BBassic
I changed this.
- Jul 28, 2011
- 13,065
Yesterday evening, in the 'Potter Out' thread I posted this small snippet of data relating to our first six games:
Looked at in isolation I thought the numbers were encouraging as, to me, they indicate that we generally give as good as we get in terms of shots and shots on target (notable exceptions being City who dominated us and Watford where we appear to have just been savagely, and sadly, unusually clinical).
Unsurprisingly there seem to be two camps forming at this early stage - one side concerned but convinced that everything will come good in the end and the other concerned and convinced we'll be playing Championship football in 20/21. I personally belong to the former camp and believe we just need a touch more luck and, crucially, to find our way back to being the team so ruthless in front of goal at Watford. However this doesn't preclude me from noticing our defensive frailties which were so painfully clear yesterday against Chelsea. Playing out from the back left us vulnerable to the press and we found ourselves giving the ball away or being caught in possession.
With this in mind I wanted to look at the whole season so far, for all teams, to see how we stack up. Are we, statistically speaking, as poor as some think we are? Or just woefully goal shy as others think? Both? So that's what I've been doing with my Sunday morning.
A few notes on the data itself. I'm using data from - http://www.football-data.co.uk/englandm.php . It has not yet been updated with yesterday's games. I think they only update when all the fixtures for that week have been played. This means it only includes the first six games. I'm happy to revisit this on Tuesday once the final fixture on Monday has been played.
I decided to disregard shots not on target as the data isn't granular enough to warrant its inclusion. A shot not on target may have been blocked or been sliced out for a throw in etc etc. It isn't defined in the dataset and thus there's no way of knowing. I felt it could potentially skew things.
Lastly, the goals scored value will include own goals and penalties. Much like shots not on target they're not defined to that level in the dataset so I'm having to just include them here despite their inclusion having an effect on the data.
First up, here's the raw data. It's concerned solely with shots on target (SOT), shots faced on target (SFOT), goals scored (GS), goals conceded (GS) and the percentages of goals scored / conceded to SOT / SFOT.
Appreciate a block of numbers like that is pretty dull to read so I've put together some shiny graphs. First up is the percentage of GS against SOT:
Some numbers stand out there for me. Firstly, City are insane. 49% of their SOT ended up in the back of the net. Liverpool just behind them on 45%. Utter madness. Makes our 25% look pretty poor but not as bad as, say, Crystal Palace on 16%, the lowest in the league. Big surprise there for me though is Sheffield United scoring with 43% of their 16 SOT. That is the sort of clinical finishing we should be aiming for. Taking our chances when they arrive. My main takeaway though is that, once again, we are roughly where you could expect us to be; mixing it up with Newcastle, Southampton, Watford, and Villa. All teams around us in the table.
Next is the reverse. GC against SFOT:
Chelsea! Wow! You look at that and wonder if yesterday, had we a touch more attacking nous about us, we could have walked away with a result.You can easily see where Watford's problems lie as well, comparing the two graphs. Only 18% of their SOT result in GS yet a hefty 51% of SFOT wind up being GC. Once again Sheffield United are a surprise package with only 25% SFOT ending up in their goal. They play, from what I've seen at least, a similar style to us with centre backs pushing forward so it's interesting to see that a largely Championship squad is faring better, in a similar system, than our (arguably) Premier League squad.
Interesting for me here is our 38% SFOT becoming GC. If you look at the number of SFOT for us, 21, and rank that against the rest of the league we're joint 4th with Leicester and Man City, behind Palace
facepalm in third, Everton in second and Liverpool in first. Statistically speaking we don't open ourselves up to many SFOT it's just that, when we do, there's a decent chance of them rippling the net.
What does this tell us? Personally speaking these numbers are saying that both the camps I mentioned earlier have a case. We are letting in 38% of the shots we face and we're only putting away 25% of the shots we take. We're both goal shy and fragile at the back. However I still believe, and I said earlier which camp I'm in, that if we improve our goal-scoring record our defensive issues will be less noticeable.
