Author: James Yorke

Expected goals are in the news again as Man Utd have rocketed back into the top four race under the tutelage of Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer. In the wake of an odds-defying result in the Champions League (they were around 4% to get through v PSG) things looked great, and a defeat in an open game against Arsenal has only slightly reduced the shine on the Norwegian’s halo. To anyone switched on to evaluating football though there is a simple truth: Borne out by both actual analysis and the general feeling of watching the team, during 2019, at times, Man Utd have got the breaks.

What this has done, in part, is create a schism between ideas around Solskjaer’s future. I think it’s straightforward: he has improved results and the basis in which they have been achieved, so points and expected goal accumulation are heading in the right direction. He also gave everyone a fun night by “masterminding” a last minute comeback, something that heralded memories of 20 years ago, when he himself did it before. It’s all very romantic and sweet but even through an analytical prism, I’m not sure what more he could have done in his time at the helm, ergo, give him the job.

This isn’t the only idea though, notable analytics post-match chartist 11tegen11 got a ton of grief for suggesting that as Solskjaer had outperformed metrics and was likely to never have it so good, he should turn down the job if offered. This was a clumsy way of representing the point and clearly a step too far, but the core truth was valid: ahead of the defeat at Arsenal, Solskjaer had been riding the top of the wave. Some that were offended by stats jumped in to the debate too, including ESPN editor Alex Shaw, who opined that:

Just seen someone say Solskjaer may not be the right man because 'United are out performing their xG, long term that will revert.' What a joyless phrase that is.

One person’s joylessness is another’s useful information. Again, to reiterate, Solskjaer has improved Utd, but arguably only to a level that matches their undeniable talent, so in the mix behind Liverpool and Manchester City for the top four. Whether he can take the job on and move them up to the next level--to challenge for the title--is a key point. The gap to bridge is enormous, and will be for anyone. Man Utd still hold many of the same problems they did under Jose Mourinho, yet harbour ambitions of the highest realm. Aspects of the squad are aging and the defence appears to need remedial work, in truth it has done for years. That improvement will be a challenge and with Liverpool and City well bedded in to long term projects, it doesn’t feel like they will be careering back to the pack any time soon.

StatsBomb editor Mike Goodman noted that this round of “xG versus the world” featured a distinctly broader base of invested parties and perhaps that this represented progess. And that’s a healthy move. The stylised nerds against Real Football Men war may well rage on, but an increasing group of younger, engaged fans and people involved with football are interested in any aspect or analysis that broadens out their knowledge. Expected goals are well past the realm of niche outsider chat, for all that it probably hasn’t reached your dad’s mates down at the golf club. The future has arrived, as it tends to.

The essential wins created by following and understanding the numbers are frequently obvious and arrive often: Man Utd were always highly likely to drop back this season, Arsenal’s underlying quality was not very well reflected by their unbeaten start, Dortmund were never away and clear in Germany, Real Madrid are a declining unit full stop. There are further elements that are showing themselves even more recently as both Liverpool and Tottenham’s results quieten down to varying degrees. We can easily understand that both were ballooning over expectation throughout the autumn and early winter:

All the narratives exist in the difference between the red (reality) and blue (expectation) lines. However, the blue (xG) line gives us a strong idea of a team’s definable quality and quickly shows us that Liverpool are very good, but also that they were last season. Has the team actually improved? Now that’s hard to say. For Tottenham, the reality is rose-tinted, while expectation shows tangible decline. That they have hit a bumpy patch eventually in this season, feels long overdue, especially given issues around multiple injuries and a lack of squad reinforcement. None of this is to denigrate the enjoyment of the game, and you will find that people who are engaged in this stuff are every bit as interested in the sport as those that aren’t, perhaps moreso.

For players it can be more nuanced: Harry Kane’s shooting flagged him as a Premier League starter quickly, Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal drought during 2017-18 was always going to fade out as long as he was peppering the goal. It can work otherwise too: Marcus Rashford never had the shot volume to match his early goal totals when he broke through in his first season. It’s only now having been empowered into a striking role with an engaged manager in Solskjaer that we have seen his shot and goal volume enter the territory where he is no longer just an attractive attacking prospect, he’s now an attractive goalscoring prospect too.

