Simple question: Have Arsenal progressed this year? Are they better than they were last year? To answer these questions I am going to post 4 graphs which that will get us part, if not all, the way there. So, we compare certain metrics from the 12/13 season to the 13/14 season, using league data only (incentives).

TSR/Shots Share%/Corsi/Whatever

These charts show Arsenal’s rolling share of the shots taken throughout their fixture lists. Arsenal were recording a higher percentage share of the shots in 12/13 than they currently are in 13/14. This is not a good thing.

Some folk may point to shot quality/locations but there’s usually a reason that teams take less shots and/or concede more shots and, usually, those reasons aren’t positive.

Shots On Target Ratio

A bit noisier, but a few things stand out: This time last year once the horrendous injury list had eased Arsenal went on a season saving run of form to finish 4th ahead of the Tottenham. A part of that form was due to an improvement down the strecth in Arsenal’s SoTR which picks up from game 23 or so and finished a fraction shy of 60%.

This season (13/14) Arsenal’s SoTR was pretty good, if not elite, for the first 22 or so games before nosediving. Injury lists play their part, as do quality of opposition issues. Still, it appears that Arsenal won’t be able to equal last years ~59% SoTR number. Arsenal’s 13/14 number is currently at 55.3%.

Goal%

Goal% = Goals for/Total Goals(goals for+goals against)

Goal% is driven by a teams shots and target ratio and its PDO number. Arsenal’s 12/13 number consistently improved from around the 10 or 11 game mark – driven by SoTR (above) and an improving PDO.

Arsenal’s 13/14 Goal% was driven by good, not great, SoTR and a super high PDO that was at 110 or higher for 21 of the 31 weeks of the season so far. League average PDO is 100. Teams who spend a high amount of minutes in leading positions will post PDO’s north of 100.

We can see that Arsenal’s 13/14 Goal% has cooled off and this is due to SoTR cooling off by a few percentage points and a gradual cooling of PDO.

Points%

Arsenal’s shots and shots on target numbers may not have convinced everyone that there is real year on year decline and that’s ok. Maybe goal% didn’t convince anyone either! How about we look at points% then?

Points% = points/total points available

This graph is super cool in a scary kinda way. We can see that Arsenal showed amazing improvement in the second half of 12/13 (SoTR, PDO improved). Arsenal’s 13/14 season looks like it is going the other way. Decline, decay, injury-hit squad unable to cope with a tough sked, tactics or whatever. It is a frightening graph.

Whichever we slice the information it doesn’t look good:

• Arsenal have a significantly lower TSR year on year.
• After a good start to the season in SoTR (easy sked?) Arsenal’s number has cooled in recent weeks and is now worse than 12/13’s SoTR number.
• Goal%, driven by a high PDO and some good SoTR numbers has cooled and now sits below 12/13’s number after the exact same number of games.
• 13/14 Points% remains the only stat that is currently better than 12/13, but with a poor TSR, declining SoTR and PDO numbers Arsenal’s 13/14 Goal% may come dangerously close to touching 12/13’s number.

In short: Context is important, inuries to key talent, lack of striker and wing options may have handicapped Arsenal’s ability to post better underlying numbers. The question is by how much have those issues handicapped Arsenal? We don’t know. Arsenal may well surpass last seasons points total but they may well do so having posted poorer shots and shots on target numbers. People may point to shots quality (and some score effects) and say “who cares if they are shooting less but shooting better” and you know what, maybe they’re right, but for me I would rather a team posts high percentages of the shots and shots on target share whilst still trying to take the very best quality of shot that they can.  

Statsbomb Podcast Episode 13. Ben Pugsley and Mike Goodman discuss last weeks big Premier League fixtures, Liverpool’s tactical quirks, Suarez’s conversion %. We also talk some Champions League odds, Manchester United’s present and David Moyes’s future.

