This morning Paul Scholes broke rank somewhat by giving his opinion on Wayne Rooney's mentality, training ethic, and somewhat logically, his unsuitability to play center forward for the remainder of his career. It has long been mooted that Rooney would into a deeper tactical position as the years progress, an dit isn't beyond possibility to see Rooney played as an attacking midfielder/schemer/roamer type once into his 30's.

I'd link you to the article Scholes wrote (ha) but search for "Nicklas Bendtner arse" and you'll find it easily enough from there.

See:

Scholes Quotes:

Wayne was in the Everton team at 16 years of age, in 2003. Since then he’s played at Euro 2004, two World Cups, Premier League, and Champions League every year at United. There’s a chance he’s worn out. Wayne’s peak may have been a lot younger than what we’d expect of footballers traditionally. Age 28 or 29 has been the normal ‘peak’. With Wayne, it could have been when he scored 27 league goals in 2011/2012 when he was 26.Pretty juicy.

Scholes continues:

Wayne might be a player who’d retire come 31 or 32, given the amount of football he’s played. Ryan Giggs has been on the go for ages, but he adjusted his position. Can Wayne do the same?I don’t think Wayne will be able to play centre forward until he’s 34 or 35. But he could play centre midfield, possibly, into his mid-thirties.

In short, Scholes thinks that Rooney may well have peaked in 11/12; that he may have a lower age peak than other players due to miles on the clock; and that Rooney can't play center forward until he's 34 or 35. I'm not in huge disagreement with points 2 and 3, and if Rooney is still playing center forward at 35 it will be because he has followed the Martin petrov route.

I was thinking over some of the points made in Scholes' article, specifically: has Rooney peaked and what does Rooney's career arc look like?

A quick search later and I stumbled on earlier StatsBomb work from Ted which looked at Rooney's most recent 5 seasons using detailed stats. You should check it out, there's radars and all! What I wanted to do was look at the entirety of Rooney's pro career (12 seasons) and to be able to do this we have to abandon some of the more detailed stats featured in the radar piece. Why? Well, the football stats dark age ended in 2008-09 and from that point onward we began to have access to more detailed game stats like accurate shots on target info, key passes, giveaways, takeaways etc. etc.

I don't want to repeat previous work so what I decided to was take Rooney's basic info from all 12 seasons of his pro career including the Everton days.

All numbers are from the Premier League only.

Stats we can examine:

• Percentage of minutes played.
• Goals p90
• Assists p90
• Scoring Contribution p90
• Shots p90
• Conversion%

Six categories which will be broken down by age during the relevant season. I'll also include a rolling average of his performance throughout his career.

Percentage Of Minutes Played

Rooney's career average sits around 70% of minutes played which, for a player with that many miles on the clock, is pretty impressive. Pretty durable player, alright.

Goals p90

Penalties, penalty shots are, and always have been, stripped out.

Remember Scholes' quote about Rooney having peaked in 11/12 (26 yo season)? Was Scholes fooled by Rooney's excellent goalscoring in 11/12 and thus concluded that "peak" must have arrived in the season he scored the most goals, ignoring Rooney's general contribution as a forward?

Scholes obviously watched Rooney up close and may have been able to detect subtle changes in Rooney's game and where he may have declined over the years, but 11/12 looks like a spike in performance (as does 09/10) due to shot volume or conversion% or tactical usage and not the start of some terminal decline.

Despite varying quality of teammates this chart is actualy quite clean: growth in the early part of his career, 2 years of overperformance, one year of underperformance and pretty consistent numbers apart from those over/under seasons.

Assists p90

Remember how I mentioned usage when talking of Rooney's goals p90 numbers.

Check his 24 to 26 year old seasons out:

Age 24

Goals p90 0.73 Assists p90 0.10

Age 25

Goals p90 0.32 Assists p90 0.45

Age 26

Goals p90 0.67 Assists p90 0.13

I could be wrong but that looks like tactical usage. In general assist rates for Rooney's career are all over the place.

Scoring Contribution p90

Once we add Goals p90 and Assists p90 we see can clearly see Rooney's consistent contribution as a forward. Scholes may well believe Rooney peaked in 11/12 (age 26) but age 22 and age 27 stand out above all others.

At age 22 Rooney posted an excellent scoring contribution number and part of this was due to operating in close proximity to the legendary Cristiano Ronaldo. That was the year that Ronaldo scored 31(27) league goals (5.76 shots p90, 0.88 Goals p90). Ronaldo draws teammates into his orbit of excellence and thus they post better numbers.

All told, since Rooney's peak, at least according to Scholes, the England forward has posted 2 of the best 3 Premier League seasons of his career in terms of scoring contribution p90 minutes. The rate stats don't lie although it is important to factor in the percent of minutes Rooney has played in each season.

Shots p90

Rooney has always posted pretty good shot volume, even in his 17 and 18 yo seasons (he was really something at that age), but three of the last four seasons of shot volume have fallen below Rooney's career average. Not entirely sure why that has happened:

• Declining team talent level?
• Different tactical usage?
• Different team tactics?
• Decline in his own game?

The first 3 points have merit, hell even the fourth one may have merit but Rooney's contribution numbers have held steady despite his shot rate declining.

Conversion%

Part of the reason Rooney's Goals p90 numbers have remained strong despite below average shots generation is due to the graph above. Rooney's conversion % has been on an upward trend (bar a couple of down years) for the players entire career. It is possible that Rooney has become a better shooter as he has grown older, or that he has learned how to shoot from better positions on the field. It is also possible that tactics were geared towards getting Rooney into the best scoring positions possible.

It is certainly a curious trend, though.

