Köln's finishing is not the problem. Their defending is
Eleven games into the Bundesliga season, 1. FC Köln sit thirteenth with 10 points when the chances they have made and allowed say they should have 15.3 — and the leak is at the back, not up front.
The number that should worry Erik Palmer-Brown is 4.4. That is how many goals more Köln have conceded this season than the chances they allowed were worth. Twelve scored against 13.3 expected is a striker's problem you can live with; eighteen conceded against 13.6 is a defence giving away goals it has no business giving away.
Köln have 10 points from eleven Bundesliga games. On the quality of the chances in those games they should have 15.3. Five points have gone missing, and the table says so plainly: thirteenth. The same calculation puts them seventh.
It is not a story about a team that cannot create. The finishing is off by 1.3 goals against expectation, which is the sort of margin a forward line works through over a winter. Twelve goals from 13.3 expected is football as it normally happens. The other end is where the season is bleeding. A defence that concedes 4.4 more than the shots against it deserve is not unlucky; it is losing its duels, its shape and its composure at the wrong moment, and doing it often enough to cost a club five places.
Palmer-Brown has been in charge at Köln since January 2049. He knows what a Rhineland crowd sounds like when it is being asked to wait. In October, two goals without reply against Gladbach at the RheinEnergieStadion lifted the side clear of the bottom five and gave the derby to Jurandir. That was the version of Köln the chances have been promising all autumn: compact, patient, taking what it needs. The version that turns 13.6 expected goals against into eighteen actual ones is the reason the promise has not held.
"You can talk about luck until the table stops listening," Palmer-Brown might say, and he would be right. Five points is not a small debt in a league this tight. Around them the expected-points table is crowded: Bayern first on 23.4 with 28 points, Dortmund second on 21.8 with 19, Hamburg third on 19.8 with 19, Leipzig on 18.5, Wolfsburg on 17.7 with 20. Hoffenheim sit sixth on 16.2 with only 8 points — the mirror image of Köln's problem, and no comfort to anyone in the Rhineland.
Köln are not being outplayed. They are being out-scored in the moments that decide matches, and mostly at their own end. The chances say seventh. The table says thirteenth. Until the defending closes the gap, the table is the one that counts.