An analysis of the season (with some surprises!)

[lcfc_forever]

There was a piece published in the Athletic about the Alternative Premier League awards.

 

I won't post all the content given the forum rules but there are a couple of insights that are really interesting, plus where we should have finished according to expected goals.

 

1. Vardy has scored below expected goals (excluding penalties) more than any other player, a difference of almost six goals. Whether this is a longer-term decline or not, remains to be seen. He did seem to be back at his best with a crowd in, and a summer off to rehabilitate could mean we see the best of him again next season.

2. In contrast to Vardy, Ihenacho was among the top players to score more than his expected goals - almost five goals more. Only Son Heung-Min, Bale and Lingard were ahead of him on that measure. His goals per minutes was also only second to Bale. Again, in contrast to Vardy, will be interesting if having crowds back in the ground will affect Ihenacho in a different way, although this didn't phase him in the FA Cup Semi-Final win. Maddison was also among the the top 10, scoring four goals more. 

3. This was the shocker - Schmeichel was one of the worst performing keepers based on expected goals conceded. He conceded 5 more goals than expected, with only McCarthy and Guaita doing worse. 

4. Based on the expected goals league table, we should have finished around sixth place, and not been in with a shout of Champions League as Chelsea and Liverpool underperformed their expected goals highly. Man Utd were the luckiest side in the top 6, interesting whether they take a false sense of security from finishing 2nd as they look like the team with the most work needed, probably followed by Liverpool as their side ages and needs refreshing. 

 

A couple of side notes - the stats show how impressive Bale was this season when he got the chance to play, especially in the 2nd half of the season, Benteke had the biggest share of Crystal Palace's chances (which suggests a player who is creating opportunities so that Twitter link might not be so ridiculous after all, although his confidence in front of goal is obviously an issue) and Pereira who we've also been linked with had the highest share of expected assists for West Brom. 

 

All in all, it was a minor miracle we were actually only 20 mins from Champions League qualification when you consider our no.1 striker and goalkeeper underperformed so much this season, and the sheer number of injuries we had:

It did feel like each time one of our players was on a rich vein of form, they picked up an injury - most obvious examples are Justin, Maddison, Vardy and Evans. I strongly believe if Evans hadn't got injured, we'd be celebrating Champions League qualification. He was colossal for us from the FA Cup Semi Final and his desire to carry us through along with his defensive organisation was crucial. Karen Carney got it spot on saying he was the player who was determined to get us over the line this time but we really missed him against Newcastle and in the final two games. The timing of the injury was awful, coming just before the start of the game (you could say the same with Fofana as well who picked up his injury in the warm up as well). 

 

Overall, the success (and overperformance) of this season is down to the resilience and mental strength of the team - 2nd highest number of points won from losing positions - as well as a lot of luck, which made up for some of the injuries we had. To have achieved so much in such difficult circumstances is really positive. 

 

Edited 25 May 2021 by lcfc_forever

[Foxxed]

There was a thread few seasons back with some guy trying to prove with quite a few detailed statistics that Schmeichel was overrated. He is, however, the team’s strongest personality on the pitch, something I feel we often miss, and his saves have won us trophies. We have to accept, I think, Vardy’s off the ball work will be a greater contribution compared to his goal scoring. I hope we can have a front three of Barnes, Vardy and  Iheanacho next season.

[theessexfox]

Vardy was our fourth top scorer excluding penalties I believe?

[los dedos]

7 minutes ago, theessexfox said:

Vardy was our fourth top scorer excluding penalties I believe?

Who was above him and did Youri's penalties count 

[Guest SO1]

Good Luck trying to find a keeper better than Kasper. The amount of matches he saved our bacon this season...what's the cup worth? Statistics are only as good as the human collecting them so let's not give any credence to them being the be all end all.

[lcfc_forever]

2 minutes ago, SO1 said:

Good Luck trying to find a keeper better than Kasper. The amount of matches he saved our bacon this season...what's the cup worth? Statistics are only as good as the human collecting them so let's not give any credence to them being the be all end all.

Kasper is an absolute hero for his performance in the FA Cup Final. 

 

Given what we know about his character, I think he himself would acknowledge he can perform better and needs to work on his game. 