Conclusion

Rooney has been an excellent footballer throughout his career and we don't need to waste too much time arguing otherwise. Has he become as good as hoped? Maybe not, but he is a player who contributes in terms of goals and assists at a very good level despite the changeable quality of teammate over the years.

As for Scholes' theory that Rooney may have peaked in 11/12 (26), well, I'm not so sure.

It is easy to see why Scholes may have come to that conclusion: Rooney played the most number of minutes of his career and as the main striker. He scored a ton, had his 3rd best shot volume season while posting the 2nd best conversion%. It is easy to see why such a season is held up as the last of Rooney's peak. Instead, it should be held up as an outlier season. A season of splendid achievement created by tactical usage, excellent health and a spike in both shot volume and accuracy.

It likely wasn't Rooney's peak from which he has now regressed. It's just that since that season Rooney's role has changed (he's assisting more goals), the quality of teammate and tactics may have changed, but still the player has posted 2 of his best 3 seasons of scoring contribution since he "peaked".

Rooney has been mighty good since 11/12, but he's been mighty good in a slightly different, more all-round way.

Career

An Expected Goals Model works by categorizing chances and assigning a value to each category. In most cases we just add up all Expected Goals for a team or a player to measure performance, but it's also interesting to take a closer look at those categories themselves. I've looked at a few recognizable 'types' of chances (based on shot type, location and assist type) and asked myself the question if a team's attacking style can be identified by the types of chances they create, and similarly if teams have certain defensive weaknesses against specific types of chances. In other words: how much do chances of a certain type contribute to the total ExpG or total conceded ExpG? Here are the numbers for the Premier League as a whole over the last four full seasons: To see if these numbers are actually meaningful I've looked how much they differ per team (relative standard deviation), and to what extend they are repeatable (correlation between the first and second half of a season). Any stat that tells something about a teams style should be repeatable at least. The first thing you'll notice is that repeatability can hardly be found in types of chances conceded. Teams play to their own strengths much more than they play to their opponents weaknesses. This actually surprised me a bit. I would suspect that if it's known that a team has trouble defending crosses other teams will use that knowledge, but it might be easier said than done if you don't have the players for it. On the other hand, a manager can change a team's attacking style as we will see later. A couple of examples: Teams that are consistently weak at defending set pieces? There's no such thing aside from one exception (the top right outlier): Arsenal during the 2010/2011 season. Penalties are all over the place and completely random: Here you'll see that the creation of a certain type of chance is more spread out and shows more correlation than the amount of chances conceded of the same type: All in all I would say that there are only three numbers that are definitely meaningful: chances created from through balls, headers and shots from outside the box. Between through balls and headers there's also a negative correlation of 0.54. Without a doubt we're looking at different attacking styles. Here's a view of this season's data which I like to call arsenewenger.png: A closer look at Arsenal shows that although he fits right in, it's not just Özil either. Here are the top ten seasons (out of the last four) in terms of %ExpG from Through Balls: You want more manager fingerprints? Here's the full picture from this season: Notice Crystal Palace as the leading team when it comes to headers? It's no coincidence. Over the last four seasons under Tony Pulis, Stoke averaged more than 30%. Now Pulis gets the Palace job and immediately their percentage is up to 32.7% from 24.6% under Holloway. And then there's Swansea, currently the team with the lowest share of through balls. If they ever were a poor man's Arsenal they're not doing a very good job now. Under Brendan Rodgers in 2011/2012 they managed 11.1%, in the first half season under Laudrup it was even up to 11.8% but then it dropped to 4.6% and all the way down to 0.7% now (that is one shot from a through ball all season). This blows my mind as Michael Laudrup was an absolute master of the through ball himself. At the same time you can find Rodgers' first season at Liverpool in the top ten above, right there as the highest non-Arsenal team. That leaves us with one high profile managerial change which doesn't show such a clear picture. After David Moyes' move from Everton to Manchester United, Everton's headers are down slightly and shots from outside the box are up (Barkley, Mirallas), but it's not a huge difference. United's through balls are down a bit, and headers are up, but that trend was already going on under Ferguson:  

Referees are sometimes lauded for keeping the cards in their pockets for as long as possible, but are players taking advantage of this? This graph may raise a few eyebrows: While free kicks are spread out evenly over the duration of the match, the amount of yellow cards increases steadily as the game goes on. This suggests that the chance of getting a card when you concede a free kick increases as well. Unless fouls are in fact steadily getting more reckless, it doesn't seem like they are judged entirely on their own merits. Of course there are different reasons for a referee to give a free kick or yellow card. I've looked at minute-by-minute data of every Premier League match since 2009/2010 from whoscored.com, which provides a description along with every free kick or yellow card event. The distinctions made in these descriptions are not terribly specific, but it goes as long way. Let's look at the classification of yellow cards: You can see the same increase in cards as in the previous graph, but it's clear that the composition changes over time. The share of yellow cards for unspecified reasons ("other") increases from almost non-existent to close to half of all cards. I can only assume that these are mostly for things like time-wasting, kicking the ball away, dissent, etc., which become more of an issue later in the match. For the most part this explains the increase in the second half, but it still doesn't explain what happens in the first. A possible answer can be found in the official rules, which state that "persistent infringement of the Laws of the Game" is also a cautionable offence. That means fouls don't actually have to be judged on their own merits and it makes sense to look at the amount of fouls committed by the player that receives the yellow card as well. In the next graph I've separated yellow cards received for "real" fouls (kicking/holding an opponent etc.) into those received for first and for subsequent offences: Now it's clear that the chance of getting a card for a single foul is fairly consistent during three quarters of the match, but the opening stages are still an anomaly. The only other explanation I can think of is that referees are conscious of the fact that a card early in the match is a harsher punishment than a card later in the match. In my previous article I calculated this effect for red cards, and to a certain extend it must be true for yellow cards as well. Players already on a yellow run the risk of getting a second and will be more careful making fouls in the rest of the match. The numbers show that on average, a player receiving a yellow card will have made 0.59 previous fouls and will only make another 0.36 fouls in the rest of the match. Of course this is skewed by the fact that the average yellow is given after 59% of the match. If we correct for that it's 0.5 vs 0.42. It's a minor effect, but it's there. To be certain I've also looked at hand balls, which I expect will be judged on their own merits. Free kicks given for hand balls are evenly spread out as well, but the risk of getting a yellow for it is 60% higher in the second half than in the first. All things considered it looks like it's true: it is easier to get away with a foul early in the match.

