ANYBODY who has watched the majority of Warrington Wolves’ games this season will have a pretty good idea about their strengths and weaknesses.

A record of five wins and six defeats from 11 games sees them sit seventh in the Super League table.

With the regular season approaching its halfway point, we have crunched some numbers from the stats available to see just how The Wire are performing compared to their rivals and what it can tell us about their development…

ATTACK/DEFENCE BALANCE NOT YET FOUND

Daryl Powell arrived at The Halliwell Jones Stadium promising a more expansive attacking game and the numbers demonstrate there are not having trouble scoring points.

Their 11 Super League games have seen them scored 45 tries and 250 points in total – on both counts, that score is only bettered by joint-leaders St Helens and Wigan.

Both sides have scored 50 tries while Wigan just have the edge on points scored – 288 to 272.

Warrington Guardian:

Matty Ashton heads for the corner to score against Wigan. Picture by Mike Boden

Matty Ashton and Josh Charnley both feature highly among the leading tryscorers having scored eight tries each while Toby King’s seven puts him as the highest-scoring centre in the competition.

However, their problem has been their ability to keep sides out.

The 258 points they have conceded is among the highest in the competition with only the bottom three sides – Toulouse (330), Salford (290) and Wakefield (280) leaking more points than Powell’s side.

Warrington Guardian:

Only Super League's bottom three sides have conceded more points than Warrington Wolves this season. Picture by SWPix.com

OFFLOAD GAME REMAINS STRONG

Warrington have been regular features among the leading offloaders in the competition in recent years and that trend is continuing despite the change of coach.

The Wire have offloaded the ball 128 times in Super League games – more than any other side.

Peter Mata’utia leads the individual offload charts with 20 while there are two other Wolves players in the top 10 – Toby King is third with 17 while Ben Currie’s 15 offloads puts him seventh.

Warrington Guardian:

Peter Mata'utia leads the competition for offloads. Picture by Mike Boden

TACKLING AND DISCIPLINE

The numbers also indicate that Warrington have had to do much more defending than they would have liked.

They have had to make more tackles than any other side with 3,811 while they also lead the competition in marker tackles (654).

Warrington’s tackle success rate seems pretty favourable having missed 292 tackles – the sixth-most in the competition.

Warrington Guardian:

Warrington Wolves have had to do more tackling than any other side in Super League this year. Picture by Mike Boden

They are about average for errors made too – their 110 is the sixth highest number although Toby King’s 17 is the second-highest number of errors for an individual thus far behind Saints’ Jack Welsby (19).

However, their discipline compares well with their rivals given their have conceded fewer penalties (59) than any other side.

Having said that, their seven yellow cards is the joint-most in the competition alongside St Helens and Leeds Rhinos.

METRES

A key criticism of this year’s Wire squad is their perceived struggles to get themselves into good field position by making ground, particularly through the middle.

The numbers back up their mid-table position in this instance too as Warrington rank sixth for both metres made (13,895) and average gain (7.25 metres per carry).

They have actually made more metres than high-flyers Wigan (13,616) and Catalans (13,748) but remain comfortably behind Super League’s leading “metre eaters,” who are currently Huddersfield Giants (15,149).

Individually, Matty Ashton has been impressive with his metre-making – he ranks sixth in the competition having run for 1,449 metres with ball in hand.

Warrington Guardian:

Matty Ashton is among Super League's leading metre-makers. Picture by Mike Boden

The winger also features highly in the charts for clean breaks, with his 13 ranking as the fourth best.

As a team, Warrington have made 55 clean breaks – the joint-third best in the competition with Wigan and behind St Helens (62) and Castleford Tigers (62).