I was kind of curious as to how Tottenham’s share of the shots (TSR & SoTR) and share of the goals (Goal%) looked during the 2013/14 season pre and post AVB. Having completed that task and seen the results (which I will get to), I thought I’d go back and look at Tottenham’s previous 2 seasons for which I have data. Just to make certain that everyone understands the stats that I will be talking about, here is a quick reminder: TSR – share of the shots taken. SoTR – share of the shots on target taken. Goal% – share of the goals scored. PDO – scoring% (goals f/shots on target for) + save% (100-goals a/shots on target a). Good. I’ll start with Tottenham’s 2011/12 Premier League season to warm things up for the main event. 2011/12 – Harry Redknapp So Tottenham, under Redknapp’s management, had plenty talent – Modric & Bale – and posted a 61% share of the shots (TSR) and a 59% share of the shots on target (SoTR). Fine numbers. Tottenham’s share of the goals finished at 63% which is more or less in line with season-end TSR. But as you can see from the graph above Tottenham’s share of the goals (goal%) was a lot higher than TSR for the first 27 or 28 games of the season. The reason for this? PDO. Tottenham’s PDO was ~1100 for the first 28 or games or so and this enabled Tottenham to post a higher share of the goals than their TSR would’ve suggested. Still following? I hope so. In short: if a team posts a goal% way higher than their shots or shots on target share then it may well be safe to conclude that a big part of that overperformance is due to high shooting percentage and/or a high save%. Conversely, a goal% that is lower than a teams share of the shots or shots on target may well have been suffering from a low scoring% and/or a low save%. Just theories for now, but we understand that scoring and save percentages, given time, regress back toward the mean somewhat. Redknapp’s final season saw early overperformance driven by a high PDO, which then regressed. Tottenham, more or less, were a pretty good team who finished with a goal% in line with their TSR%.  2012/13 – AVB Now to AVB AVB improved upon Redknapp’s strong shots numbers and finished the season as a 65% TSR and Shots on Target Ratio team. Both of those shots ratio numbers are superb. The problem? scoring% and save% (PDO) were subpar (below 1000) for all but three games of the entire season. This caused Tottenham’s goal% to fall to 58%. Villa-Boas was able to coach this Tottenham to outshoot the opposition and dominate the play but what he couldn’t coach may have been something out of his control and that was the rate that Tottenham converted their chances (scoring%) and prevented the opposition from converting their chances (save). Now, Tottenham’s low PDO – and thus goal% – may have been influenced by poor shots locations, or personnel issues, or tactical issues or whatever. The problems with PDO will likely also have been caused by what is loosely termed as ‘bad luck’. It is almost impossible to tease out the exact cause of Tottenham’s woes – there’s likely some systems issues and there’s likely some ‘bad luck’. Shit happens, but that shit really handicapped a Tottenham team who had shown excellent ability to control games and outshoot the opposition. ***** Now to the good stuff. 2013/14 – AVB (16 Games) These are Villas-Boas’s final games as Tottenham manager and final games before he officially became damaged goods, and even “a manager with a defective tactical system”. Tottenham’s TSR was ~62% at the time of his sacking and the SoTR was ~58%. Both of those numbers, while good, are still down on the previous season (Bale’s exit?). Still, those numbers should be good for a top 4 battle, the problems for Villa-Boas, once again, were caused by Tottenham’s inability to convert chances (scoring%) and preventing the opposition from converting their chances (save%).  A series of hammerings wrecked Tottenham’s PDO and thus impacted their Goal%. This time it wasn’t so easy to use ‘bad luck’ as the cause for the low PDO and goal%.  Villas-Boas’ systems (high line and inability to penetrate in attack) were spotted early by football media and used as a facile excuse for Tottenham’s failings. The reality was less clear. Yes, Tottenham played a high line which was, on occasion, completely wrecked, but it also worked in many games that Villa-Boas deployed it. As for the lack of penetration in attack, meh. Soldado wasn’t helping, neither was Townsend or many of the other baffling personnel decisions, nor was a league high number of minutes spent in a tied position. Villa-Boas’ tenure saw Tottenham control games and post excellent shots numbers but either ‘bad luck’ or ‘bad systems’ or a combination of those and many other factors saw Tottenham’s Goal% significantly lower than their TSR and SoTR numbers would’ve suggested. People call PDO a coach killer, and for good reason. 2013/14 – Sherwood Of all the candidates dotted throughout europe, Tim Sherwood was deemed to be best qualified, either through talent or familiarity, to coach Tottenham Hotspur. And who am I to question Sherwood’s appointment, after all 23 points in 11 games is mighty good form! Sherwood restored Adebayor to the lineup and was rewarded with timely goals. The systems were tweaked slightly and Tottenham piled up the points. All is good, huh? Well, not really. Sherwood has Tottenham posting the lowest TSR (~51%) and SoTR (~48%) numbers of any Tottenham manager in the last three years – significantly lower than Redknapp and lower still than AVB’s teams. Score effects may play a part in the decline of those shots numbers, but it does not by any stretch of the imagination explain all of the decline. Nor has Sherwood faced particlarly tough competition which could explain the decline. Sherwood has simply taken AVB’s team, tweaked personnel and tactics and turned it from a 62% TSR/58% SoTR shots team into 51%/48% team. A shots drop that dramatic is rare indeed and it’d be mighty interesting to watch Tottenham’s zone entries to see just why they are no longer generating the same number of shots. (*Villa-Boas team were taking 17.3 shots per game and conceding 10.8 per game. Sherwood’s team are taking 12.5 shots per game and conceding 12 shots per game.) Still, what does the average fan care for drops in shots rate, or drops in TSR or SoTR? Tottenham are winning, Adebayor is scoring at a fast and easy rate, the players are “confident and happy” again, the points are piling up. The problem is, all the points and and goals are built not upon an ability to out-chance the opposition and dominate the shots count but upon an outrageous PDO of 122.75.