Luis Suarez is a brilliant footballer. I think we are now beginning to get to the point where his on-field performances; his influence on his team-mates; and the impact he has on opposition defenses is such that he can be classed as a genuine superstar of world football. Suarez a superstar? Yes, and it no longer feels like a hyperbolic soundbite.

Suarez is frightening opposition defenses. He's butchering weak opposition and outperforming the toughest competition. He's arrived.

An admission: I was always a fan of Suarez despite some very real concerns about inefficiencies in shot selection and pass selection. Suarez, despite some bad, just had too many good qualities to his game for me not to sold on him.

And before I am accused of jumping on any bandwagons following Suarez's hot start to 13/14, I must mention that I was very much behind Arsenal pushing beyond the quoted £40m asking price and signing the player. I believed Suarez was worth the money then and I still believe Suarez is worth that money, and then some. 17 goals in 11 league games tends to bump valuations somewhat.

***

The main purpose of this article is to examine Luis Suarez's hot start to the 13/14 season; how it ranks when placed against Suarez's Liverpool career numbers; and how sustainable Suarez's 13/14 numbers may be.

Liverpool Career

This is what Luis Suarez's Liverpool career numbers look like:

• A solid start in 10/11. Excellent shots numbers undermined by terrible conversion and scoring percentages.
• 11/12 saw shots numbers remain at roughly the same rate per90. Scoring% ticked up a touch as did key passes per90. The goals per90 is still pretty average.
• 12/13: explosions in the sky! Shots, SoT and key passes are all up year on year. The boost in scoring% (goals/SoT) and conversion% (goals/total shots) boosted the goals per90 number to a Liverpool career high.
• 13/14 is other worldly. The shots per90 number looks like the bastard offspring of Messi and Ronaldo. The Shots on Target per90 number is the best 11 game sample I have ever seen as is the Goals per90. Shot volume certainly helped Suarez to score 17 in 11 games but the main drivers are those conversion and scoring% numbers.

13/14 Scoring% is historically high for Suarez's career, but it is also high when placed against his peers' numbers. Suarez's scoring%, in my opinion, is not sustainable long-term.

If you're the type of girl/guy who prefers to use all of a players' shots in conversion stats then focus on Conv% which is, when placed against the previous 3 seasons, seems inordinately high.

So What Is Going On With Suarez's 13/14 Numbers?

Small(ish) sample. The scoring% and conversion% numbers should both cool down over a larger sample (the rest of the season) and that will likely mean a slowing of his 326 goal pace that he is currently operating at.

But what about Suarez's shots numbers which are out of this world? Hmmm, good question. Like most excellent forwards, Suarez is a flat-track bully who butchers weak opposition and a cursory look at the games Suarez has played this season gives us an indication of the opposition strength:

Newcastle, Arsenal, Everton and Tottenham were the tough fixtures. The remaining schedule is pretty easy. Could it be that Suarez is padding his shots numbers against teams who are clearly no match for his talent level?

The flat-track bully element to Suarez's game, and every other good strikers game, is not meant as a criticism. Good strikers feast on weak teams and it may just be that Suarez has faced 7 or 8 teams who, for whatever reason, are pretty weak now. This is my theory, and feel free to ridicule it!

I will probably test Suarez's performance against, say, Top 7 teams and the rest of the league when I manage to find a hour free to do so.

***

We know what Suarez's career box numbers look like and we know that this hot start to the season looks to be a level of performance above and beyond Suarez's career average. What I want to look at now is just how abnormal Suarez's start to the 13/14 season is.

To look at how abnormal the hot start is I am going to look at Suarez's Liverpool career numbers using an 11 game rolling average  so as to compare 13/14's 11 game stretch with the other 77  11 game stretches. I want to know if Suarez has enjoyed a hot streak like this in terms of shots, conversion% or goals per90 in his Liverpool career previous to the start of the 13/14 season.

Shot Volume

Shots per90 is pretty variable: 3 peaks and 3 valleys within those 76 buckets worth of 11 games. Suarez's overall shots per90 volume is excellent.

Shots On Target per90 was fairly stable in the first 60 games at the club. Since then, the SoT per90 volume has been on the march with a notable spike in the last 30 games. I'm not particularly sure why we have seen a recent improvement in shots on target per90 volume.

Shots On Target% & Scoring%

Shots on target% = shots on target/total shots. Scoring%=goals/shots on target.

As stated previously, Suarez's ability to get shots on target has improved recently and that improvement shows up inSoT%.

Suarez's Scoring% (my preferred conversion stat) is not particularly stable. There doesn't look to be any long term improvement in Suarez's ability to convert shots on target into goals; it merely looks like a lot of noise to me. In fact, as good/"lucky" as Suarez's scoring% (45.9%) is, Suarez has posted better 11 game spans of scoring%.

Suarez posted five spans of >46% scoring% and those spans came at the start of the 2012/13 season. In short: we have been here before with Suarez and a high scoring%.

