Month: April 2014

Following West Ham’s defeat at home to Newcastle on the 18^th January, relegation for the Hammers seemed a real possibility as they sat in 18^th position in the league.  Their total of just 18 league points from their first 22 games was the joint lowest in the league; this honour was shared with Sunderland and Cardiff. The following chart plots their cumulative goal difference and their cumulative expected goal difference, based on volume and quality of chances created and conceded.  Actual goal difference is in blue, with the expected goal difference shown in red. As can be seen at that point in time (mid January), our model would suggest that West Ham could count themselves pretty unfortunate to have a goal difference of -11.  We would suggest that a net goal difference of -5 might have been closer to a deserved return during their opening 22 games. The Return of Andy Carroll That Newcastle game was the first time that Andy Carroll had played more than 30 minutes in a match this season as the big striker took longer that initially thought in his recovery from a heel injury suffered in the final game of last season. In the 10 league games played by West Ham since mid January, they have picked up a very impressive 19 points and this points haul has taken them to the position of almost guaranteed Premier League survival.  Sam Allardyce has recently extolled the virtues of Carroll, and following the Hammers victory at Sunderland on Monday night Allardyce was fulsome in his praise:

"It's a bit scary to think where we might be if we'd had Andy all season. We didn't have him all season last season and finished 10th; we have had him even less this season.   "We are now 11th, we are one point behind our last year total, so we have 37 points and this time last year, we had 38, we have had our best run of results since we have been back in the Premier League.   "Since Andy and the other players got fit - and I always said coming on the back of January, 'Once our players are all fit, watch out, we will be okay, we will win football matches'.

