For a while as a young boy I collected London bus numbers; not route numbers but the fleet number that was painted next to the driver’s cab. It was the budget version of train spotting because you didn’t need to buy a platform ticket. I would carefully write the numbers down in a small notebook but I didn’t stick at it very long before realising the whole exercise was a complete waste of time.
Nowadays any millennial geek fascinated by collecting and recording pointless information can ‘monetise’ their proclivity through gainful employment with an organisation such as Opta, the sport’s data specialists. Football, like most sports, is now awash with data that provides a minute by minute analysis of every action and incident so that at any time we can know how far Mark Noble has run today. My assertion, however, is that while the resulting statistics might be interesting they are nothing more and there is no cause and effect between the data presented and the actual outcome of a game i.e. that the stats are basically meaningless. I have written about this previously and undertook to keep a watchful eye as the season progresses to see if I could be proved wrong.
For the purposes of my study I am using the data presented on the Whoscored website, which despite my scepticism over the usefulness of the stats is an excellent resource. The Whoscored data is, I understand, sourced from Opta and fed real-time to a large number of media companies . For each game, the website provides a match report showing summary details for possession, passes completed, shots on goal, aerial duels won, tackles made and dribbles won. I am making an assumption here that having selected these categories the folks at Whoscored consider them to be the most pertinent to the outcome of a game.
Of the 30 Premier League matches played to date there have been 22 which have had a positive outcome (with 8 drawn games). Of these, the winning team had the advantage in possession, passes completed, shots and dribbles won while the losing side more often came out on top for aerial duels won and tackles made. In only 1 of 30 games (Burnley v Swansea) did the winning side dominate every category while there was also 1 game (Palace v WBA) where the losing side was on top across the board.
So are there any conclusions that we can make? Should managers tell their players that losing aerial duels and tackles is the best way to win the game? Or is it obvious that more shots on goal increase the chance of winning? Or that if you are forced to defend it is likely that you will need to make more tackles?
There was a school of thought last year that conceding possession bore some relation to winning the game; probably because it was a prevalent feature of Leicester’s season (and our own to some extent). This has not been reflected in the games so far this season although I am still not convinced as to how possession is actually measured; the only time I have seen it explained (a few years back) it was suggested that possession is, in fact, derived from passes completed. That in all 30 games the team with most possession also completed most passes may confirm this.
Maybe the only purpose for the stats is the fun of collecting them in a similar vein to the bus numbers and I am over-thinking them. But I don’t believe that is how they are used by TV producers and pundits who present them as if they define the game. For now it remains case unproven as far as I am concerned but I will keep on tracking developments.
There is nothing more satisfying as a supporter than seeing a young player come up through the youth system (or academy in modern parlance) and establish himself in the first team. Over the years we have been blessed with golden ages of plenty from our academy but there have also been periods of famine. In the Premier League age it is becoming increasingly rare for youth players to make it through the ranks and academies have become multi-cultural establishments; much different from bygone days when a youngster from Kent would have been considered exotic in our youth setup.
For every successful youth team product there are many more who simply fade away. Among these there are those who are hotly tipped for stardom but who ultimately do not deliver. We shall be taking a look at some of these ‘Boys Who Never Quite Made It‘.
The doldrums of the International Break is the perfect time to look elsewhere for entertainment rather than seeking it from that collection of expensive labourers masquerading as craftsmen in the national team.
If Michail Antonio picks up an England Cap today he will become the 40th player to represent England as a West Ham player. I don’t know about you but my interest in the England team is always heightened if there is a chance of seeing a Hammer in action. There has to be some incentive to watch the national team these days when there are so many alternative entertainment options such as sorting your CDs into alphabetical order.
Never mind the largely predictable World Cup qualifiers, today also sees the arrival of the First Qualification Round of The (Emirates) Football Association Challenge Cup. Still packed with romance for the clubs at the lower end of the football pyramid, dreams of Wembley, or at least a Third Round meeting with a Premier League team, will be at the back of many a non-league player’s mind as they rub in the pre-match White Horse Oil this afternoon. The big question up and down the country is can the ‘minnows’ from Ashby Ivanhoe, Brimscombe & Thrupp or Sporting Bengal United find their way into the bag along with the big boys next January?
When West Ham play Accrington Stanley in the next round of the League Cup (or whatever it’s called these days) it will be the first encounter between the two clubs. Someone who did once play against Stanley though was legendary goalkeeper Willie ‘Fatty’ Foulke; at the time plying his trade with Bradford City. When Accrington visited Bradford for an FA Cup tie in February 1907 it was discovered that Foulke, who stood 6ft 3in and weighed in at circa 22 stone, was wearing a jersey that clashed with the red shirts of the visitors. After a fruitless search for a suitably large replacement Foulke was wrapped in a sheet borrowed from a neighbouring house. The game ended in a Bradford victory by the only goal and with Foulke barely called into action his makeshift attire was as pristine as it had been at the outset. Thus, the origin of “keeping a clean sheet”. [Incidentally, it is also claimed that the chant “Who ate all the pies?” was originally directed at Foulke.]
Somewhere in the depths of the FA Headquarters there is a room where every single piece of transfer paperwork is processed. In the room there are two middle- aged men (Kevin and Malcolm) both dressed in sleeveless jumpers and FA ties whose job it is to stamp ‘APPROVED’ on the transfer forms when they are happy that everything is in order. All relevant papers are placed in a buff folder before being passed through a glass partition to a lady called Sonia who enters details into the ‘system’. At 11 pm on 31 August, Sonia will leave her seat for the final time and slide the partition closed representing the metaphorical slamming shut of the window for another summer. Our sources close to the matter understand that this is what actually happens.
The Super Sunday Contractual Obligation Match
The Half Time Pep Talk
They used to say that lightning never strikes the same place twice. Although our friends from Giurgiu have already dispelled that particular myth there is little confidence that the same repeat performance will apply to our game against Manchester City this afternoon.
Under The Hammers 