On the impact of Bobby Zamora, Eduardo Vargas and Richard Dunne at QPR

The thoroughly entertaining Iain Macintosh today compiled an article suggesting how well QPR have been performing recently. He credits much of this resurgence to Harry Redknapp's re-utilisation of two senior Rangers, Bobby Zamora and Richard Dunne.

While he is of course correct - especially in a poetic sense - a certain set of numbers emerging from my ever-expanding Player Plus/Minus dataset - which you can find by clicking here - might help quantify the effect Zamora and Dunne have both have on the Hoops.

In their eleven matches so far, the Rs have managed a goal difference of -11, or being outscored by one goal for every 90 minutes they take the field. This means any player who has managed each of the 990 minutes Rangers played so far this season will have an Individual Plus/Minus of -11. If you will, think of Individual Plus/Minus as a player's "personal" goal difference, or the amount of goals his team concedes while he's on the field, subtracted from those his team scores when he plays.

However, players rarely play every minute of every match of the Premier League season - in fact, in last year's abbreviated (four-team) sample, only Brad Guzan and Steven Caulker managed such a feat. This means to compare a player to his teammates and thereby examine his impact on his club, we must standardize the time-frame in which player and team both score and concede. That is, a team's Goal Difference divided by 38 results in the average amount they score/concede more than their opponents per match - so a Player's Plus/Minus rating per 90 minutes allows us to compare a team's performance when a certain player is deployed against when he is not.

But technical definitions aside, this set of information details how much a team scores or concedes over 90 minutes when a player is on the field. And Zamora's, particularly, numbers are spectacular. When he is on the field, QPR have a Goal Difference per game of 0, a full goal-per-game improved over when he doesn't take the park. 

This is the single best "Impact Factor" for a forward in the league, and is shared (with teammate Yun Suk-Young) for the third-best rating of any position. Only Jack Cork and Charles N'Zogbia are better throughout the entire league; another Ranger with a similarly lofty total is forward Eduardo Vargas, whose Impact rating of +0.803 is fifth-best.

Dunne, the other cartworkhorse whose virtues Macintosh espouses, rates as the seventeenth-most impactful defender in the league of the 95 that qualified (must have played at least 360 minutes).

Other interesting points to come out of the data set include Adnan Januzaj's lack of ability to influence proceedings for Manchester United (with the Reds 0.71 goals per 90 minutes worse off with him on the field), Jack Wilshere's awful start to the campaign (Arsenal are nearly 1.7 goals worse-off with him playing, the worst ratio in the EPL) and the absolute ostrich egg laid by France forward Emmanuel Riviere.

For more information - and some pretty, relatively-informative charts - on Player Plus/Minus, you can read the primer here, or search this site for "Plus/Minus".

Fulham to join Stoke and Birmingham in Europa League?

As the Premiership season hurtles to a satisfying conclusion, few may be more sated than Mark Hughes. The Welshman, in his twelfth year of management, has led Fulham to tenth place so far this season, boasts a +4 Goal Difference and a fair play record which sees them firmly in contention for European football next season.

Roundly pilloried in his early days at Craven Cottage - for a combination of factors including the club's mediocre-at-best early form, his egregiousness about his time at Manchester City, an insistence that every opposing manager properly shake hands with him and finally, his not being Roy Hodgson. Using a finally-healthy forward trio of Andy Johnson, Moussa Dembele and - critically - Bobby Zamora, Hughes has masterminded the Cottagers back from a perilous December position. Fulham still struggle to win away from home, but they've solidified their spot as a mid-table Premiership team and haven't had a player sent off since 2009.

UEFA awards a Europa League position to the best-behaved club (in terms of red and yellow cards) in each of the three best-behaved European leagues, so long as that club hasn't already qualified for the tournament. While Fulham lead the Premiership's disciplinary table, they haven't assured themselves of this spot - should they commit three yellows more than second-placed Blackpool (or worse, a couple of red cards) over their last two games, they would be

lose their position. Stoke City qualified for the tournament thanks to their FA Cup success, while Birmingham's League Cup triumph could see them playing in Podgorica next year. To see Blackpool - perhaps even from the Championship - would provide the most unlikely trio of English Europa League entrants in some time.