That hot scoring% cooled off pretty sharply.

Conversion%

Conversion%=goals/total shots.

If you prefer to focus on a players conversion stats by using all shots that a player takes the we can look at the graph above.

A crazy barren period at the start of Suarez's career is a mystery to me. (Liverpool fans?) But following that barren period we see that Suarez's conversion% bobbed up and down, neither too high nor too low; no droughts or extended hots streaks and the BAM! Look at the far right hand side of the chart. That spike is completely out of keeping with the Suarez's career rates.

Suarez's career conversion% is 12.07%. In 13/14 Suarez's conversion% is 25%. That 25% number is out of keeping with Suarez's Liverpool career. It looks like an anomaly. Or, maybe there is something I am missing. Maybe Liverpool's tactical setup, the quality of his team-mates or weak opponents have led to the spike in Suarez's conversion%? Or it could be the amount of time Liverpool spend winning, and thrashing, their opponents?

I'd say variance with a side dish of weak opposition.

Goals Per90

If we add a recent spike in shots on target volume, a spike in shooting accuracy, a spike in conversion% and scoring% what do we get?  A goals per90 spike.

This, I believe, is the most extreme graph. After a tough start to Suarez's career, which included that extended barren spell, Suarez numbers, with no little variance, have stayed at an elite level (buckets 32-75). What has happened in buckets 75-78 can only be described as freakish. A perfect storm, if you like.

That perfect storm was caused by:

• The 2nd best shots per90 rate in Suarez's Liverpool career.
• The best SoT per90 rate in Suarez's Liverpool career.
• The 2nd best SoT% in Suarez's Liverpool career.
• The 6th best Scoring% in Suarez's Liverpool career.
• The best Conversion% in Suarez's Liverpool career.

If we add all of the above together it becomes clear just how Suarez has posted 17 goals in 11 games so far this season.

If we take a guess and say that the shots volume and SoT% may have been caused in small part by some weak opponents, improved tactics and the thrashings that Liverpool have dished out, then what can we say the spike in conversion% was caused by?

Is the spike in conversion% solely caused by variance? Or is some small part of it tactical or influenced by opponent strength? I cannot be certain either way. We know shooting% regresses on a team level and may be a pretty good guess when looking at Suarez's conversion% chart that conversion% isn't a consistently repeatable skill from 5 games or so to the next 5 games or so.

Going forward I expect Suarez to continue to post high shot volume numbers (although they will cool off some) but I am far less certain about Suarez's ability to maintain those conversion% numbers. If Suarez's conversion% numbers cool that will likely mean that Suarez's Goals per90 numbers cool also.

This wouldn't be the end of the world. Suarez would continue to perform well, create tremendous shot volume and score at an elite clip. But regression in the conversion% means Suarez may well drop from Messi-like heights and rejoin the mere mortals.

Suarez is a brilliant player, who will deservedly win the golden boot, but I'll stick my neck out and say that Suarez cannot maintain a conversion% that is double his Liverpool career average. The goals may slow down a little, but that's fine.

Incredible hot streaks don't last forever.

One of the most crucial findings of the nascent football analytics community was the discovery of shots ratios and their powerful predictive power. The discovery that year-on-year shot differential at the team level was repeatable, and largely skill driven (86% skill/14% luck), enabled the community to write and talk about a teams dominance without having to refer to league points or placings.

Football was merely catching up with what hockey had known for a number of years.

Shots Ratios/Differentials are, in general (obviously there are exceptions), a proxy for something else - control, territory, scoring chances and they tell us some, but not all, about a teams underlying dominance over it's it's opponents and it's fixture list. A team that takes 60% of the shots in it's games will, over time, be more successful than a team that takes 30% of the shots.

But there's a problem with using basic shots numbers as a cast iron indication of dominance and that problem is called goals. Specifically the effect that the scoring of a goal has on the dynamics of a game.

The team that takes the lead in any given fixture is likely to sit a little deeper and take fewer shots. The team that is trailing will attack more and take more shots - especially as time begins to tick down. The wisdom of this strategy - tactical or subconscious - is questionable, for what team would willingly choose to cede territory and concede an increasing number of shots?

In this post I'm going to present some numbers on Score Effects which will show what teams do when leading or trailing by a goal and why those teams employ the seemingly odd strategies that they do.

*Note: I wish I had more data to use but my database melted into oblivion over the summer. Alas, we have 13/14 season to work with.

TSR

Our entire sample is tens of thousands of minutes of football and nearly 3500 shots. But the crucial game states to look at are those which fall under 'Close': minus 1, tied and plus 1. This is where 85% of game time takes place, 83.9% of all shot events take place and it's also the where we see the best examples of how goals lead to score effects.

I have included all game states in the following charts, but as stated above we are really only interested in the game states which fall under Close. The sample size of +3, +4 etc just isn't big enough to draw any conclusions.

This is Total Shots Ratio (shots for/shots for+shots against) and straight away we see some things of interest:

• Tied TSR is 50%.
• Teams at Plus 1 get out-shot by a decent margin 46.6% to 53.4%.

It's a curious thing but teams who are leading by a goal tend to construct something that is called a 'defensive shell' that sees the leading team, in most cases and especially away from home, tighten up their defensive shape and drop deeper. For the leading team preventing an equalizer is more valuable than trying to score a second goal. All these things lead to the team at plus 1 losing the shots battle and the team at minus 1 winning the shots battle.

We often hear of managers who want their teams to play the same way when winning as they do when they are losing, but the data says that this doesn't actually happen (except for a few elite clubs). Why do teams play differently when leading? It could be tactical or it could be a collective response from players who are risk averse and want to protect the slender lead.

