Updated Goalkeeper stats available

After some happy-fun-time data entry, we can now present you with a fully updated list of European goalkeeper stats, including all players who started a game in the four major European leagues this season.  You can get there by clicking the link below.

European Goalkeeper stats, 2011-12 season

Balanced Sports also offers other collections of stats, like Key Man analysis and Invidivual/Team efficiency measures.  Feel free to take a look at them as well.

The EPL run home "analyzed"

As the Premier League season rampages towards the Manchester derby which will (probably) decide the ultimate route and destination of this season's victory parade, we've got enough data from the season in progress to suggest how results for the rest of the season plays out.  The season is now thirty games old for each club, with the last eight enough to determine who raises the cup this season, which of the upstart clubs finishes with a well-earned chance at European football and which clubs will be facing derbies next season with the likes of MK Dons, Watford or Burnley.

So far, the information that may be the most telling as we enter the season's waning weeks is how each of the teams in the battle to play Champions League football next season got to be where they now are.
The table below includes the five teams currently slated to play continental football next season. It indicates what percentage of available points they have secured against opposition in different parts of the table. For example, Manchester City have played four times against teams currently in the relegation zone and won each encounter. Therefore, they have attained 100% of the points available from those four matches. Chelsea, however, have managed only two wins and a draw from their four encounters with current drop-zone residents – a more sickly 58%.

	Available points achieved by club (%):
Versus teams:	Man United	Man City	Arsenal	Tottenham	Chelsea
In relegation zone	100	100	78	87	58
Are relegation threatened	86	100	52	90	76
In table's bottom half	90	88	64	83	56
“Mid-table”	79	65	71	69	52
In table's top half	69	67	56	42	49
League Top 5	76	83	33	21	29
Total	81	78	64	61	56

For the purposes of this illustration, “Mid-table” includes all teams not currently occupying European slots or in danger of relegation. This means all teams from position 6 – 15 are included, no matter how turgid their play or how daunting their final fixtures appear).  Data correct to Thursday, March 29th.

We can automatically surmise that this season's Premier League has more of a Spanish – or Scottish – appearance to it. The lack competition at the top is galling - and even worse in graphical form (click to enlarge the graph).  While it's expected that clubs lose more points against higher opposition, for a league which champions itself as the most even in Europe, the strength of the Manchester clubs is starkly apparent.

Click to enlarge.

This term displays a major duopoly as the twinn'd Manchester clubs have been markedly more adept at taking points from other so-called “elite” opponents.

 This bodes well for City, in particular, as their April 30^th derby approaches – soon after a trip to Arsenal. Given their record, prior games against mid-table Norwich City and West Brom could provide more hurdlese than their matches against the Red Devils and Gunners. 


Once we depart Manchester, the numbers are just as revealing. Third and fourth positions are the subject of another local rivalry, as despite an ugly start to the season, Arsenal have earned their current tabular position, while Spurs appear a team of bullies. Redknapp's men have extracted only a win and two draws from eight encounters with Top 5 opponents (five points from twenty-four). For Chelsea, these numbers show definitively the poor fit between players and former manager Andre Villas-Boas: last year, Carlo Ancelotti was canned after accumulating more points (by percentage) against every category of opposition.

The future isn't so rosy: Australia's next batsmen

Although the first nation into the CB finals series and coming straight from a whitewash of India in the recent Test series, Australia has far from a settled lineup. Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey are the two oldest First Class cricketers in the nation, while the third was only recently sacked from the Australian team.  The youthful promise of Phil Hughes and Usman Khawaja has tried the country's patience twice too often, while Shaun Marsh and Brad Haddin both endured form slumps which made Mark Taylor's 1996-97 look positively inspired.

With Marsh almost indubitably losing his spot for the tour to the West Indies, the quest begins for a true number 3 batsman.  That role is likely to at first go to Shane Watson, with perhaps Peter Forrest hijacking a spot on the tour bus with some good One Day International form.  Behind those two and the dubious credentials of Dan Christian, Australia simply doesn't have batsmen with the requisite body of First Class work pushing the national incumbents for selection.