I am aware there may be Tottenham fans who will argue  that this PDO (scoring% + save%) is powered not by ‘luck’ or unexplained variables but by systems and personnel and skill and the speed of attacks (which can be a part of PDO.) Maybe Tottenham fans are right to suggest skill and sytems are powering this hot streak of form, but to suggest this they would be indicating that Sherwood is a tactical genius, or a master psychologist, or that Adebayor has morphed into a world class striker, or that Tottenham’s attacking speed has dramatically improved, or that the defensive and attacking systems are the leagues best and that is why that PDO stat-thingy is the best in the the league over the last 11 games. And maybe if all those things are real and those things and are really driving that PDO number, then maybe they are sustainable and Tottenham can continue to take a 64% share of the goals while only taking a 51% share of the shots, and maybe’s and if’s into infinity! If you are a Tottenham fan who believes that this form, with those average shots numbers, is sustainable then you are suggesting that maybe Sherwood is a tactical genius, maybe he does make the players happier, maybe Adebayor is now a world class striker. Thing is, if you do believe Tottenham’s form is sustainable without dramatic improvement in an ability to outshoot the opposition then you are betting on an awful lot of maybe’s continuing from now until the rest of the season and beyond. Sherwood may be a genius, Adebayor may now be a world class striker, I don’t know. But the way PDO regresses and a little history close to home (graph 1 – Redknapp) tells us that PDO’s that high and goal%‘s that far seperated from TSR%’s don’t tend to continue forever. To me good coaches produce teams that outshoot the opposition in terms of shots and shots on target in most game situations while creating the very best quality chances they can and preventing the opposition from creating good chances. Andre Villas-Boas had the shot dominance part down, but was handicapped by the scoring% and save% elements of performance. Sherwood is producing teams that are completely average by the shots dominance count but have bananas high – like Barcelona high – scoring percentages and strong save percentages. Long term, which manager type is the better option?

20011-2014 – TSR, SOTR & Goal% Rolling Sherwood’s full 11-game reign is the very last data point (far right). Worst SoTR, 2nd worst TSR, Highest PDO, abnormally high Goal%.

Six top flight managers have been relieved of their duties so far in this 2013/14 Premier League season. Some of those dismissals, at the time, seemed fairer than others. What I am going to look at in this short piece is how those six teams who replaced their managers fared before, and after, the management change. To examine how those teams fared I am going to look at each teams Shots On Target Ratio and also their PDO. I will include each teams points per game number and their goal share%, but I want to get a feel for how these teams performed by the underlying numbers. I shall list the teams rolling numbers in each category and the new managers rolling numbers in each category for comparison. Shots on Target Ratio will be used as a proxy for team skill and control on games. PDO will be used as a proxy for for ‘luck’ or, as is another way of putting it, by how much did each team outperform its Shots On Target Ratio. If team X has a PDO 10 points above average but a Shots On Target Ratio ten points below average it may be fair to say that team X has outperformed its SoTR. That ‘over performance’ is, commonly, generally and perhaps not entirely fairly, referred to as ‘luck’

Issues With Method

Strength of schedule, injury, home/away splits and especially score effects can, and will, skew the numbers I am going to look at here. There is no real way of factoring all these effects into this study. The study isn’t perfect, I neither have the time or the skill to make it perfect. I have what I have and that is all. We shall start with the first manager to be dismissed.

