Talking of long range efforts leads me nicely to the shooting of Andros Townsend, I saw him in the flesh when Swansea visited Spurs earlier this season, he's certainly got pace and ability (as well as maybe the tendency to go down easily) but has this season become the benchmark for 'hit and hope' attempts.
Townsend has racked up the shots this season (has the highest overall so far with 45) and only Luis Suarez has a higher shots per game ratio. Where Townsend and Suarez differ though is that Suarez has scored 9 goals from 40 shots but Townsend has scored only 1 from 45 shots and that was actually a cross that Soldado dummied which ended up fooling the keeper.
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Townsend's only league goal this season from his 45 attempts |
Townsend's goal for England
This season's activity for Townsend is similar to his behaviour for QPR last season (and a handful of games for Spurs):![]() |
Shooting in 2012/13 - Townsend with 2 Goals from 37 attempts but the two coming from relatively good positions |
At the other end of the spectrum is someone like Wayne Routledge, who has had just 7 shots from the 10 games he's played in the league so far this season and Nathan Dyer has 15. This is in part why the interest in Tom Ince who has 36 shots (and 6 goals) in his 13 appearances in the Championship so far this season, although my feeling is that Huw has just thrown Swansea's hat into the ring with regards to Ince on the off chance there are no takers with deep pockets. I'd personally be surprised if we ended up being anywhere near the highest bidder in terms of wages offered given he's out of contract at the end of the season.
When to pass, when to shoot? If the opposition know you pretty much never shoot (as is the case with Routledge), then that's one less thing for the defence to worry about. Similarly shooting on sight isn't going to get you too far either unless you have the finishing skills of Gareth Bale. The next stage is to look at different sides decision making in terms of shooting/chance creation.
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Match Stats: Created using Statszone , Whoscored and Squawka
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