[Duquesne Whistle]

57 minutes ago, Foxxed said:

There was a thread few seasons back with some guy trying to prove with quite a few detailed statistics that Schmeichel was overrated. 

It was probably Ben Hamer 

[don_danbury]

1 hour ago, Foxxed said:

There was a thread few seasons back with some guy trying to prove with quite a few detailed statistics that Schmeichel was overrated. He is, however, the team’s strongest personality on the pitch, something I feel we often miss, and his saves have won us trophies. We have to accept, I think, Vardy’s off the ball work will be a greater contribution compared to his goal scoring. I hope we can have a front three of Barnes, Vardy and  Iheanacho next season.

schmeichel is definitely not overrated. if anything he is underrated 

Edited 25 May 2021 by don_danbury

[Paninistickers]

This season was peak Schmeichel. 

 

Improbable goal saving saves every 2 or 3 matches

[dayday]

I remember reading a thread on Man Utd’s red cafe last season, and a few of them was obsessed about expected goals.

 

Apparently are goals to shots was insane, and we was scoring well more than our expected figure

 

I personally think it’s a load of old tosh.

[KansasFox]

19 minutes ago, dayday said:

I remember reading a thread on Man Utd’s red cafe last season, and a few of them was obsessed about expected goals.

 

Apparently are goals to shots was insane, and we was scoring well more than our expected figure

 

I personally think it’s a load of old tosh.

I agree.  And probably even more so with the expected goals conceded.  Maybe Kasper let in a fair few unexpected goals, but what if he made even more unexpected saves?  And someone missing an expected goal tells so little.  I imagine Mason Mounts shots in the cup final were expected goals, but they were stopped by unexpected saves!  One could read the expected stats and you would just think Mounts shooting was poor, when actually Schmeichel's shot stopping was out of this world!  

For me these are the kind of stats that just allow you to prove anything you want!!   ....Or maybe I just don't understand how it all works really!

[Foxaholic ME]

35 minutes ago, don_danbury said:

schmeichel is definitely not overrated. if anything he is underrated 

Good season but went from hero to villa against Spurs   onethrough his legs one abysmal effort from a corner  and had he displayed anything like normal form we would be celebrating  champions league 

[foxile5]

42 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

This season was peak Schmeichel. 

 

Improbable goal saving saves every 2 or 3 matches

But he doesn't have 100% distribution when he's delivering balls from his long kicks. Gerrimout

[Guest worth_the_wait]

There's a lot of obsessing over opta, statistics, and more statistics.

 

I wonder how much notice great managers (such as Alex Ferguson) used to pay to that sort of thing?

[lcfc_forever]

16 minutes ago, worth_the_wait said:

There's a lot of obsessing over opta, statistics, and more statistics.

 

I wonder how much notice great managers (such as Alex Ferguson) used to pay to that sort of thing?

He did pay attention to this for sure, comes through what he’s written since retiring. 

Edited 25 May 2021 by lcfc_forever

[lcfc_forever]

1 hour ago, KansasFox said:

I agree.  And probably even more so with the expected goals conceded.  Maybe Kasper let in a fair few unexpected goals, but what if he made even more unexpected saves?  And someone missing an expected goal tells so little.  I imagine Mason Mounts shots in the cup final were expected goals, but they were stopped by unexpected saves!  One could read the expected stats and you would just think Mounts shooting was poor, when actually Schmeichel's shot stopping was out of this world!  

For me these are the kind of stats that just allow you to prove anything you want!!   ....Or maybe I just don't understand how it all works really!

I get the scepticism and it isn’t completely precise but I can guarantee you that this type of analysis is what we and the other top clubs use to assess performance. 
 

As an example this season, expected goals suggested Everton and Southampton would fall away - they did - and Tottenham wouldn’t maintain their strong start to the season either. It’s far more right than wrong, and much better than the rubbish you hear from pundits. 

[urban fox]

8 minutes ago, worth_the_wait said:

There's a lot of obsessing over opta, statistics, and more statistics.

 

I wonder how much notice great managers (such as Alex Ferguson) used to pay to that sort of thing?