  The narrative would certainly back up Allardyce’s claims that it has been the return of Carroll, and some other injured players, that has been the catalyst for West Ham’s rapid ascent up the table. But is there a chance that we are being told a story that simply fits with the results?  You will recall from the chart above that West Ham were arguably playing better than their results suggested at the point Andy Carroll returned from injury. Here is the same chart, extended so that it includes all West Ham’s league games played to date: Despite their great results, West Ham’s expected goal difference per our model has continued to decrease further into the red since mid January.  On the other hand, their actual goal difference has seen such a turnaround in fortunes that it is now 6 goals better off than their cumulative expected goal difference. Over the course of their last 10 league games West Ham enjoyed a +5 goal difference, compared with an expected goal difference of -7.  In fact, of those 10 games I would suggest that in 6 of them they obtained results that were in excess of 1.5 goals better than the performances would have suggest they should have earned. Such examples include the 0-0 draw at Stamford Bridge as well the 2 goal victories over Norwich, Swansea and Aston Villa in early February.  Incidentally, Carroll missed two of these victories following his red card received in West Ham's victory over Swansea. So what? We have to be careful not to allow our opinions to be formed by popular narratives.  Too often these narratives are lazy and they simply fit the results and the prevailing mood of the media thus masking the underlying story. Just like in the Tottenham article I wrote last month, it is important that the decision makers at clubs are able to detach themselves from raw results as well the mood of the wider public if they are to act in the best interests of their football club. Analysis of the data in mid January would have suggested that West Ham were due an upturn in their fortunes.  We have seen that Allardyce has put the improved results down to the return of the injured players, most notably Carroll. I’m not so sure that it's as simple this.  In my opinion they have hit a hot streak at the perfect time, both for the club in terms of securing their top flight status, and for Andy Carroll whose stock is at an incredibly high level just as plane tickets for Brazil are being handed out by Roy Hodgson. For all that Andy Carroll brings to this West Ham team, I feel that recognition needs to be given to the fact that West Ham weren't as bad as they appeared in January, but also they probably aren't as good as they now seem to be. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I haven’t written one of these in a while because I’ve been focused on other work, but there’s plenty to discuss. How Do We Fix Spurs This Summer? First, you get a decent manager. Van Gaal is the name that’s been batted about, but there’s no reason for Spurs fans to be despondent if he doesn’t come. There are plenty of other sociopathic geniuses out there to choose from, the trick is finding the right one. Here are three: Thomas Schaaf, Thomas Tuchel, Markus Weinzierl. Yes, they are all German, but they are also all actually good at this whole managing and tactics business. Uncle Tim is not. Find Germans disagreeable? Fine. I think the best name I have heard for the Spurs job was floated as a possibility by the Telegraph this morning: Mauricio Pochettino. Sound defensive system? Check. Better than expected offense with decent, but not great players? Check. Used to working with a Director of Football system and ownership that isn’t completely attached to reality? Also check. Don’t underestimate what Pochettino actually did with Southampton. Before he came along, they were definite candidates for relegation under Nigel Adkins. After he came along, they were nowhere near relegation, and have taken fairly regular scalps from big teams in the Premier League. They are a very comfortable 8^th this year, even after wasting £27M on Wanyama and Pablo Osvaldo. His tactical system is a lot like what AVB ran at Spurs, except Southampton players actually score when they shoot. Beyond the Spurs manager issue, it’s probably best for me to cede the floor to Tor-Kristian Karlsen, as I agree with just about everything he said yesterday on Twitter. (Note: read bottom up on each image.) and The attacking talent is mostly there, and I still think the buys they made last summer are pretty good, but evaluating them is complicated by the fact that guidance from the top has been seriously remiss. On the other hand, there is a problem with the Spurs defense. They need 1-2 center backs this summer and have to completely re-evaluate their fullback situation. Neither Dawson nor Kaboul (who used to be outstanding) have looked capable of playing against anyone in the top half of the table. Meanwhile, Kyle Naughton, who is 25 now, doesn’t belong anywhere near the starting lineup. That leaves the oft-injured Danny Rose (decent) and Kyle Walker (good), plus The Janimal, who might actually rip the still-beating heart out of the next manager that forces him to play left back. I don’t know where Spurs will get the money to re-tool this summer, but fix the manager issue and add quality and pace to the back line and they will again be good enough to compete for Champions League places. Hell, everything kind of fell apart on them this season and they are 2 points above Manchester United in the table. All is not lost. Something is Actually Wrong at Arsenal I’m going to start by assuming you read the piece from this weekend by Ben Pugsley. If not, click over there and come back to me. I haven’t written much about Arsenal this season because I really did not want to be that downer fan standing on the side saying, “Hey guys… something’s not right here.” I just wanted to enjoy the ride and hope that they continued to over perform. Writing about Tottenham’s self-destruction? Good fun! Writing about Liverpool’s analytical revolution and march up the table? Also good fun! Writing about how Arsenal’s baseline numbers are falling off a cliff this year? It just irritates people. This kind of needs to be said though. That’s… I can’t… What the hell is going on here? *Goes to sob in the corner* Forget Manchester United’s transition from Fergie to Moyes – that is the saddest chart I have ever seen. [Disclaimer: I’m an Arsenal fan.] ARSENAL ARE TENTH IN THE LEAGUE IN SHOTS PER GAME THIS SEASON! Yes, it fails to account for shot quality for or against, but basic shots  and that differential captures the broad strokes. Going from a 7.2 shot differential per game - a number that would generally compete for the top of the league - to a 1.5 over the course of five seasons is staggering. Even more staggering is that Arsenal have done it under the same manager (and are still about 80% likely to finish 4^th). The first reason most Arsenal fans would point to is injuries. The problem with this theory is that Arsenal always have a lot of injuries. In fact, they are almost always near or at the top of the injury table in terms of player games missed due to injury, and this happens every season and is not just because Abou Diaby is broken. Because Arsenal always lead the injury table, I'm lead to think there is definitely a problem with regard to their fitness regime. Either they are training wrong, have the wrong expectations in terms of how much training and game time most players can endure before they are likely to pick up injuries, or they have too few players for their typical game load (in short: the squad needs to be bigger). I am not an expert in sports science and I don’t know how things operate specifically at Arsenal, but the fact that this problem is constant means they need to do something different going forward or the problem will always exist. Another major issue with Arsenal this season is quite simple: They have no zoom. Pace. Meep-meep. With Theo Walcott out, Arsenal have zero players in the attack that actually scare opposing defenders, either when running on to throughballs (an Ozil specialty) or running at defenders off the dribble. Compare that to City (Aguero, Navas, Silva) or Liverpool (Suarez, Sturridge, Sterling, Coutinho), and the differences become stark. Lack of pace means tighter marking to the players up front. It also means less space to exploit between the back line of the defense and the midfield bank of four, which makes it harder to Arsenal’s intricate passing game to operate, and means you have less space for all of those talented attacking midfielders to do their thing. It also means slower recovery speed from attack to defense, and it creates a whole host of secondary issues that aren’t entirely obvious. I actually saw the esteemed Arseblog and Orbinho discussing the quality of Arsenal’s crossing this morning, and Giroud’s ability to get on the end of them and my jaw dropped. Given how Arsenal have played in years past under Wenger, this whole crossing business should be a tertiary concern. However, because the entire squad lacks pace going forward, it suddenly matters. That's definitely not part of the plan. So there’s no pace in the squad, the talent level in attack is a huge question mark, and multiple important players are constantly injured and have been for years. Things are very much not right at Arsenal, but they used to be. Money is no longer a problem, but maybe the correct perspective to diagnose and treat the issues is. We’ll know more next year. Failed Stats Experiments The theory that tackles and interceptions have no statistical correlation to goals against and the like bugs me. It’s correct – there is no correlation from either – but defense is also tremendously important. It likely means that we’re measuring the wrong stuff from games, or we haven’t figured out how to adjust the stuff that we are measuring in a way that is important. I can also tell you from my player research that having higher levels of Int and Tack in your stat sheet seems fairly significant, but at the team level? Meh. With this in mind, I started thinking about how to “fix” the base stats collected. If a team has the ball, they can’t make defensive actions. Therefore possession is a limiting factor on potential defensive actions! A team like Bayern, who has had more than twice as much possession than their opponents, has far fewer opportunities to even perform defensive actions unless they go rogue and start stealing the ball from their teammates. A breakthrough! Or so I thought. I did the regression analysis on Tackles plus Interceptions per game at the team level and compared it against various metrics it should impact like Shots Conceded, Goals Against, etc and found… Normalizing by possession ends up giving defensive actions the same correlation as possession itself. Which probably makes sense, but I was hoping for more. It’s entirely possible I screwed things up or missed a different way to attack this problem, so with that in mind, I have included the data set at the end of this article for all of you to play with. In the meantime, I'll keep working on this, because I am sure defense matters... I just don't know how to prove it yet. [table id=62 /]