Analytics in Football - Official Thread

[Philby]

As ever, it's probably the product of a few factors

- Arsenal opting for a more controlled approach, resulting in fewer free-kicks in general
- Maybe some small sample variance kicking in, which have limited the proportion of their FKs that are within realistic range
- Management instruction from Arteta (highly likely data-driven) to only take on direct FK shots on goal from specific areas
- No stand-out top-tier FK specialist & Xhaka (who used to take a few) has moved on
- Their best FK takers are all left-footed (Odegaard, Zinchenko, Vieira)

One to keep an eye on as the season progresses.

 

[Nollaig O Muracu]

One thing I've noticed is Arsenal taking their time over free kicks, corners etc. Sometimes they run up to the ball, but stop before they hit it and go back and take it the 2nd time. It's definitely deliberate as they've been called out for it by at least one ref. It's also not time wasting, as it happens early in games too. I'd theorise they're doing it as they think they longer they wait to take one, the more likely the opposition are to lose concentration, if only for a second or two, but that's all you need at that level. It seems to be working too as they've the most number of set piece goals in the league this season.

Anyone else seen or heard anything about it?

 

[Philby]

Surprised to see Raya so far clear of the rest on this, although do hold a very high defensive line - so that would tally,

 

[Cloudy O'Ranieri]

IF you can handle the voices/accents:

Soccer Data with Sean Forman - The Double Pivot: Soccer analysis, analytics, and commentary

The launch of fbref.com has changed public soccer analytics, and we sat down to interview Sean Forman, the president of Sports Reference, about the website, how it came to be, what he learned about soccer analytics from building it, and about thei...

t.co

 

[Philby]

Nice, I'll give it a listen.

 

[Philby]

I tweaked and re-ran this to cover the PL up to the latest games.

Interesting to see Ferguson sitting nicely there - just on the 75th percentile in terms of the quality of the shots that he takes on, but only two players (Kudus & Bernardo Silva) have finished their chances materially better than he has.



Note: Due to the data inputs this will have dragged in a fair few guys who are mainly wide midfielders/attackers and not just forwards. I left them in as it's interesting to see where they sit relative to pure forwards

 

[Cloudy O'Ranieri]

Far be it for me to criticise your viz when you see the piece of shit I posted in the Betting thread, but I'd replace "shot quality" with "chance quality".

 

[Philby]

Far be it for me to criticise your viz when you see the piece of shit I posted in the Betting thread, but I'd replace "shot quality" with "chance quality".

Ya, that'd probably be a bit more intuitive.

Only issue is that you can have a chance (sometimes a bloody a great chance) and not manage to get a shot off...and it wouldn't show up on these stats.

 

[Cloudy O'Ranieri]

Ya, that'd probably be a bit more intuitive.

Only issue is that you can have a chance (sometimes a bloody a great chance) and not manage to get a shot off...and it wouldn't show up on these stats.

Sure, but whoever is viewing will likely know that xG is shots based.

"Shot quality" would suggest the player did something good/bad with the shot. The good/bad finishing part is more in line with shot quality. "Chance quality" points to how good the player is at getting into good positions to score from these recorded shots.

 

[Philby]

Sure, but whoever is viewing will likely know that xG is shots based.

"Shot quality" would suggest the player did something good/bad with the shot. The good/bad finishing part is more in line with shot quality. "Chance quality" points to how good the player is at getting into good positions to score from these recorded shots.

You've convinced me

(sh1t....are we allowed to admit this in the Sports Forum? Asking you obviously as you are the admin)