How bad is Australia's batting talent drain?  The following chart displays how well Australia's batsmen have performed in First Class matches this season.  They are divided into four quadrants according to the mean age and First Class batting average.  Any First Class player with pretenses to batsmanship (ie. allrounders) are included.  Click on the chart to zoom in.

As you can see, very few young - or even average-aged - batsmen earned their keep, let alone a shot at the Australian team by virtue of their form.  That two of the best-performed young batsmen were wicket-keepers (Matthew Wade and Peter Nevill), stands as testament not only to their talent but to a relative dearth of "comers".

The graph becomes even more stark when narrowing it by appearances.  In the following chart, only players who played at least three Sheffield Shield/Test games were considered.  Based on form alone, we can suggest those players rising most above the average for their age are best placed to take over from the current older generation.  These include Forrest, Liam Davis, Tom Cooper - he of Netherlands' fame - and Christian.

 While Taylor (and Steve Waugh) so helpfully proved that form is hardly permanent, those players in the bottom right quadrant should be those most concerned.  It is a tried and tested premise of sport that fans and administrators alike - want one of two things: success, or hope for the future.  Based on this year's form, those in the bottom right quadrant are hardly likely to offer either.

Comparing EPL efficiency across years

Last week I posted a graph which showed the Offensive and Defensive efficiency of teams across Europe's four major leagues.  The chart was measured teams' conversion rates against the number of shots they faced before conceding a goal.  As with all statistics, this is informative in isolation, but doesn't provide a full understanding of the situation without further context - as in,without further information we can't say if Liverpool's offensive profligacy is a one-season trend due solely to Luis Suarez's left boot, Andy Carroll's relative lack of presence or even if Steven Gerrard's long-term absence contributes to such a statistical  malaise.

In order to answer these questions, we need to compare this year to others.

The following charts show first the change in Offensive/Defensive efficiency for each team in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 Premier League, and secondly the change over the last three years (when shots/shots faced statistics became more readily available).  In the first graph, lines chart the year-on-year change for each club.  Such lines aren't present in the second chart as they would make the chart practically unintelligible.  Enjoy!

I  highly recommend clicking each image to enlarge it.

The most efficient teams in Europe

The following chart was inspired by a similar chart on the blog Experimental 3-6-1.  It displays the ratio between the average number of shots a team needs to score a goal, versus the average number shots they face before they concede.  Click the image to zoom in.

From the graph, we can surmise that Borussia Moenchengladbach has by far the sturdiest defence, while Freiburg offer about  as much resistance as wet paper.  The most inefficient teams in front of goal, however are Cesena and Kaiserslauten.  It's probably no surprise that both are in severe danger of relegation.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: Cricket's Moneyball effect

Ben Roberts

It's my turn to throw my voice into the vortex of latter opinion and desire borne out of the 2011 release of Moneyball. I only recently watched this film, and enjoyed it immensely. It's release has awoken the rest of the sporting world to a concept that was not even new in the period portrayed in the movie, but has been around for over 30 years. Suddenly everyone wants a piece of the action, and to find the killer measurable statistic for their sport of choice that separates the wheat from the chaff.

Baseball is a sport made for such a concept. Without going into much detail, in my opinion baseball lends itself so easily to this analysis due to: 1) being very static in gameplay with players not moving around the field randomly but in a definite order; 2) having direct cause-and-effect relationships in the game play, (for example an out always equals a run saved); 3) Major League Baseball being a market based sport (also replicated in many others but not cricket) meaning that value is something more easily determined as it comes in dollars and cents.

Cricket by contrast does not have such a static nature nor cause and effect relationships. While commentators always say that the best way to restrict scoring is to take wickets this is not an absolute (like baseball) until you talk about the 10^th wicket falling. Neither does the sport have a market-based nature, although players are shifting first-class teams more today, the game remains a sport played at the highest level as a regional representative.

The key premise of the theory is stated early in the movie when Jonah Hill's character tells Brad Pitt's character that for years they have been asking the wrong question. They should be trying to buy wins (a direct result of runs scored and restricted) not players. The improvement in statistics themselves had been around for many years, the trouble was the ignorance of the users.