Rashford’s emergence at such a young age mirrored that of Raheem Sterling. That they were even on the pitch for top clubs at early points in their development was a huge signifier. Sterling’s best season in a pre-Pep Guardiola world was arguably for Liverpool in 2013-14 but how did we really know that he had made the leap into becoming one of the league’s top performers in 2017-18? Clutch goals helped the casual fan notice, as did the sheer volume of goals, but plenty of players have hot scoring streaks. The reason we knew he was now undeniably the real deal was that the goals and creativity were backed up by the expected numbers, so more than likely were sustainable. Between 2016-17 and 2017-18 his expected goal contribution nearly doubledl. That's huge. These rates have continued this season too. The kid grew up and delivered.

Expected goals do help us make solid preliminary evaluations. Luka Jovic has had two goal filled seasons at Eintracht Frankfurt, and he has both good expected numbers and looks to be overshooting expectation:

The main point here is not a fear of unsustainable overachievement, but that his expected totals are extremely solid. For a 21 year old to be recording around 0.6 xG per game is a hugely positive indicator and that his goalscoring has landed on the positive side of that is a bonus. It's no wonder he looks to be attracting attention from Europe's top clubs as a versatile scorer who can shoot with either foot or his head, and scores freely.

But he's an obvious pick. Elsewhere, Lille’s Rafael Leão is intriguing. He has seven goals in Ligue 1 this season and at just 19 years old, there's certainly a touch of the Rashfords about his early profile; even moreso when you realise his shot volume (just over two per game) and expected goals (0.30 per 90) are more modest than his outputs (a goal rate of double that).

That’s not to denigrate his achievements, and you would certainly look at him as a young talent, but despite the goals, it could be that he is more of an forward prospect than a goalscoring prospect. He has converted most of his decent probability chances and expected goals helps us rationalise the expectation.

Expected goals also showed us Mohamed Salah was likely an elite player when he joined Liverpool rather than the Chelsea wash-out that many idle viewers thought. They backed up that he was having a season for the ages in 2017-18 too on two levels: his rates were superb but also that he was overshooting them. They also helped us understand that he was performing at a fairly similar level this season, and that a more “normal” goal return--which has still been enough to be high in the scoring charts--was more than fine too.

In fact Liverpool’s elite three man strikeforce as a whole are an informative case. Between them taken as a total (obviously they weren’t on the pitch 100% of the time) their expected goals per 90 were a combined 1.28 per 90 minutes in 2017-18 while their actual goal output was 1.73. This season their expected output is basically the same (1.24) while their output is 1.44. Everything around this conversation is elite, but to suggest that they’re less productive because they are exceeding expected goals by less than before fundamentally misunderstands the variable nature of finishing. Different levels of “great” are still great.

I started writing about football analytics in March 2014. Five years on, the uptake has been enormous, and what was once niche has found its way into the mainstream. There still remain challenges to broaden out analysis outside the expected goal framework, and to ensure that the key concepts are understood and not misused, but we have more and better information at our fingertips in 2019, and there is no excuse for the old tropes (“my grandmother could have finished that”) to take precedence any more.

Man Utd should give Solskjaer the job, but they should also give it him with a realistic expectation of what he can achieve in a given timeframe. They have a large upwards gap to traverse and it will take them time even if they get everything right. As one of the world’s wealthiest clubs, they should have a long term strategy to achieve those goals. Now, who is going to decide which players they buy this summer?

The only thing people love more than heralding new, exciting young talents is discarding them for newer, more exciting young talents.

This is the story with Christian Pulisic and Jadon Sancho. Way back in the final stretches of the 2015/16 season, when it looked as though Thomas Tuchel could build a dynasty at Borussia Dortmund, a 17 year old Pulisic was beginning to receive some minutes off the bench and looking rather interesting in the process.

The following year, he managed to become a more integrated part of the side and managed to get everyone excited. The United States had produced its first great men’s soccer player. The rumours of a big money move to the Premier League were abound. The world was to have a new superstar. Then Sancho turned up in Dortmund and stole his career.

Let’s track back on that slightly.

Sancho arrived at Dortmund from Manchester City in the summer of 2017, with the then 17 year old having to wait until the second half of the season to get on the pitch, just as Pulisic did at the same age. In what was a mess of a Dortmund side, he took to the Bundesliga like a duck to water and established himself as the poster boy for young Englishmen plying their trade in Germany.

