Early goals in Trap's tenure

[Stuttgart88]

It has become something of a pleasant routine that we score early under Trap. We are (fairly) criticised for being a very pragmatic, unadventurous side happy to play without the ball for long periods. However, when you look at the timing of our competitive goals under Trap (and also in friendlies: Norway, Norn Iron and Scotland were all early or at least well before HT) and when you combine that with the fact that we are managed by Italians "we have what we hold" is it any wonder that we are uninspired by the method, but most of us pleased with the results?

Last campaign:

• Georgia away: scored early
• Cyprus home and away: scored very early
• Italy home: scored early enough
• Bulgaria home and away: scored very early, and early enough.
• Montenegro: didn't score at all (but second game was a dead rubber).

This campaign:

• Slovakia away: scored early enough
• Andorra at home: scored early enough
• Macedonia home and away: scored very early, and a second followed early enough

The games where we didn't score early:

• Italy away - equalised after a good performance
• Armenia away - scored after we had already fluffed a few chances

Cyprus away, the French second leg, the Russia home game and Armenia away are all good examples of where we needed a goal, and got it. Russia was too little too late obviously, and we actually started very well. Slovakia away we gave it a good shot at getting another at 1-1, and Bulgaria at home after we were rubbish and they equalised, we very nearly scored.

My point: we are quite good at scoring when we need to, and quite boring and negative when we don't need to. More often than not we don't need to, so we're boring.

[BonnieShels]

Kudos for that rationale at the end. It made my Sunday.

In saying that. I have loved how since Trap took over that we look like we can always score when we need to.

[geysir]

We only play when we have to, but work hard at the boring bit.

[Charlie Darwin]

We've definitely got the knack of early goals under Trap, but I think it's been that way under the last few managers too. We're quite an excitable bunch I feel - we run around like mad for the first 20 minutes and tire ourselves out, but more often than not we're a goal to the good by then.