Yes but it’s the world we live in. We have people at the club who’s sole job is to analyse these things and prepare dossiers on any potential targets. One of the reasons Evans joined us was because of how impressed he was with the stats research and dossier we had prepared on him before putting in our bid. Showed that we were serious about him.

[theessexfox]

1 hour ago, KansasFox said:

I agree.  And probably even more so with the expected goals conceded.  Maybe Kasper let in a fair few unexpected goals, but what if he made even more unexpected saves?  And someone missing an expected goal tells so little.  I imagine Mason Mounts shots in the cup final were expected goals, but they were stopped by unexpected saves!  One could read the expected stats and you would just think Mounts shooting was poor, when actually Schmeichel's shot stopping was out of this world!  

For me these are the kind of stats that just allow you to prove anything you want!!   ....Or maybe I just don't understand how it all works really!

Making unexpected saves would also come into the statistic. It's a measure of how many goals you would statistically expect to go in (recorded after the shot was taken), vs how many we actually conceded, so it would take into account saves he should have made as well as saves he had no right to make. However, assessing goalkeepers' performance is pretty tricky statistically - if a keeper flies out and misses the ball, the post-shot XG will probably be around 99.9% and it will look like the keeper has no chance of saving it, when it's his error that has led to such a high probability of scoring, so it's not a flawless measure.

 

The Athletic's Zonal Marking podcast had a good episode about this - some keepers have hugely overperformed against their expected goals against one season, and then underperformed the next, so it's not a perfect indicator of goalkeeping performance I'd say.

[Nicolo Barella]

19 hours ago, theessexfox said:

Making unexpected saves would also come into the statistic. It's a measure of how many goals you would statistically expect to go in (recorded after the shot was taken), vs how many we actually conceded, so it would take into account saves he should have made as well as saves he had no right to make. However, assessing goalkeepers' performance is pretty tricky statistically - if a keeper flies out and misses the ball, the post-shot XG will probably be around 99.9% and it will look like the keeper has no chance of saving it, when it's his error that has led to such a high probability of scoring, so it's not a flawless measure.

 

The Athletic's Zonal Marking podcast had a good episode about this - some keepers have hugely overperformed against their expected goals against one season, and then underperformed the next, so it's not a perfect indicator of goalkeeping performance I'd say.

Whilst it's generally a good indicator of goalkeeper performance, another thing it fails to identify over the course of a season is, to borrow an American term, how "clutch" a goalkeeper is in certain more important games e.g. the FA Cup final.

[Kilworthfox]

23 hours ago, lcfc_forever said:

There was a piece published in the Athletic about the Alternative Premier League awards.

 

I won't post all the content given the forum rules but there are a couple of insights that are really interesting, plus where we should have finished according to expected goals.

 

 

 

Expectations, are not facts. I don't see how you can read anything tangible into this at all.

[lcfc_forever]

3 minutes ago, Kilworthfox said:

Expectations, are not facts. I don't see how you can read anything tangible into this at all.

It what the top clubs increasingly use. Would recommend reading: 

Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution

[Kilworthfox]

2 minutes ago, lcfc_forever said:

It what the top clubs increasingly use. Would recommend reading: 

Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution

Those top clubs who make such good decisions? 

[lcfc_forever]

19 minutes ago, Kilworthfox said:

Those top clubs who make such good decisions? 

Well, they cite Dortmund, Brentford and Man City who've done pretty well! 

[theessexfox]

30 minutes ago, Kilworthfox said:

Expectations, are not facts. I don't see how you can read anything tangible into this at all.

Expected goals is a statistical model calculating the probability of a shot going in from a certain distance, angle, pass, etc based on thousands of previous shots in similar situations, it’s pretty tangible and fact-driven

Edited 26 May 2021 by theessexfox

[5waller5]

33 minutes ago, lcfc_forever said:

It what the top clubs increasingly use. Would recommend reading: 

Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution

 

Thanks for the recommendation - Have sent this to my Kindle for some bedtime reading!!

 

One thing that surely can never be properly analysed is the X factor though - I'm sure Matt Le Tissier would look rubbish on a spreadsheet but could win games single handedly ...... I may find out over the next few evenings!!