Quick Hit: Team trailing at -1, on average, tends to out-shoot their opponents due to a mix of their own desperation to equalize and the leading teams' tactical conservatism in protecting their game position. Why are teams out-shot when leading by a goal?

Shots On Target Ratio

The table above likely shows some of the positive effects of a defensive shell. Yes, the leading team gives up an increased number of shots against and thus sees it's TSR suffer, but in defending deeper in a more compact shape it's shots on target ratio doesn't deflate to quite the same extent. Two reasons why, at plus 1, SoTR is higher than TSR:

1. The defensive shell works and forces the trailing opposition team to take shots from increased distances, from worse angles or under more pressure with less space. The pressure, the bad angles and the increased distances all contribute to the leading team being able to prevent a higher number of the trailing teams shots from finding their way on target.
2. The leading team is able to exploit the desperation of the trailing team and counter attack into more space with fewer defenders present. That space and lack of defensive pressure leads to a higher percentage of the leading teams shots to find their way on target.

Quick Hit: Teams trailing at -1 shoot their opponents by shots on target but the margin is smaller than when looking at total shots.

Shots On target Percentage

Complete for/against chart with SoT % rating.

This chart shows us the percentage of team shots for that end up on target. In the section above I talked about the space and lack of pressure the +1 team faces when attacking and we see the effects in this chart.

Plus 1 SoT% is 34.93% which is a touch higher than the number teams post at minus 1. The reasons for this can be seen in bold above. It's pretty simple really, trailing teams find it harder to post good Sot efficiency numbers due to the leading teams shell. There may also be a touch of desperation to the trailing teams shots selection.

The trailing team also cheats for offense which leaves them open to effective counters.

Quick Hit: Team at +1 (and further) receives a boost in SoT For% & SoT Prevention%. Team at -1 suffers a decline in comparison to plus 1 in both Sot For% & SoT Prevention%.

Scoring%, Save% & PDO

As stated previously, any information outside of +1/-1 is likely too small a sample to be trusted at this point.

Close Game States contain ~84% of the shots information so we shall focus on close. It's also worth noting that there is massive variance in sc% and sv% in small samples (see Arsenal's scoring% at tied which is contributing to the high league Tied sc% for an explanation).

Scoring%

Scoring% at plus 1 sits at 29.8% which is significantly higher than scoring% at minus 1. Again, the leading team, in general, attacks into more space with less defensive pressure so it's no real surprise to see plus 1 scoring% so much higher than scoring% at minus 1. Minus 1 scoring% runs into that defensive shell - lots of bodies/pressure/little space - and suffers for it.

Save%

We see a boost for the leading teams save% (defensive shell, forcing shots to the outside). Save% at minus 1 is significantly when compared  to plus 1. The trailing team may well be cheating for offense which leads to a higher percentage of shots against actually getting on target. That same cheating for offense may also contribute to a lower save%.

PDO

Add the scoring% and save% numbers together for each individual game state and we end up with a PDO rating. PDO gets a pretty big boost at +1 and a pretty sharp drop at -1.

Goal Share %

The final graph is the most telling. Things we know so far: The trailing team is the stronger by the shots count but weaker in terms of efficiency and conversion percentages. The leading team has a tactical advantage in that they have possession of the lead, can tighten their defensive shape and in attack capitalize on the trailing teams desperation in trying to find an equalizer. For the leading team, not conceding an equalizer is more valuable than scoring a second goal, and that tactical mindset is evident in all of the charts above.

The result of all the things we have looked at can be easily summarized: The leading team (+1) scores 52.94% of the goals and concedes 47.06%. And that is despite being out-shot by both total shots and shots on target.

Tactics - defensive shape and counter attacking threat  - actually matter a hell of a lot to the team that is leading by a single goal.

Those tactics reduce the oppositions efficiency and conversion percentages while boosting their own efficiency and conversion percentages. The result of those tactics is a greater likelihood that the next goal of the game will be scored by the team already leading.

Notes & Further Questions

I'm far from happy that I can't publish a study on score effects that features a far larger data sample but I felt that score effects and game states had begun to feature in my work to such an extent than an explanatory post on the topic was necessary.

Some of these numbers may well change over the course of the season, or over the course of the next three seasons but hey, I felt I had to address the topic. The question of shot quality is a hot topic in football analytics these days. The question of how much shot quality matters needs to be answered, and it will be.

But I do wonder to what extent scoring or save% boosts at +1 and +2 game states can sometimes skew our interpretation of teams' overall numbers. We know 'good' teams can sometimes sustain PDO's north of the league average. Is that sustain positive proof of an ability to create better chances (shot quality) and prevent quality chances against or is it merely a function of the boost that good teams receive by spending a lot of time in winning (+1, +2) positions?

Are Arsenal's and Liverpool's save percentages indicative of a well rounded defensive scheme no matter if the scoreline is in their favour or not?

Or are those teams save percentages and defensive schemes boosted by spending above and beyond an average of 45 minutes per game in a winning position?

Teams with good attacking and defensive schemes tend to find ways to get into the lead more often that not.  Not all of a team X's impressive conversion numbers are due solely to score effects but some of it may well be.

On a individual player level who's to say that what looks like a sustained shot quality ability isn't just a function of playing on a dominant team who spend a huge chunk of their games in a positive game state?

Scoring becomes easier when your team is winning by two or three against demoralized opposition.

Lots of questions, more miles to be covered.

La Liga: Clubs struggling under piles of debt; squads wrecked by the sale of their best and brightest; fans turning away from subscription channels like Canal+ and GolTV in their droves. It's pretty bleak in Spain if you are a football fan.

