’t want to change it, they need a different manager. I’m desperate to change it, desperate”.
They are some pretty strong words from the Head Coach, one who seems to have grown pretty tired of the recent run of results. It was an interesting press conference really, especially considering he also went on to say that he wasn’t necessarily seeing a lack of effort on the pitch.
To me, this felt like an attempt from Glasner to give his squad a kick up the arse after the softer approach hasn’t managed to coax out the clinical edge that has been missing in both boxes. “No more hugs” was another interesting line, perhaps backed up with Glasner getting the squad to run out in the fields of Nottingham on the day after the game.
But what exactly does Glasner mean when he says “outrun by the opposition” - is he being literal with that? Are Forest actually being statistically outrun in each game this season?
Opta’s data relating to to Total Distance Covered shows that Forest’s total figure of 112.76km on Saturday was their lowest figure since the win at Villa Park. Personally I wouldn’t put too much weight on the total figures here though, and more the difference between the sides on the pitch.
Instead I’d say its more useful to look at the difference between teams. Each game is it’s own entity, the flow & playing style of both teams contributes very heavily to the outright totals. This data shows that Forest have covered less ground than their opponents in each of the last 5 games - perhaps this is what Glasner is referring to.
If we look at what Opta split out as Distance Ran, rather than all movements, Forest’s players do look to be doing a bit better in this regard - they ran just under 500m further than Brentford on Saturday - the 5th time in 9 games that they’ve outrun their opponents. Interestingly, Forest’s biggest positive difference so far this season came in their only win of the season against Aston Villa.
I think this one is probably the key one - Forest have only significantly out-sprinted their opponents on one occasion this season. This again came in the win at Villa Park (against a team that spent the last 10 minutes or so down to 10-men, therefore one less player available to sprint). We’ve seen some pretty poor numbers here from Forest in recent weeks, particularly against Palace & Ipswich.
It’s when we put everything together though that I think we can perhaps see why Glasner’s frustrations got the better of him after the game on Saturday.