The Whites' positive goal difference is also a boon. Alongside freescoring midfielder Clint Dempsey, their primary forward trio of Johnson, Zamora and Dembele have played a combined forty-two starts as Dembele and Zamora have spent much of the season recovering from broken legs. Each of the three has a differing, harmonising se

t of skills - Big Bobby's the target-man with eyes on an England call-up, Johnson's the archetypal goal poacher while Dembele is fleet of foot and nimble in the link-up.

This trident - thrust by Dempsey and Danny Murphy - has Fulham, Michael Jackson statue and all, sitting tenth in the league. Even after receiving an entertaining 5 -2 thrashing at the hands of Liverpool, Fulham boast a goal difference of +4, the second-best figure over the past ten EPL seasons for a club finishing in that position. Should they finish lower this differential could be a Premiership record. Like many managers, Hughes is most visible in defeat. That very little has been said of him during 2011 could perhaps be the ultimate compliment that his job in London has been completed in the image of the man himself - with very little fuss.

Image: Fulham's owner, Mohammed Al-Fayed with plastic friend. Courtesy: sports.yahoo.com

With injurious tackles, intent is irrelevant

In her blog piece “de Jong tackle devoid of intent”, ESPN's Rebecca Lowe has completely missed the point with regards overzealous tackling in world football. She describes it as “just one of those incidents”, while saying that Toon manager Chris Hughton was “more angry with referee Martin Atkinson about the penalty than the tackle”. There's no question Hughton would be more concerned about the penalty conceded - Managers focus on what they can control, rather than what they cannot.

Her next sentence however gives the game away. “I think the general consensus is that it was a bad tackle, but it wasn't intended to break his leg”. Of course it wasn't aimed at breaking Hatem Ben Arfa's leg! What ridiculous, fatuous nonsense! Rebecca Lowe has missed the point like an Asamoah Gyan penalty: very rarely will a player set out to intentionally injure another. It occasionally happens – a la Roy Keane and Alf-Inge Haaland – but the fact is Nigel de Jong has form for injurious tackles and as such intent doesn't matter. Either his technique is very poor, his decision making is very poor or he is extremely unfortunate. There is no middle ground. That Lowe suggests that players are now “afraid” to tackle because they risk a card is ludicrous given the voracity with which de Jong has challenged Alonso, Stuart Holden and now Ben Arfa.

To defend a player and say he shouldn't be punished because he didn't mean to injure someone is akin to defending a motorist who by poor driving ability breaks a pedestrian's leg. If you can't do something dangerous well, then you should use caution when applying that dangerous procedure, it's simple risk minimisation. More than that, it's plain common sense and common sense should always apply on the sports field.

A player who tackles poorly deserves to be punished, especially if the tackle seriously hurts another player. Calls for the tackling to be banned for as long as the tackled one are completely unworkable but without question a three-game ban is completely insufficient for a challenge of such magnitude and destructiveness. Repeat offenders, of which there can be no question that de Jong and Wolves' Karl Henry are, must be punished more severely by the powers-that-be. If that is a FA-sanctioned ban or their national team coach omitting them. Intent just doesn't enter into the matter – the result is all that matters. That being said, poor challenges often don't have such a traumatic result, so hindsight is very much the key action in play here.

Perhaps it would be best to assemble a matrix as in the Australian Football League. In such a system, challenges and offences are graded according to whether they are Negligent, Reckless or Intentional and punished according to a sliding scale. Another layer is added if a challenge is assessed as being Low, Medium or High Impact; in this system a player is punished more with a more serious injury. Should a tackle not be ranked as negligent, reckless or intentional then the impact would not count against the “offender” - take for example the Kirk Broadfoot/Antonio Valencia injury three weeks ago.

With this system, the AFL has stamped out a lot of head-high contact and the duty of care in preventing injuries and concussions rests solely on the defender. Many sports have the defender accountable for injuries incurred while guarding their goals, it's time for football to wise up and do likewise.