Paolo Di Canio

  Mad dog Paolo di Canio was dismissed after just 5 games of the 13/14 season. An abrasive temperament, an inability to coach his team in the basics of game control, an inability to outshoot the opposition and a failure to fix the gigantic fucking hole in Sunderland’s midfield were just a few of the myriad reasons that Di Canio may have been dismissed for. But really this was about Ellis Short fixing his mistake in appointing Di Canio in the first place. And I’m fine with that. If you have made a mistake don’t be stubborn or proud, but instead fix it. The fix here for Short was Di Canio’s rapid dismissal. WOWY: Di Canio

  Not entirely fair to judge Di Canio on a tiny sample of just 5 games, but the information Ellis Short had after just 5 games may well have been more than enough. Di Canio’s team had no control (SoTR), no luck (PDO) and the points and goal share were abysmal. Things have improved slightly under Poyet but 1 ppg may not be enough. You’ll notice how Poyet’s Goal share matches his SoTR number which tells us that scoring% and save% haven’t been too cruel or kind to his team. Sunderland are exactly where they should be under Poyet and that is a 1 ppg team. Di Canio was terrible, Poyet is a touch better but he likely doesn’t have the horses to improve this team beyond the numbers posted.

Holloway/Pulis

Insufficient samples here. Holloway lasted 8 games. Pulis has been in charge for 9 games. So, the first cut-off line indicates Holloway’s time in charge. The second cut-off point indicates the start of Pulis’s time in charge. Pulis has posted a better PDO and a better Shots on Target Ratio. WOWY: Holloway/Pulis

  Holloway’s numbers were pretty tragic. Goal share is lower than shots share which points to an under performance in PDO. Alas, this is the case. Pulisball has seen Palace take a staggering ~54% of the shots on target, but register just 43% of the goal share. Again, PDO is the culprit. No matter, Pulisball has magical powers and those powers are strong enough to record a ppg of 1.44. Pulis has been an inspired choice to replace poor Holloway. 53.8% of the shots on target, just let that sink in.  

Martin Jol

Fired after 13 games with what is, as far as I know, the worst SoTR on record. Not even Sunderland under O’Neill were this insipid. Since Jol’s departure Fulham have posted improved SoTR numbers (just under 50%) but PDO is a real issue. WOWY: Jol

  Jol’s numbers were a fair reflection of performance: SoTR matches Goal Share%. thus 0.77 ppg is a fair reflection of his utter ineptitude in managing this football club. Since Jol’s departure Fulham have posted relatively strong SoTR numbers but that hasn’t led to a goal share% indicative of the strong shots performance. Why is that? PDO is damn crippling this football club. Jol deserved to be sacked, but the decision to sack him was likely 5 or 6 games too late, which was probably caused by the belief that the PDO spike around game 8 was actually real talent instead a temporary variance. Meulensteen has Fulham posting good shots numbers but PDO is a real issue. A point per game pace is fine, and it may improve if PDO regresses.  

Andre Villas-Boas

I really didn’t like Villas-Boas’s sacking, but something was broken at Spurs during those last days and we will likely never find out just what that something was. Villas-Boas posted strong SoTR numbers but the PDO was crippled by a low scoring% early in the season. Once the scoring%  started to improve, along came the save% regression. During the last few games of Villas-Boas’s reign Tottenham’s lowly PDO was finally destroyed but two alarming blowout losses at the hands of Man city and Liverpool. Since Villas-Boas’s departure Tottenham have posted a PDO of, wait for it………130.03. In layman’s terms: the most ridiculous, obscenely unsustainable PDO that not only I have ever seen during a short run of games, but the most obscenely unsustainable PDO one could ever possibly imagine. Poor Andre. WOWY: Villas-Boas

  Villas-Boas’s goal share% was lower than his SoTR due to the poor PDO. This probably had a knock-on effect to the low ppg number. Sherwood is a genius, the right man for the job, has liberated the Tottenham players, found the right attacking balance a lucky bastard in that Tottenham have posted a 53% scoring% and a 77% save% during his short reign. Goal share% is far higher than SoTR due to that PDO, thus ppg is pretty darn high. That PDO number won’t last, Tottenham’s ppg number won’t continue to be that high. Six games is a tiny sample, good or bad stuff can happen. In Sherwood’s case, he has either stumbled on a formula which turns Tottenham into BarcaMunich or he is riding some lucky percentages/unsustainable play. Villas-Boas posted some good fundamental numbers numbers at Tottenham but some systemic and behind the scenes issues meant his sacking was likely a fair one. Jury is out on Sherwood.  