To be completely honest, and though it pains me to say it, unless one or both of those problems is addressed we may very well find ourselves staring at a big red R come May 2020.
Looked at in isolation I thought the numbers were encouraging as, to me, they indicate that we generally give as good as we get in terms of shots and shots on target (notable exceptions being City who dominated us and Watford where we appear to have just been savagely, and sadly, unusually clinical).
Unsurprisingly there seem to be two camps forming at this early stage - one side concerned but convinced that everything will come good in the end and the other concerned and convinced we'll be playing Championship football in 20/21. I personally belong to the former camp and believe we just need a touch more luck and, crucially, to find our way back to being the team so ruthless in front of goal at Watford. However this doesn't preclude me from noticing our defensive frailties which were so painfully clear yesterday against Chelsea. Playing out from the back left us vulnerable to the press and we found ourselves giving the ball away or being caught in possession.
With this in mind I wanted to look at the whole season so far, for all teams, to see how we stack up. Are we, statistically speaking, as poor as some think we are? Or just woefully goal shy as others think? Both? So that's what I've been doing with my Sunday morning.
A few notes on the data itself. I'm using data from - http://www.football-data.co.uk/englandm.php . It has not yet been updated with yesterday's games. I think they only update when all the fixtures for that week have been played. This means it only includes the first six games. I'm happy to revisit this on Tuesday once the final fixture on Monday has been played.
I decided to disregard shots not on target as the data isn't granular enough to warrant its inclusion. A shot not on target may have been blocked or been sliced out for a throw in etc etc. It isn't defined in the dataset and thus there's no way of knowing. I felt it could potentially skew things.
Lastly, the goals scored value will include own goals and penalties. Much like shots not on target they're not defined to that level in the dataset so I'm having to just include them here despite their inclusion having an effect on the data.
First up, here's the raw data. It's concerned solely with shots on target (SOT), shots faced on target (SFOT), goals scored (GS), goals conceded (GS) and the percentages of goals scored / conceded to SOT / SFOT.
Appreciate a block of numbers like that is pretty dull to read so I've put together some shiny graphs. First up is the percentage of GS against SOT:
Some numbers stand out there for me. Firstly, City are insane. 49% of their SOT ended up in the back of the net. Liverpool just behind them on 45%. Utter madness. Makes our 25% look pretty poor but not as bad as, say, Crystal Palace on 16%, the lowest in the league. Big surprise there for me though is Sheffield United scoring with 43% of their 16 SOT. That is the sort of clinical finishing we should be aiming for. Taking our chances when they arrive. My main takeaway though is that, once again, we are roughly where you could expect us to be; mixing it up with Newcastle, Southampton, Watford, and Villa. All teams around us in the table.
Next is the reverse. GC against SFOT:
Chelsea! Wow! You look at that and wonder if yesterday, had we a touch more attacking nous about us, we could have walked away with a result.You can easily see where Watford's problems lie as well, comparing the two graphs. Only 18% of their SOT result in GS yet a hefty 51% of SFOT wind up being GC. Once again Sheffield United are a surprise package with only 25% SFOT ending up in their goal. They play, from what I've seen at least, a similar style to us with centre backs pushing forward so it's interesting to see that a largely Championship squad is faring better, in a similar system, than our (arguably) Premier League squad.
Interesting for me here is our 38% SFOT becoming GC. If you look at the number of SFOT for us, 21, and rank that against the rest of the league we're joint 4th with Leicester and Man City, behind Palace
facepalm in third, Everton in second and Liverpool in first. Statistically speaking we don't open ourselves up to many SFOT it's just that, when we do, there's a decent chance of them rippling the net.What does this tell us? Personally speaking these numbers are saying that both the camps I mentioned earlier have a case. We are letting in 38% of the shots we face and we're only putting away 25% of the shots we take. We're both goal shy and fragile at the back. However I still believe, and I said earlier which camp I'm in, that if we improve our goal-scoring record our defensive issues will be less noticeable.
To be completely honest, and though it pains me to say it, unless one or both of those problems is addressed we may very well find ourselves staring at a big red R come May 2020.