Not all the news out of Spain is doom-laden, though: Bale's signing broke  the world record for the highest transfer fee; Neymar was (I think) the second most expensive transfer in 2013/14; Atletico are mighty good; Simeone is God and Diego Costa is not only the most improved player, he may also be about to declare for the Spanish national team! There could also be a three-way battle for the title for the first time in years.

During the Summer I made some mental notes about which stats and leagues I was going to track this year apart from the PL. La Liga was due to be the second league tracked.

That tracking lasted all of 3 games before I realized that it was pretty pointless. La Liga is not a level playing field, the TV money is distributed in a cruel and damaging manner to any team not named Barca or Madrid and to put it bluntly: La Liga is dull and at times unwatchable from this writers perspective.

So why an article about la Liga if I have all this hate for the darn thing!? La Liga has some nice players, specifically forwards (non-attacking mids), and as part of my rebuilding of the Per90 database I decided to check in on some of the best forwards that la Liga has to offer.

Some of these players are pretty high in the scoring charts, others are established players and two (Neymar and Bale) are positionally fluid and could of been discarded from this list. But I create the list, so those players stay for now.

La Liga After 12 Games: Forward Per 90's

*An extensive explanation of what these metrics mean can be found here. Penalties are stripped out.

This table is set to Goals per90 but you guys can easily scrape it into a spreadsheet to make it sortable.

Diego Costa is the most interesting player for me. Costa is not a prolific shooter, but has a crazy good goals p90 due to what are likely unsustainable Scoring% and SoT% numbers. Worth looking at Costa's giveaways, but I'll have more on that shortly.

Shots & SoT Per 90

This is how some of the best forwards in la Liga are performing shots wise through the first 10 games.

Of the humans, Diego Costa and Villa are two of the more efficient players in the league (fits with Atletico's system). Seferovic is just 21 years old and is a player is of interest for the rest of the season. Bale looks very un-Bale like so far. A bad back, muscle trouble and new systems may explain some of that performance. Bale's last two games have been crazy good though.

There are two players in that chart that aren't human in terms of shots performance. Messi is more efficient and manages to get 3.5 shots on target per 90 (it's a crazy number, really), Ronaldo is the bigger volume shooter with just short of 8.5 shots per 90. Silly, stupid out of this world numbers.

Giveaways & Passes Per 90

Giveaways = intercepted+tackled

Now, I only posted the chart below as I wanted to see how readers felt about giveaways. When we look at this chart it's obvious that Barcelona have a system that focuses on passing and not giving the ball away, but Barca are a rare beast and not too helpful for the giveaway question I want to ask.

Are giveaways a product of the team system or are they a product of where a player is located on the pitch? If Diego Costa is operating and passing in high risk areas of the pitch then surely his giveaways p90 will be high (see Suarez, Sturridge and Aguero who all post higher giveaway numbers than Costa). Or am I being too generous to Costa in speculating that his position on the pitch may be the cause of all those giveaways?

Maybe giveaways merely point to poor decision making and execution. I'm curious though so any ideas are welcome.

 1) Deep Breath

When do we begin to panic over Man City's 7th place, 16 point haul? NOW! screams the generic fan. Maybe I have mellowed in my old age, maybe I don't care as much, but I am absolutely miles away from panic.

Either way, we must look at Man City's form and be gently concerned at certain traits.

• Defensive lapses.
• Goalkeeper having a crazy, uncharacteristic funk in form.
• Kompany's injury breakdowns.

Here's the thing: I don't see how any of the three points that I quickly thought of are systemic faults in tactics or setup and thus can be pinned on Pellegrini.

Pellegrini can set up his team in meticulous fashion, get his tactics and personnel spot on, Man City can out-shoot their opponents, out-chance their opponents, but he can do very little about the daggers than keep piercing his best laid plans. Those daggers are individual mistakes, 5 second mistakes in a 96 minute game and they are costing Man City dearly right now. Hart, Nastasic, Kompany, Clichy, Negredo. Pick any names you want.

Man City's tactical setup, both in attack and defense is absolutely fine, in fact it is producing some of the best underlying numbers in the league. So we don't need to worry about the system Pellegrini is employing.

Think of Man City team as a huge, elegant steam liner. These individual mistakes are the giant anchor that is stuck fast to the sea bed.

Time for Joe to sit for a game or two. Have a rest, work with him on some technical issues/decision making, bring him back into a side that has Kompany in it.

 2) Torres To Aguero

Niall Quinn made an interesting point during Sky's broadcast yesterday. When asked when we'll know if Fernando Torres is back to his old form Quinn replied "when he is scoring two or three goals a game".

We know Quinn's statement is nonsense, we all laughed. But the discussion had me thinking, just how good does Torres look in the PL this year? Obviously the goals haven't flowed, but maybe the players underlying numbers can point to a return to form?

9 games into the season this is how a select group of strikers are performing:

Torres has pretty similar SoT numbers to Olivier Giroud. Giroud has the hot scoring%, Torres doesn't.

Suarez is out of this world in his shortened season. Aguero is dynamite in every category. Sturridge has some really nice shots numbers but the goals are coming from that unsustainable scoring%, which will cool off. Also, Sturridge needs some rest, he'll become jaded or, worse, injured if he continues to play nearly every minute available.

Torres's shots and shots on target numbers are an improvement on previous seasons but they still aren't super good. The low scoring% is the anchor.

3) Player Of The Week

Suarez v West Brom. Yes, we know that Suarez crushes teams like this, but it's still nice to see one of the league's best operators in top form.

4) Southampton & Stats

Mauricio Pochettino

"I think statistics are evil," he said. "They don't really show anything. "Today it is okay as we win, but when you lose they are not as important. "I think more than anything today it is about how we played aside from the three points, aside from getting the victory. "Statistics are relative and more than anything I am satisfied with how we won today."