Steve Clarke

  I thought the sacking of Steve Clarke was a touch unfair on the dour Scotsman at the time. I may still feel that way for a little more time yet, but Pepe Mel may well be a significant upgrade. We need more data on Mel and for that we must wait. Clarke was posting decent fundamentals but since his departure West Brom have improved their SoTR despite facing some pretty tough opposition. WOWY: Clarke

  Clarke’s numbers were a pretty fair indication of his ability with West Brom: Sub-par shots on target team who posted a sub-par goal share with a league average (fair) PDO. Since Clarke’s departure the SoTR number is has improved (small sample), the goal share has improved and thus points per game has also improved. The numbers during the six games without Clarke look pretty good. The sacking seemed harsh but the early returns point to the possibility of this West Brom team having more talent that Clarke was able to coax out of it.  

Malky MacKay

Oh dear, Malky. This isn’t good. MacKay’s Cardiff were a poor SoTR team under his management, so poor, in fact, they came mighty close to matching the ineptitude shown by Fulham under Martin Jol. The above chart shows us that Cardiff were always a poor shots team but were merely propped up by a high PDO which regressed ever so slowly toward the mean. WOWY: MacKay

  MacKay’s numbers were a fair reflection of what he was able to get out of this team: SoTR matches the goal share, while PPG is fairly impressive due to the early season PDO spike. We don’t really have enough information about Cardiff without MacKay but it may be fair to say that Cardiff will likely not continue to post that impressive a SoTR number, nor will they continue to suffer the cruel blows that their low PDO number currently deals them. MacKay was likely not a good enough manager to manage in the PL, but we cannot be completely certain of this due to the talent level at his disposal. Cardiff do have some nice pieces at their club but those pieces are likely not nice enough, nor are there enough of those nice pieces to guarantee safety in their battle against relegation. We wait to see what the super sub can coach out of this team.  

Final Thoughts

Managers matter, but so do small samples and the variation in not only performance and luck, but in the variation of strength of schedule and injury. Personalities matter too. Just ask Daniel Levy or Vincent Tan. Managers can be prematurely fired off the back of periods of ‘bad luck’ just as they can perhaps be fired too late due to periods of ‘good luck’. Stuff happens, life for a manager can be as unfair as it is fortuitous. My take is thus: by all means fire a manager for posting poor numbers in terms of control of the shots count (SoTR) but be wary of dismissing a manager due to a low PDO (the coach killer) unless it is absolutely certain that the low PDO number is caused by long standing system issues. Personally, my take away from this piece, and other private work that I have been doing, is how well Goal Share% fits with SoTR (and TSR) numbers. If those two numbers do not sit pretty close to each other then the cause is likely due to a high, or low, burst in PDO. Given enough time, shots talent will equate to goal share talent. And we know what happens to PDO, right?

1) Close Goal Difference

Close Goal Difference = Goal Difference at minus 1, tied and plus 1. I’ve banged this drum for some time now in various places. Close Goal Difference has an almost perfect (r2=0.95) relationship with points won. Close Goal Difference Total Goal difference has a weaker relationship with points (r2=0.79). Overall goal differential, which includes blowouts and thrashings (Liverpool, City and Norwich), has a weaker relationship with points won. If we solely focus on Close Game State we retain 82.9% of the goal events and throw out the goals scored that likely had zero bearing on how the points were won. None of this is groundbreaking news. Incidentally, Man United won the league in 12/13 with a Close GD that was streets ahead of any other team in the league. 13/14 PL Table With Close Goal Difference  

  This is how Close GD and Points through 15 games looks. Tottenham and Newcastle are big outliers in terms of more points gained than their Close GD would suggest. Man City’s Close GD suggest that they should have secured more points.

