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Remember the time when it seemed weird for statistics — ones which weren’t goals or shots or corners — to be used in football coverage? And now expected goals are almost the norm. This year, 2022, will be no different, and there might be even more stats entering our collective consciousness. Last year we looked…
It’s not often that school science experiments stick with you, or end up relating to football data, but this one clearly had an impact. We, as a class, were faced with a series of numbers like this: 6 2 8 1 0 2 9 3 1 0 2 2 6 1. If you try and…
It’s always a good thing, from time to time, to check that your perceptions are backed up by something meaningful. Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United are a team whose reputation precedes them by a Yorkshire mile (like a Lancashire mile, but better), particularly the intensity and relentlessness of their pressing. However, just how intense is it…
Brentford’s reputation seems to have preceded them. Last season, Arsenal — the Bees’ opponents on opening day — kept 42 per cent of their goal kicks at a short or medium length, ending less than 40 metres from goal. That rate was about average for the league as a whole, but, against some teams, they…
Rúben Neves likes a shot from range. If you’re unfamiliar with the Wolves midfielder, his shot map tells you just how fond of them he is. It’s as if the penalty area is a high-end nightclub and his shots keep turning up in trainers, left waiting outside the place everyone wants to be in. But…
The Copernican revolution was when European society accepted Nicolaus Copernicas’ wisdom that the Sun did not revolve around the Earth. The Kuperian revolution was when footballing society accepted Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s wisdom that transfer policy should not revolve around major tournaments. In their book Soccernomics, Kuper and Szymanski noted that “the worst time…
When Charles Darwin first wrote about evolution, he wrote about the beaks of finches. They had evolved to do different tasks to find food, some to root around finding insects and some to break open nuts. The ideas of evolution and natural adaptation were set in full motion, that different beings will adapt to new…
I’ve written before about how learning to apply football data is like learning a foreign language. You learn the definitions of words, but the way you put those words together is kind of up to you. It can be artful. However, that thought might be a little daunting, so let me offer an alternative metaphor.…
Football matches are sometimes described like boxing bouts, as two fighters punching and counter-punching, slugging it out in an attempt to fell their opponent. It’s a dramatic comparison, sure, but it hits at a fundamental truth. As in boxing, in football you attack by taking action and you largely defend in ways which don’t make…