He initially started this season on the bench, but a string of great performances as a substitute ha meant he has forced his way not just into the starting eleven but has become a key player for Lucien Favre’s potential title winners. The player he displaced from the starting line up? Christian Pulisic. Let’s take a closer look at them both to see what’s going on.

Christian Pulisic

In some senses, Pulisic feels like the star of a Dortmund team that never existed. Having been signed by the club as a 16 year old back in 2015, he was clearly groomed for the kind of football we saw from the club under then manager Jürgen Klopp. With Klopp’s reign coming to an unceremonious end, Thomas Tuchel came in with broadly the same principles, albeit a greater emphasis on possession play.

While Tuchel’s first season was built around Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Marco Reus and Shinji Kagawa in the attacking midfield roles, his second saw a changing of the guard, with Pulisic and new signing Ousmane Dembélé now trusted behind Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Dembélé was clearly the senior partner here, setting himself up for the big move to Barcelona. But Pulisic showed himself to be well on the way to stardom, combining a terrific natural talent at dribbling through congested areas with intelligent off the ball movement.

Of course, the side’s inability to build on the previous season’s results combined with reported clashes with senior figures at the club led to the end of Tuchel’s reign, though a theoretically similarly minded figure in Peter Bosz was appointed. The less said about Bosz’s reign, the better, and he was replaced by Peter Stöger in less than ideal circumstances halfway through the season. Almost by accident, Stöger began the trend away from the club’s famed pressing game and towards a deeper counter-attacking approach, a move that has been heavily reinforced this year by Favre.

In an alternate world where Dortmund are in the fourth year of Tuchel, it’s easy to imagine Pulisic as a key player. Under Favre, he increasingly seems sidelined. So is he failing to have any impact? Well, not quite. For Dortmund, his xGChain this season remains as strong as Sancho and behind only Paco Alcácer.

He is involving himself in just as many sequences that lead to high quality chances as Sancho, albeit not in such noticeable and arguably decisive ways as the Englishman. He is dribbling a solid amount (3.06 times per 90) but his expected goals and assists remain fairly middling. Nothing about his creative passing really stands out as much as it perhaps should for his ability in the numbers. It does feel as though he has stalled.

As he matures and evolves his game, it may be that he is more suited to being a ball progressing midfielder than a wide player. In recent weeks, Pulisic has been heavily linked with both Chelsea and Liverpool.

If he were to move to Liverpool, it is easy to imagine a positional evolution similar to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, with the American’s skillset well suited to Klopp’s quest to turn stalling attacking midfielders into deeper ball progressors.

The Chelsea move would also have logic behind it, with Sarri’s possession heavy pressing system probably much better suited to the Favre set up. While one could see him as the most advanced midfielder in the 4-3-3, a position currently occupied by Ross Barkley, it’s easy to imagine him as a zone moving wide forward replacing Willian long term and sharing some of the burden currently taken by Eden Hazard.

This could help Hazard become the goalscoring wide forward Sarri wants him to be while replacing some of the ball progression he’s been doing in the past few years. If he goes to either of these clubs, it seems like he could have an excellent career in the Premier League. As it stands, the more ball progressing part of his skillset doesn’t seem especially useful to a Dortmund side who want to move up the pitch quickly with the speed of some of the other attacking players. Such as…

Jadon Sancho

If Favre’s arrival at the Westfalenstadion has been a hindrance to Pulisic, it might have been the best thing that could have happened to Sancho. During the player’s time in English youth football, the player was seen as something of an unpredictable dribbler, someone who could do something truly surprising at any point.

“You get a lot of players in academies who have been coached, but [Sancho] has got that natural street ability where you don't necessarily know what he is going to do before he gets the ball. He then goes and carries it past two or three players with ease”, stated former England Under 16 coach Paul Williams.

“He could be our Neymar-type player – in terms of being unpredictable, playing on that left-hand side”, claimed another former England youth coach Dan Micche. That is, of course, “provided he doesn’t become restricted”.

Favre is, of course, not a manager who likes to play “unrestricted” football. “Efficient” would be a better word to describe his approach, with his continual ability to overperform expected goals in part a feature of compact organisation and getting men behind the ball.