2) RvP Sad Face

I desperately wanted a GIF of this situation but a plain ‘ol picture will have to do. The picture really doesn’t do justice to how dejected RvP looked as he trudged off. I wonder what goes through van Persie’s head in those quiet, reflective moments? Does he pine for ‘home’; does he regret his decision to move to Man United? Probably not. But I’m damn sure that a big part of RvP signing for Man United – except for the substantial pay rise – was the chance to work with Alex Ferguson and win trophies. Man United’s ability to win silverware seems to have departed when the genius (with every passing game the word genius becomes apt) finally decided to retire. Look at van Persie’s face. Look at it! Sorrow, regret, sadness. He looks like a man who left his girlfriend, who was pretty darn amazing and loving, for the hot-hot girl he met in a nightclub. Turns out that the hot club girl is a bit of a dick: nags him when he goes for a beer with his friends, arguments over his failure to fold towels in the correct manner, “football, again?”. Ferguson was like the makeup that the hot club girl wears and he made Man United look more attractive and dazzling a proposition than it actually was. Well, it’s morning now for van Persie, the club girl has no makeup on and she’s not so hot now. Robin may well be wondering what the hell he has got himself into.  

3) What Next For United?

This: Villa, West Ham, Hull and Norwich. Moyes’ world seems to be crumbling. The players look bereft of confidence and belief. Now is really the time for Rooney and (health permitting) van Persie to step up. That pair are Man United’s best players and it’s times like this – semi-crisis – that a club needs it’s best players. This upcoming bunch of fixtures are probably just what Moyes needs. United will be favourites in all 4 fixtures, 3 of the 4 are on the road which may not be the worst thing in the world right now. 9 points form these 4 games would be the absolute bare minimum requirement. 12 points, as unlikely as that seems in current form, may just be possible. This stretch of games which takes us to the end of the year, and the halfway point in the fixture list, will likely define the narrative regarding Moyes and his Man united team.  

4) PDO

I love the stat called ‘PDO’. A lot of you may not, and you may be highly dubious of it. PDO is team save%+ team Scoring% and it regresses heavily toward the mean on a season to season basis. It has been said before that PDO captures ‘luck’ or ‘non-skill’ or simply put, the unexplainable. Hell, maybe PDO captures systems and those who say that a team (non-Barcelona) post PDO’s way out of the normal bounds are able to do so because of these systems. Maybe high PDO’s are due to the amount of time spent in a winning position? It’s possible. This is the best explanation I have seen for what PDO actually means:

@ExtraSkater PDO’s really the answer to “are they outperforming shot differential”, so it’s the key plot here… — Eric T. (@BSH_EricT) December 6, 2013

  13/14 PDO’s   Arsenal are the big outlier in terms of posting a high PDO. Palace are the team posting the crazy low PDO, but that PDO is regressing. Arsenal are stubbornly holding out for whatever reason. In 11/12 Man City won the league with a PDO of 116.2. City’s PDO the next year? 99.16. In 12/13 United won the league with a PDO of ~114.9. United’s PDO so far this year? 98.52. My point is: winners of the league, especially if they are runaway ~89 point winners, will likely post a pretty darn good PDO that may sustain for a 38 game spell. But unless you are managed by Ferguson or there is a huge talent gap between your team and the rest of the league it’s unlikely that a team can maintain such high PDO’s year on year. If we take Eric’s tweet at face value then we conclude that Arsenal are the team who are outperforming their shot differential to the largest degree.  

5)Regression in Save%

I talked about PDO in the previous point so now let’s look at save%. This time I want to focus on the Save% splits. I’m going to take the first 8 games and the next 7 games and look at the save percentages posted in each of those buckets.  

  It’s worth noting that 18 of the 20 teams saw their save percent regress in the last 7 games back toward (or beyond) the mean. Only Arsenal and Cardiff managed to sustain their high (or low) Save percentages from bucket 1 to bucket 2. Maybe Arsenal and Cardiff employ unique defensive systems. In a way I kinda hope Arsenal are employing a unique and vastly superior defensive scheme in comparison to anyone else in the league. If they were, it would be interesting to analyze and duplicate. Alas, a 91% save% in the last 7 games may be systemic but is more likely to be simply due to variance and the bounces teams sometimes get.

6) Arsenal’s Defense

Whilst we are on the topic of Arsenal’s save% I’ll take a quick look at Arsenal’s defensive scheme. This season we have seen a flexible Arsenal: pressing in one game, sitting deep in the next, using possession to swamp opponents in the easier fixtures. Throughout these intelligent and varied tactical setups Arsenal’s defense has been mighty impressive. Arsenal’s 11goals against is the lowest total in the league. But what do some of Arsenal’s underlying defensive numbers look like?