Pretty funny, really. Maybe MP meant it, maybe it was something that got lost in translation.

Statistics may be evil, at least in Pochettino's mind, but in the first 9 games they have some dark, evil love for Southampton. Let's see if some numbers which tell us some nice things about Pochettino's defensive scheme can convince him!

SoT Prevention% (how good a team is at preventing the opposition from getting shots on target) 70.47% (3rd)

All of these numbers tell us that Southampton have some really good things going on defensively. Southampton are able to restrict the opposition passing in their own third of the pitch, they are also able to restrict the number of shots against and how many of those are actually on target. All told, Southampton have some wicked defensive numbers.

But, and there is always a but, Southampton's save% is a thing we must talk about. At 88% it is around 16% points above the league average. It is not going to stay 16% points above league average, in fact the save percentage is going to fall and regress.

When that save% does regress, Southampton's won't be able to sustain their current ppg clip unless they can significantly increase their offensive output to cover for the regression of said save%.

Southampton have a lot of really good things going for them, but that scary good save% is coming down.

Mauricio, un poco de musica para ti...puede aprender algo!

5) Quick Fire

Fernandinho Is starting, ever so slowly, to look really good. Hid performance in the 2nd half v Chelsea reminded me of his Shakhtar days. Quick, good passer, ball-carrier, destroyer.

Cardiff If Norwich can post 31(10) shots against you, then you have some serious issues with defending, control of the game and restricting the opposition.

Swansea Look like Barcelona right now in terms of their ability to get a high percentage f their shots on target. SoT for% currently stands at 43.3%. An interesting attacking scheme for sure.

Villa, of any PL team, have had by far the hardest set of fixtures through the first 9 games. That difficult run has ended, Villa are in good shape, it's now time to get more points on the board against some of the weaker teams. West Ham, Cardiff, West Brom & Sunderland are the next four fixtures.

6) Fulham, We're Worried About You

Fulham, you want to thank Crystal Palace and Sunderland for their utter ineptitude. For if they weren't so inept we may be talking about you a little bit more than we currently are. This may seem odd, right? Fulham have 10 points so far, hell they probably only need another 25 or 27 points to survive, so what's my problem?

Fulham are a horrible team. They are constantly out-shot, they lack pace and dynamism. Hell, the only thing they seem to be good at is getting the shots they take on target (Fulham's numbers are on par with Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool. Sustainable?). Anyway, I am not sure if Fulham can continue to be out-shot to the extent they are in each game they play. Fulham's Rolling Total Shots Count (9 games)

Obviously Fulham's SoT numbers don't look as bad as their shots numbers do, but both numbers are in the bottom two in the entire league. Now, there are no certainties in life but if Fulham continue to be out-shot by this margin or worse (they have faced soft competition so far) then they will be in deep relegation trouble.

Fulham cannot, and should not, believe that a PDO of 109  (above average) will continue to bail them out of the shots deficit.

Fulham are on course to be out-shot by 439 shots and 97 shots on target.

7) Tied GS Shots & Win %

Ever wondered what the w/d/l record of the team who out-shoots their opponents at Tied GS where score effects are at a minimum? Of course you haven't.

Anyhow, I wondered what the answer is so I pulled all 90 PL games this year and looked for the team with the highest number of shots at tied and checked that against the game result. I threw out the games where the shots count was tied (7 games) just because I felt like it!

The dominant shot team at tied GS went W50 D18 L15. That works out at 2.02 ppg for the dominant shots team, which isn't bad at all. A list of Tied TSR teams can be found here.

Not sure it means too much after juts 9 rounds of fixtures (luck and variance etc), but I thought it was an interesting quirk and I was really struggling to fill this point with anything worthwhile!

8) Arsenal: The Good

Arsenal have had a tremendous start to the season and it's been a lot of fun to watch. Things that are going great for Arsenal:

• Scoring% 35% (2nd)
• Save% 78% (6th)
• PDO  113 (3rd)
• SoTR 58% (6th)
• Time Spent Winning 49 minutes per game on average.

Shots on target ratio is pretty darn good but once we marry that to the scoring% and save% numbers then it's easy to see why Arsenal have been piling up the points.

WHOA! Arsenal are a fine shots on target team at Tied GS (no score effects). Again, add the shots ratio to the scoring%/PDO and it's easy to see why Arsenal have had such a fine start to the season. Arsenal out-shoot their opponents and the convert their shots at a more efficient rate.

So far so good...

9) Arsenal: The Regression

Now I am going to be a dick and tell you why it might not continue. Things that will regress:

• Arsenal's scoring% at Tied Game State. It's going to regress hard.
• The amount of time spent winning and the booster effects to scoring% & save% that minutes spent in a winning position causes. You may think 49 minutes per game in a winning position is sustainable, I don't.

Another potential reason for Arsenal's excellent numbers is their strength of schedule. I have Arsenal down as having faced (10th game included) the weakest shots TSR teams, the 3rd weakest SoTR teams and the 2nd weakest final third possession teams.

Knowing this, it's understandable that Arsenal have beaten a lot of those teams quite handily, for Arsenal beat sub-par teams better than almost anyone else in the PL. Some of Arsenal's excellent scoring%'s and PDO numbers will regress, the shots ratios are also likely to come down over the coming weeks. Why?

Upcoming Fixtures: Liverpool (h) Man Utd (a) Southampton (h) Cardiff (a) Hull (h) Everton (h) City (a) Chelsea (h).

Wow, I count two easy games there in Cardiff and Hull. The rest? That's six of the seven best teams in the country that Arsenal have to play and those games are sandwiched in-between CL games and the notorious injury months of November and December.