At Borussia Dortmund in particular, this has been accompanied by a counter attack at blistering pace, with relatively little scope for slowing down and overcomplication. This has kept him at a relatively medium 3.1 dribbles per 90, while Micche’s proposed idol Neymar puts up 4.8 and stat breaker Adama Traoré manages 5.0.

What he is doing a lot of, though, is creating chances, with Sancho assisting as many expected goals in open play per 90 as anyone else in the Bundesliga. He’s also become a key ball progressing cog, becoming comfortably Dortmund’s most frequent player to complete open play passes into the box. This is a team that are top of the Bundesliga and a not insignificant amount of their attacking plan seems to be to give the ball to this 18 year old.

It has at times felt recently as though some particularly gifted young English players have been allowed to be a little too unrestricted. Players such as Jack Wilshere and Ross Barkley have been encouraged to flourish without really being defined to specific roles and tasks, and it does feel as though it has contributed to them stalling, as Barkley himself implied when he admitted he hadn’t been coached at Everton to the extent he is right now at Chelsea.

Sancho, meanwhile, finds himself in a situation where he is being given clear instructions and responsibilities. Though Neymar is the superstar Micche suggested he should emulate, perhaps Sancho might be best off looking at the early evolution of Cristiano Ronaldo. Under the tutelage of Sir Alex Ferguson, a young Ronaldo was taught to generally simplify his game, reducing the “tricks” and becoming a more decisive footballer in the process. While it is unlikely that any player will achieve as much as Ronaldo, this does seem to be the path that he should be aiming for under Favre.

Conclusion

Predicting the path of player development is hard and fraught with elements that are difficult to control. Pulisic seemed to be blazing a path to great success before dipping somewhat in the past 18 months. Sancho is currently defying logic with his form, but it is very possible that he will see similar frustrations in the future.

A player such as Raheem Sterling spent several years unable to perform like he did at age 19 before having a sudden leap in production under Pep Guardiola. It happens. Improvement is not linear. While he has the advantage of being more suited to the style of football, it does feel right now as though Sancho has a higher ceiling than Pulisic.

That Dortmund have tied Sancho down to a new deal while apparently being open to letting Pulisic go suggests the view is the same internally. But this is not a huge indictment of Pulisic rather than an endorsement of Sancho. Both look more than capable of having terrific careers. Bear that in mind if you’re reading an article in two years’ time about how Sancho is struggling to live up to expectations.

One of the key benefits of forming a football data company is that you can choose which leagues to collect data for. As such, StatsBomb have added English League One to the roster and collected data for 2017-18, and will continue to do so going forward. Having high quality data for a league that has been under served in the past is a fascinating starting point for analysis, so let’s dive in, identify some players who performed well and discuss their game. This will be the first of two articles written discussing League One via data, so be sure to keep an eye out for the second one next week.

A relevant disclaimer: StatsBomb endorses data use as part of a fuller process that involves traditional scouting methods too. Data has an important role in refining ideas but cannot be the sole driver towards a complete analysis. The profiles here can act as a start off point and show how data can help refining multiple leagues worth of players towards a far more efficient process.

Jack Marriott (Peterborough)

Marriott’s 27 league goals led the division, and his move up a division to Derby appears well deserved. While the league’s top scorer might appear to be an obvious pick, when evaluating players, it’s important to understand the inputs that went into a performance to get an idea of whether or not it’s intrinsically likely to recur.

A look at his shot chart shows how the Peterborough man accrued his impressive total:

Chiefly impressive here is the sheer variety of his goals. He scores from set pieces, he scores from crosses, he scores from through balls. He scores headers, he scores from outside the box, from wide and from close in. He’s also matched expectation: 26 goals from an xG of 25.7. His rate of over four shots per game ranked second only to Wigan’s Nick Powell and his rate of shots related to all touches was over 7%, nearly 2% higher than anyone in the league; he’s a pure striker. Without even going any deeper we can see that his season has been an accurate reflection of the chances his teammates have created for him. If we are to be critical, the volume of wider shots he took, particularly from the right side, is probably too high, but he’s not intrinsically wasteful, and this is a good shot chart for a striker.

He did not manage to score after a dribble, but he showed an ability to carve out his own opportunities in that manner, ranking second in the league for shots inside the box after a dribble with ten. We can see here his next actions post-dribble, and those wide shots crop up. The ability to generate his own shot should not be undervalued though, as it’s likely that this type of chance allows his team to relieve pressure, and lightly implies a good workrate.