  Well, not much of that would help us in understanding why Arsenal have the best GA record in the division. Shots and Shots on Target against are pretty meh. Shots on target prevention (SoT against/shots against) is one of the worst numbers in the league. Arsenal are pretty good at not allowing the ball into their own defensive end and, of course, the save% IS OUT OF THIS WORLD. Some of Arsenal’s middling shots against numbers are caused by score effects (Arsenal leading a lot of the time) but those same score effects should assist Arsenal in posting a better SoT prevention number than 17th in the league. Maybe a deeper video breakdown would help us to get a better feel for Arsenal’s defensive scheme, although I’m not convinced that would turn up anything new. Arsenal are giving up too many shots and too many shots on target for a title challenger, even if those are from a longer distance than the average team posts (my intuition). On the surface, Arsenal’s save% is keeping them in the hunt right now.

7) Sunderland

Sunderland, it’s been a while since I wrote about you and your crazy antics, but I’m back. James Grayson posted a chart on twitter that looked at Sunderland’s collapse in TSR this season. I wanted to follow that up with a few little bits of info. Paolo Di Canio was fired after game 5 with Sunderland’s shots +/- at -5. Di Canio’s PDO (see above) was 81.4which is massively under par. Kevin Ball took charge for games 6 and 7 which saw Sunderland tread water. Poyet, the great hope, took charge at game 8 and has presided over a complete fucking collapse of Sunderland’s shots numbers (-74 in 8 games ). Poyet’s Magic

  Poyet’s Sunderland are being killed not only by the shots count but the shots on target count too. Goals for and against? Bad news in those categories too, I’m afraid. But there may be some extenuating circumstances. The Good (less bad) Sunderland’s last 4 home games have come against Newcastle, City, Chelsea and Tottenham and yes, boys and girls, that is probably the toughest 4 game-set of home fixtures and PL club will face this term. The Bad Sunderland’s last 4 away games have been fairly gentle in terms of away fixtures: Swansea, Hull, Stoke and Villa. In those games Sunderland were -36 in shots, -12 and were outscored 7-0. Overpowered by tough competition at home. Overpowered by weak competition on the road. Poyet will be given lots of time, and we people that stick our noses in teams’ business need more time to properly analyse Sunderland. Thing is, this looks like O’Neill’s Sunderland and that is not a good sign.

8) Fulham & The Dead Cat Bounce

In finance, a dead cat bounce is a small, brief recovery in the price of a declining stock.^[1] Derived from the idea that “even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height” Is Fulham’s recovery in terms of results and underlying numbers to be a small and brief one? The new manager Meulensteen will hope that his systems and coaching will be sustainable and can enable Fulham to rise clear of relegation trouble. I’m not convinced this will be the case. Fulham’s have a lack of talent, especially in midfield, and this prevents them from controlling games. This lack of control leads to being heavily outshot and, ultimately, without a strong defense, outscored. Meulensteen’s target – with the help of a January buy or two – will be to turn Fulham into the team that they were in Martin Jol’s early days: a team that is able to beat the weaklings at home and spring the odd rare surprise away from home. That type of results profile may be enough to survive this season which will be a fine outcome as things stand right now. This season, at best, will be a write-off and a steep learning curve for Khan. Fulham have the money and potentially the coach to gradually improve this team.

9) Shots & Shots On Target

This is pretty simple: How well do shots and shots on target correlate with GD? I’ve formatted the correlations on a week by week basis. Shots on target has always had an edge in terms of it’s relationship with GD, but that edge is closing. It’s worth noting that these correlations are a lot higher in 13/14 after 15 games than they were in 12/13. Don’t ask me why that is the case beacause I have no idea! The real test for any of these stats is how predictive they are of future performance. next week I’m going to run quite a few charts and graphs on the predictive ability of certain stats using the tiny, and probably deeply unsatisfactory sample of the first 8 games and the following 8 games.

10) Goal Of The Week

There may well have been better goals this week ( Stoke’s, Osvaldo’s) but the execution, and the importance, of this goal means it’s tops for me. Deulofeu scores here because of the pace of the shot and the short back lift.