Cricket has a multitude of data already at its disposal. Former Australian coach John Buchanan was known for recording extensive data and this became the norm for most first-class teams. The difficulty is that unlike baseball - where you can name what you want - in cricket, you cannot be as sure. Yes, more runs are important, but in Test matches you need to take wickets also.

So what if we just use such analysis for limited over matches where it's all about runs. Good idea, except last night I saw a rain interrupted T20 match get decided by the Duckworth-Lewis method which relies on wickets in a calculation of a par score. As well, we still seem to value bowling in limited over games, if we are truly only after more runs why not simply stock your team with 11 batsman who can nominally roll their arm over and field well?

The difficulty is that we do not know what the question to ask is; that is, what constitutes total value in a game of cricket? The entire premise of using such statistics is to restrict the questions that you want the statistics answer, unless you want your statistics to prove any and all manner of things. 

To give an extreme example: You have two batsmen, 1 and 2. In traditional statistics both average 36 and have a strike rate of 72 runs per 100 balls. A normal innings therefore for either is to score 36 runs off 50 deliveries.  We have a dilemma: if we need to choose, both look equal - based on traditional measures. Turning more detailed statistical analysis, we find that Batsman 1 gets those runs in 36 singles, where Batsman 2 usually hits 6 sixes (I told you the example was extreme). Which batsman is the more valuable?

My initial reaction is to say Batsman 1 is more valuable in that they turn the strike over to the other batsman giving greater chance for team scoring while they are at the crease whereas Batsman 2 faces a stack of dot balls. But what is the effect on the bowlers? Does the potentially greater runs scored per single ball by player 2 make them more valuable? Unless you know what you really want statistics can tell you anything.

Don't read me wrong - such analysis has every place in the game but requires a liberal amount of common sense to be applied. You can easily measure the worth of two identically skilled players as above. You may use the above analysis in comparison to what the team needs, but you cannot make the clear cut decisions that they can in baseball as there is no single measure of value.

Ed Cowan at his best; (c) Balanced Sports

How would you statistically make the decision (as for the recent Melbourne Test) whether to play an opening batsman Ed Cowan or all-rounder Daniel Christian? To do so compares apples with oranges. In baseball, you can use a standard measure of total value to the team and cut through inconsistencies, in cricket understanding and intuition must still be applied.

I have only a rudimentary understanding of statistic usage, and someone more esteemed than I may be able to prove that there is a methodology escalating statistical analysis beyond being a support category in cricket decision making. But until that time remain wary of the limitations when trying to apply to cricket. Mark Twain believed it was Benjamin Disraeli who said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Though it remains historically an un-sourced statement, there is still much truth to it.

EPL: Where the goals come from

"Attacking midfielders" - eg. Samir Nasri or Adel Taarabt - categorized as forwards.

Click image to enlarge.

The table above describes where each team relied upon for scoring in last season's English Premier League.  For example, league Champions Manchester United scored 73.08% of their goals through their forwards - a corps including league-high scorer Dimitar Berbatov, Javier Hernandez and Wayne Rooney.  That they were in the bottom three for goals from midfielders stands testament to the age of last season's key players Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs.

It is interesting to note that clubs noted for a passing game - such as Wigan or at times West Brom - were balanced out for goals from midfield by clubs such as Birmingham, who simply didn't have anyone outside central midfielder Craig Gardner on whom they could rely to hit the net with regularity.  It is of course no surprise to see that clubs who required set pieces to score (I'm looking at you Stoke City) had higher rates of goals scored by defenders.  

Given defenders' propensity scoring from corner and free kick situations, we can infer that with the exception of Birmingham, the relegated teams last season had extreme difficulty scoring from set pieces as West Ham managed only 7% of their goals from defenders, while Blackpool bottomed out of the division at just under 5.5%.

A large difference can be seen in the promoted teams.  While Cities Norwich and Swansea both prefer to attack with the ball on the ground, QPR can't ever be mistaken for a team of Xavis.  Manager Neil Warnock's M.O. is to get the ball to Adel Taarabt at all costs, who then attempts to create havoc.  This is displayed in him creating or scoring 47% of all QPR's goals last term.  A simple reason for them being my pick to go down - they, like Charlie Adam and Blackpool last year just don't have enough diversified offensive firepower.