Stats – Page 2 – Under The Hammers

West Ham v Watford in Numbers

Know all there is to know about the numbers game.

Numbers Geoff Hopkins has written some excellent interesting articles about the use of statistics in football. I’ll add a few numbers of my own in an analysis of the Watford debacle. Like Geoff I’ve made use of the very good whoscored.com website, whilst also checking other statistical databases, newspapers, and the internet, as well as using my brain to recall other bits of data I’ve read or seen or thought of.

I’ll start with “0” or zero. This is the tolerance that the club say they will show to fans deemed to have offended in violence or standing issues within the stadium. This is also the number of times Watford have scored four goals away from home in a Premier League game.

56,974 – yesterday’s attendance at the start of the game. I wonder if the club have read a previous article of mine where I mentioned how co-incidental it is that our attendance is frequently x thousand, 977. Three fewer this time!

25,000 (estimated) – the number still in the stadium when the final whistle blew.

38 – the number of times Watford have found themselves two goals behind in a Premier League game, including this weekend.

37 – the number of times Watford have lost the game after falling two goals behind in a Premier League game.

33 – the number of minutes required to establish a two goal lead. This is also, roughly, the amount of playing time in minutes needed to turn a two goal lead into a two goal deficit.

4 – the number of Watford players that I read we were linked with in the last transfer window – Janmaat, Pereyra, Deeney and Ighalo were all on our “radar” according to one source or another. But like a lot of these rumours – probably just made-up stories to fill column inches. Nonetheless, Pereyra looked some player, and Deeney took his goal splendidly.

4 again – the number of league goals scored by Michail Antonio from inside the penalty area this season (I won’t call it a penalty box as a box is three–dimensional, and the area is not) – more than any other Premier League player

10 – the number of headed goals scored by Michail Antonio since the beginning of last season – more than any other Premier League player – not bad for a “winger” who has played often at right back! Keep him up front Slav! Trust the stats!

11,085 – the number of days since Watford last scored at least four goals away from home in the top division. On the same day (5 May 1986) we were losing 3-1 at Everton in the last game of the momentous season (1985-86) which saw us finish in third place.

“Any number you want to one” – the odds you could have got on a Watford victory if you had gone on the betting exchanges at around 3.35pm on Saturday afternoon.

1 – the number of times Watford have previously beaten us 4-2 at our ground in a league game (on 21 February 1984 – Bobby Barnes and Dave Swindlehurst scored our goals in front of 21,263 at Upton Park).

35,711 – the increase in the attendance between the two times Watford have beaten us 4-2 on our ground (the increase is greater than the “all-seating” Upton Park capacity – well you know what I mean)

West Ham figures first in the following section:

58%-42% – our dominance in possession of the ball in the game

19-13 – our dominance in shots

7-0 – our dominance in shots from set-pieces

12-13 – slight advantage to Watford in shots “in open play”

4-8 – now we’re getting to the more important stuff – Watford had twice as many shots on target as we did. You are very unlikely to score unless you have shots on target. Yes I know it is possible if you want to be pedantic – deflections and open goals.

441-322 total passes; 381-231 completed passes; 86%-72% pass success – so we had more of the ball, and were better at finding a team mate with it, but what these figures don’t tell us is the area of the field where the passes were made! I’d like to see the statistic of successful passes in the final third of the pitch – but we never see this one – it would be a better indicator. In fact our pass success percentage was not bettered by any side in the whole Premier League on Saturday. Hull equalled us on 86%, and Middlesbrough were next on 85%. Neither of those teams won either! So what does it prove?

12-25 tackles; 50%-92% percentage of tackles won – perhaps gives an indication of Watford defensively compared to ourselves?

4-4 corners; 25-13 crosses – our goals came directly from a corner and a cross.

10-15 fouls conceded – we committed fewer than our opponents.

The really important statistic is that we threw away a two goal lead and lost the game 4-2. David Sullivan said he wasn’t going to consider a new contract for Slaven Bilic until he’d proved himself in the second season. Now is the time for him to show us his management capabilities.

More Damned Statistics

Studies have shown that accurate numbers aren’t any more useful that the ones you make up!

stats

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.

Lies, Damn Lies and Football Statistics

Football statistics, what do they mean and how do West Ham fare?

One of the growth industries of modern football is the statistic and every game seemingly now has an army of people studying play on computer monitors so that every pass, tackle and duel can be recorded and fed into a database for subsequent analysis and debate.

As a young boy I was regularly given Playfair Cricket and Football Annuals as a present which became required bedtime reading to the accompaniment of Radio Luxembourg where Horace Batchelor urged listeners to subscribe to his patented method of winning the football pools.

While the Cricket Annual was packed with player stats of runs scored, wickets taken, catches, stumpings and averages the most that you got for football players of the time was appearances and goals scored. Even Horace Batchelor had no inside statistical knowledge to support his“Famous Infra Draw Method” and his approach was to pool resources and create a huge permutation to improve the chances of picking out the drawn games.

Fast forward to today and the internet is awash with football stats and there are companies and websites that are completely devoted to their collection and analysis. The range of stats now includes number of shots, passes, tackles, fouls, aerial duels, short passes, long passes, dribbles, interceptions and distance run.

The problem that I have is that while these stats may be interesting is their any causal relationship between the information collected and the outcome of the match? Looking at the cricket stats I think it is clear that scoring runs and taking wickets are quite fundamental to winning a game but how important is, say, aerial duels won to the outcome of a football match?

The Whoscored website is a great resource for the stats aficionado and they live by their claim to be “Revolutionising Football Statistics”. So it was interesting to look at how Leicester had fared last season from a stats perspective as they ran out comfortable Premier League champions by 10 points.

The stand-out for me from Leicester’s season is that they were ranked 18^th for Possession and 19^th for Pass Success Rate (we should not be surprised that these two metrics are closely correlated because I have read that Opta use Pass Success Rate as a proxy for Possession – they don’t actually record who is any possession at any one time!). Where Leicester did well was for Interceptions, number of Tackles and Aerial Duels won. For Aerial Duels they were just behind Aston Villa – so we can see that it didn’t do them much good.

From all of these stats, Whoscored derive an overall rating (although I couldn’t find any details as to how this is calculated). The top 6 clubs based on the rating (in order) were Arsenal, Leicester, Tottenham, Manchester City, West Ham and Southampton with Manchester United in distant 10^th place. So I guess you could say there is some correlation if the rating is directly related to the attributes measured.

For the TV viewer it is Possession that is the most frequently presented statistic and this seems odd when, at least based on last season, it bears no relation to the probable outcome. It may give the disgruntled losing manager something to hid behind yet the only true meaningful statistic is goals scored.

The statistical summary of West Ham’s last season also shows that we were one of the poorer teams as far as Possession and Pass Success (12th and 13^th respectively) are concerned. We performed quite well for Total Shots and Shots On Target but our main claim to fame was being one of the most Fouled sides in the league.

So that was last season and for this we start with a fresh notebook and pencil and will provide regular updates on how the wonderful world of statistics is affecting West Ham’s season.