Mark Hollis’ statistical take on today’s encounter

Stevenage vs. Brentford

Stevenage welcome Brentford to the Lamex this afternoon with the visitors sitting comfortably in mid-table with a neat 10 point advantage.

For those statisticians among you, that’s one point per game more than Stevenage have accumulated so far or a whopping 300 per cent increase on our current tally.

Graham Westley and his men have so far managed to pick up just a solitary point from a possible 15 at home (6.7 per cent) leaving us sitting second bottom thanks to one goal overall. I like to think it was James Dunne’s at Notts County.

Some recent research on my part (with due credit to the input of my mates Andy and Dave) has brought to light the fact that we’ve been winning league games this season for a paltry 32 minutes (25 minutes vs. Bradford, one minute vs. Notts County and six minutes vs. Oldham).

Of the 900 minutes we’ve participated in, that’s a percentage total of 3.5 per cent.

Putting a positive spin on it, however, 31 of those 32 minutes were at home – and it’s at home that we face Brentford – so you can up that percentage to somewhere around seven per cent.

Despite last season’s impressive performance, Brentford have made an indifferent start to this league campaign.

The form table sees them with three defeats, two wins and a draw in their last six matches against our four defeats and two draws.

In the same time frame, they’ve scored six and conceded 10, we’ve scored three and conceded 12.

However, while the stats don’t make pretty reading, the substitutions last weekend brought with them some encouraging signs with Dani Lopez, Felipe Morais and the fit again Lucas Akins adding some much missed spark and creativity in the final third.

While it didn’t prove enough to draw level with a reasonably impressive looking Coventry City side, there were some signs of improvement [Lopez has since joined Barnet on loan].

Add to that the impressive midweek victory over a strong MK Dons side, the goalscoring debut of Francois Zoko and the arrival of Bruno Andrade [on loan from QPR] and there are reasons for optimism.

As GW would say, we’re now 100 per cent from our last one game.

We should take heart from Tuesday night’s performance and the improved spell in the second half on Saturday.

If we can carry on in that vein, continue to shore up our defence and take the promising forward play into the weekend, there’s nothing to say that we can’t take three points from this game and use it as a springboard to drag us up the table.

* Mark Hollis is the press officer for Stevenage Supporters’ Association. You can find out more about them at http://www.sa4sbfc.co.uk/home/