I asked twitter this question: What is the O/U points for Arsenal's next 8 games? Twitter thinks it's around 12.5/13 points. That would leave Arsenal at 35 points from 17 games. A good haul, but not title form.

10) Goal of The Week

Sturridge. Bad keeping but hey, the execution was dreamy.

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Unless you happen to be one of those strange, macabre souls who actually enjoys International football then this is a quiet time. Very quiet. During these International weeks I do almost anything but watch football; I will read a book (gasp!) or play the guitar, hell, I may even do some DIY. Or, I will goof around with some football numbers if only to fill the gap where watchable football once resided.

During this dullest of football weeks I decided to add a few of Europe's big teams to my intricate Game State database. Bayern Munich, Dortmund, PSG, Real Madrid, Juventus, Napoli and Barcelona were the seven teams I thought to be of interest. This Game State database I speak of looks at things TSr, SoTR, Fenwick and PDO but the one thing I had forgotten that was included in this database was an automatic breakdown of each teams shots type (Missed/blocked/on target) for & against.

Now, I understand it is very early in the season to be drawing conclusions about any given teams' strategy but Barcelona's shots outcomes profile so differently to any other teams (Europe's big 7) that I had to write a short fluff piece about it. Barcelona are weird, they are also incredibly unique.

Barcelona Shots For Outcomes

I have used a traffic light system here: Green=good (Shots On target) Red=Bad (Missed Shots) Blocked=Yellow (Meh)

As previously stated, it is very early in the season but this strange looking graph is a pretty curious thing. Barcelona's ability to get the shots they take on target is pretty ridiculous. Looking at Barca at Tied we can see that they get a staggering ~72% of their total shots number on target and at +1 that number is over 50%. These numbers will probably regress some over the coming weeks.  but we do know that Barcelona have a pretty unique attacking scheme which focuses on taking shots from prime locations.

Barcelona do this by exhibiting a tremendous amount of patience, but it goes further than this. Patience with the ball, extremely good shots discipline and constant movement from the forward players certainly help. But really it's about the attacking scheme: width from fullbacks, creating odd-man overlaps and the wide receiver style routes of most of the attacking players.

To add to all the brilliant little things that Barcelona did well, it seems that under the new management of Martino, an even more visible mixed strategy is in place. Martino's scheme still has that mesmerizing short passing, but also has the through ball down the middle for the wide players who move in centrally which, by my eye, may only be possible due to Barcelona playing a longer pitch (distance from the center backs to the highest forward player) and thus stretching the opposition out. This creates space between the opposition lines and draws the opposition out further away from their own goal.

Let's use the Valencia v Barcelona to explain this stretched pitch tactic and highlight why Barcelona may be getting so many of their shots on target so far this season.

Video

Pitch Stretch

An example of the pitch stretch with the two wide players (Pedro & Neymar) staying high up as an outlet for the more direct ball over the top and thus forcing Valencia's defenders to stay deep.

The next shot again shows Pedro and Neymar staying high and wide.

Remember how Pedro and Neymar's high and wide positions stretch the pitch and provide a passing outlet? This is what happens when one of Barcelona's attacking mids gets the ball in a good passing location.....

Fabregas is going to slot that ball through the middle as both wide players curl in and run a football-type post route.

Boom, through ball to the curling wide players who stay high to stretch the pitch vertically  and stay wide to stretch the pitch horizontally.

Virtually identical to the previous screen shot, Neymar again curls in from the left and the passer has time to thread the ball through. Again, look at the gap between Valencia's midfield to defence and defence to 18 yard line. This is an option Barcelona just did not have last season when Messi dropped deep and Iniesta tucked in.

Again, the pitch is stretched and this time Messi is the outlet. Yet again a simple vertical ball exploiting the space between defensive line and 18 yard line.

These last 4 screen shots point to a couple of things:

• Valencia's defensive scheme was a mess.
• Barcelona are definitely using the direct through ball as an attacking option.
• The width and high pitch option offered by Pedro, Naymr and Messi is going to cause some teams problems, especially if Barcelona remain this stretched out thus stretching the opposition out.

Attacking Variety

Returning to the graph that pointed out Barcelona's excellent SoT% numbers I want to quickly show a couple of images of the mixed strategy that generates such high shots on target percentage numbers.

Passing With Width From The Left

Alba joins the passing blitz on the edge of the oppostions box.

Passing Through The Centre

Here we see Barcelona's big guns trying to work the ball through the middle. In shot: Neymar, Messi, Iniesta, Fabregas and Pedro.

Passing With Width From The Right

Dani Alves provide the wide right option, Iniesta provides the inside right option. All the players inside the box are providing movement for a pass. This drags the defenders into the box which opens up space for Messi to move and shoot or pass to Fabregas for a shot.

In short, Barcelona use a multitude of weapons in an attempt to generate scoring chances. They use fullback width on both sides to create passing lanes and shooting options. Barcelona try and work the ball through the middle with utilizing their incredible close range passers and the skill of the individual. And going back earlier in the piece, they use width and players positioned high up the pitch to stretch the field and provide an out ball option which tries to create a shooting opportunity or to get a Barcelona player isolated with an opposition defender which will be, on most occasions, a complete mismatch.

Barcelona already employed a pretty varied attacking scheme but the addition of Neymar, who gives the team a left-right balance, and Martino appear to have given Barcelona even more weapons in which to hurt the opposition.

This scheme needs testing against more robust opponents than Valencia and the real tests will come against European opposition. But it's a bright start from Martino thus far. Tactical tweaks needed to be made and Barcelona may have found a coach (Martino) and a player (Neymar) who can offer even more variety to what was an attacking scheme that felt like it was slowly being figured out by quality opposition.