Correlation FC

Bees win 2-1 at Crystal Palace

A very even game on a day with terrible weather.

Correlation of the week

Christian Norgaard continues to be most valuable to the Bees when he starts but doesn't finish a game. Let's hope that the apparent knee injury he suffered during the game isn't serious as the team has had much better results with him in the lineup.

Christian Norgaard and Brentford results comparison (source Correlation FC)

Description	Games	Points	Points per game
Starts and finishes	11	10	0.91
Starts but doesn't finish	9	20	2.22
Games missed due to injury	3	1	0.33

Christian Norgaard receives treatment after an apparent knee injury early in the second half.

Trends that continued

Penalties

Brentford has won every game this season when they’ve scored on a penalty (Wolves at home, Ipswich at home, Southampton away and Palace away). All penalties by Bryan Mbeumo.

• Mbeumo has taken and made all four penalties for the Bees this season. He has now made all 9 of his Premier League penalties (today’s miss doesn’t count).
• Mbeumo is 3rd in the league with his four penalties made this season behind only Justin Kluivert (6) and Mo Salah (5)
• Nathan Collins drew his second penalty of the season, the first against Wolves in early October.
• 3 of the 4 penalties the Bees have drawn this season have been drawn by their centre backs pushing up into the box (2 for Collins, 1 for van den Berg) with KLP drawing the other.

Substitutes

Yehor Yarmoliuk takes the lead from Fabio Carvalho as super sub, with the Bees earning 19 points in games where he has subbed in. He’s come off the bench 12 times. Carvalho has subbed 13 times with the Bees earning 18 points in those games. Ben Mee has proven a very effective sub as well, with the Bees earning 9 points in his 4 substitute appearances, an average of 2.25 per game.

14:00 start time

Brentford is undefeated this season with 14:00 start times. Their only other 14:00 start time came this season on opening day, also against Crystal Palace, also ending with a 2-1 final score to Brentford.

Outperforming xG

Brentford outperformed their xG again today, and currently sit second in the league at +5.3. Perhaps not coincidentally, Brentford has the second lowest average shot distance in the league (behind Arsenal).

Home team losses

The last time a home team won a game that Brentford played in was Wednesday, 18th December when the Bees lost to Newcastle in the Carabao Cup. Since then there had been 5 home losses and 2 draws.

What’s new

Brentford won for the first time wearing their pink away kit. Yoane Wissa has blocked 4 shots in the past two games, bringing his season total to 5. Brentford has won all of their games played in rain (1 of 1). Brentford now has won more cold weather games (kickoff temperature 10 degrees C or below) than they’ve lost (4 wins, 2 draws, 3 losses). Brentford picked up a higher than usual 2 yellow cards per game, higher than their average of 1.5 per game (lowest in the league).

The Bees win for the first time wearing their pink away kit. They previously lost twice and drew once. Sidenote, this is the first time I can recall Mark Flekken wearing long sleeves under his kit this season. He looks miserable in the cold, wet weather.

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