Notts County 1 - 1 Woking
Dennis 70' Kretzschmar 50'
Difficult conditions, some poor finishing and the some of the worst officiating ever witnessed at Meadow Lane conspired in Wokings favour who were obviously much happier with the point than Notts.
This was Notts' 8th draw at home in the league to go with 8 wins and just 2 defeats.
Key match stats show Notts had the lions share of the possession but Woking were a regular threat with more shots on goal and forcing over twice as many corners.
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Notts' PPG has dropped slightly to 1.54 and now sees a season total prediction of just under 71 points, 4 points adrift of the 75 point target.
With many games off due to the weather the point was enough to see Notts jump back up to 6th place on goal difference.
Points needed for third place remains 77 points and Barrow are currently predicted to finish first on 88 points.
Current PPG for 7th is predicting 69 points. As it is now very unlikely we will find ourselves in a relegation battle I have removed the target line for this from the graph.
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Notts now have 32 points from 18 games at home and a PPG average of 1.77.
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As mentioned earlier a move back up to 6th place on goal difference which was the position after the 3-0 win over Chesterfield. Our average position for the season still hovers around 11th, however that improves to 8th based on the last 12 games.
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Season stats after this weekend's matches vs the NL average.
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Goals scored/conceded by time segment.
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Moving onto player stats and minutes played all competitions for the season. Pierce Bird was called upon at centre back due to the late injury to Alex Lacey and Joe McDonnell got his first 90 mins at Meadow Lane.
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With Wes Thomas suspended Kristian Dennis got a rare start up front alongside Kyle Wootton. The pair combined well early in the first half but to no avail as the Woking keeper kept Wootton's low shot at bay. However, it was Dennis who claimed an equaliser and his 11th goal after latching onto Kyle Woottons lay off in the box giving him his 3rd assist of the season. Mind you I'm tempted to give the assist to Callum Roberts as it was his fantastic work down the right flank that created the goal scoring opportunity.
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Wootton and Enzio are joint goal contributors on 16 each.
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Kyle Wootton on 15 goals still leads the scoring stats although Dennis remains the most efficient striker taking just 141 mins to score a goal or a goal every 1.57 games.
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Attacking efficiency is again detailed in the visualisation below showing how efficient Notts have been in front of goal at home in the league this season. Each marker represents the the number of shots taken and the number of shots needed to score a goal.
The stats for the Woking game would suggest that Notts were often a threat to the opposition goal but were also wasteful.
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As described in my last post defensive resilience has been a feature of Notts home performances this season (Barrow excepted). Despite a large amount of possession Woking constantly threatened the Notts goal but again the defence showed a level of resilience that has become a feature of recent games.
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Finally I have spent some time trying to get a feel for how the top 10 may finish after the last league game of the season.
By assessing current PPG and xG for the season so far and then doing the same for the last 10 games to ensure current form is considered you can start to plot how the top of the table is likely to look.
The chart below shows the current top 10 and based on calculations the highest and lowest positions they might finish. The grey blocks represent current league position.
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At a glance you can see that Boreham Wood, Notts, Dover and Stockport are teams most likely to improve on current position whilst Yeovil and Solihull look likely to slip up. Barrow still look like winning the league and both Harrogate and Halifax are looking good for a top 3 finish.
Based on the calculations I have come up with the following end of season league table prediction:
1. Barrow 88
2. Harrogate 83
3. Boreham Wood 79
4. Halifax 77
5. Notts Co 74
6. Yeovil 72
7. Dover 72
8. Solihull 67
9. Stockport 65
10.Bromley 63
Obviously anything can still happen, Barrow could lose every game left for example but at this stage of the seson the stats are pretty consistent for most teams. Based on this I fully expect Notts to finish somewhere between 4th and 6th but most likely 5th. It will be really interesting to see how these calculations work out and get a feel for their accuracy for the purpose of future predictions.
Hartlepool away up next in the first of 8 remaining away league games.
COYP!