Something that more strongly implies workrate are pressure events, and Marriott scores fairly well here. His rate of around twelve opposition half pressure events per 90 puts him in the top 10% of players and fourth for those with over 3000 minutes registered. Like many pure strikers, he doesn’t possess the ball to any great volume, but he does put work in to retrieve it.

Callum Styles (Bury)

Sometimes a young player can raise interest from a brief first team spell and while you would like more minutes to evaluate, what they have done in a short period of time is enough to merit further investigation. Callum Styles to date is chiefly known as the first player born in the 21st century to play in the Football League, which he did for Bury back in 2016. Still just 18, Styles got 900 minutes for Bury in the back half of 2016-17 but then figured only sporadically for Bury during the majority of their dismal 2017-18 season that eventually saw them relegated after finishing rock bottom by nine points.

Styles' time in the team this time round started in March 2018, and from there on in he completed the full 90 minutes in Bury’s last eight games. Bury were all but doomed at this point, but given the chance to contribute, Styles certainly did just that:

Via the pressure data we record at StatsBomb we can see that in the ~850 minutes Styles played, he led the league for pressure events recorded, with 25.6 per 90. We can see from the chart here the areas that he covered (where grades of red equate to exceeding league average). Pretty much the whole midfield band.

Related to this, he also led the league for pressure regains--defined as occasions in which his team regained the ball within five seconds of the player’s pressure event--which suggests that he targeted his pressing effectively within the team. Beyond that, of the 25 players who recorded 20+ pressure events per game Styles ranked second to another young player who played limited minutes, Aidan O’Neill of Fleetwood, for the volume of which turned into pressure regains--around 19%.

The caution here is the small sample of games but this is a good example of where data use can point towards player performance, and start the process towards fuller evaluation.

Cheyenne Dunkley (Wigan)

In truth, this whole article could have been about Wigan players. They won the league and were never out of the top three from the end of September onwards and though Blackburn Rovers pushed them hard to secure the second automatic promotion slot, Wigan were top scorers and had the best defence too.

Nick Powell was a contender for the best player in the division and was joined by defenders Dan Burn and Nathan Byrne and forward Will Grigg in the PFA Team of the Year while Sam Morsy was a stalwart in midfield.

However in a post-World Cup environment where Harry Maguire is one of the most important attackers in world football, the performances of Cheyenne Dunkley were notable. Signed on a free transfer from Oxford United in the summer of 2017, last season was only Dunkley’s second in League One having battled his way up from non-league. He scored seven goals and it’s fair to say he had a method:

A striker would be proud of a shot chart like that. Dunkley’s success here once more represents the value in using set pieces as part of a mixed attacking strategy.

Jay Dasilva (Charlton)

League One is a division that is still used by top clubs as a breaking ground for their young talent, and one unarguable success story last season was Jay Dasilva during his time at Charlton. The young Chelsea prospect rejoined Charlton after a spell there during 2016-17 and after captaining England’s side that won the UEFA Under-19 European Championships during the following summer. He started 34 games for Charlton last season, won their Fans Player of the Year award and graduated to under-21 honours.

Out of possession, left back Dasilva did his job:

At the other end of the pitch, Dasilva showed signs of being well capable of playing within a possession-oriented team. He led his team for final third passes completed (17.2 per game, and ranked tenth within the division) of which 30% were forward, enough to rank second among the top twenty players for final third volume. And these number weren’t padded by crosses, he scarcely attempted them.

He was also able to contribute to chance creation; 1.3 key passes per game (with a value of 0.15xG Assisted) ranked third for Charlton, impressive from left back. He’s also a capable dribbler and ranked second in his team for the percentage of pressure events that led to a regain of possession (21%).

It appears likely that Dasilva will once more head out among Chelsea’s loan army this summer, and his general progress in League One implies that he will be capable of performing at a higher level. His time at Charlton is the ideal representation of how the selective loan of a young player can benefit the player’s owner and the loan club to an equal degree.

That's just a flavour of what you can pull from via StatsBomb's League One data.

Ahead of the new season starting next week, we will return with a further post, and as the season progresses keep checking our social media for updates.

Header image courtesy of the Press Association