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I decided to look into how efficient a side we are based on different variables, such as passes per game and shots per game to goals. Reason for this was actually down to the first ever 'analyst' in football: Wing Commander Charles Reep, who while having some quite ludicrous beliefs, effectively changed football and the way we approach the sport. He was one of the first people to try to justify the long ball game based on efficiency and while this has been quite a up and down suggestion, not many people can argue with the success of managers such as Tony Pulis who knows how to perfect that style.
In any case, Charles Reep was so intrigued by the concept of analytics and efficiency that he had detailed analysis of over 2,200 games spending around 80 hours on each game over his lifetime (around 30 years of his life allowing for sleep). That sort of dedication to the numbers game helped bring statistics to where they are now in the sport. I wanted to use the concept of efficiency to see how we have performed this season despite our issues with possession.
Now onto the actual numbers and beyond the history of analysts in football (if you are interested in more, "The Numbers Game" is a fantastic book to read). I chose a few key parameters to decide different cases of efficiency so as to allow for the broadest collection of data. While defensive efficiency should be noted, I'm going to be primarily looking at offensive efficiency and seeing how we stack up in attack for now.
I've broken offensive efficiency down into 4 parts: Shots per goal, key passes per goal, passes per goal and defensive actions per goal. These all offer different bits of information, the first 3 being fairly obvious but in terms of defensive actions per goal, it can show us how successfully we turn over the ball. Are was smart and forward thinking when we win the ball back?
The answer is not really, at least in terms of turnovers per goal. You can see from the table below where we stand on the defensive actions per goal table and we are 14th. Note that defensive actions are purely successful tackles and interceptions (Blocks haven't been considered as we can't guarantee that blocks will go to one of our players after they've been made, however looking at the numbers, I doubt they'd be particularly result changing).
Next up is passes per goal, which suggests how quickly we can move the ball from back to front and get a goal. This was what Charles Reep believed was the key to efficiency. Here we are extremely efficient, coming in 3rd in the table for this particular variable. This suggests one of two things: 1) we win the ball very high up the field and don't need to play many passes forward to get the ball in the box; or 2) We have a very direct game style. In any case, the table below shows the overall league table for this particular analytic.
Next is key passes per goal, which shows how effectively we convert big chances into goals. This shows in a sense more than any other analytic how deadly our finishing actually is and the results are a solid 9th place in the table.
Finally, shots per goal which in a similar way to the above analytic shows how good we are at converting chances and whether the chances are actually good. Here we are 8th, which suggests a fairly close link between key passes and shots as expected.
All in all the results show the that we are quite an efficient team with a few improvements being needed to really set us on a good stead for promotion in the coming season. I could have looked at all these analytics compared to shots instead of goals but I felt that goals were a better suggestion of output in general. Burnley are deserved champions after showing in all these tables an incredible level of efficiency in all cases.
Hull however have shown almost no efficiency relative to their position, suggesting that the ludicrous amount of chances they may create (2nd most shots in the league behind Reading) are really not converted well enough. Similar can be said for Middlesbrough who's position is not indicated by their efficiency but by quantity.
Is quality better than quantity in this league? Burnley certainly suggest that but the two teams behind them are almost showing the exact opposite effect.
In any case, Charles Reep was so intrigued by the concept of analytics and efficiency that he had detailed analysis of over 2,200 games spending around 80 hours on each game over his lifetime (around 30 years of his life allowing for sleep). That sort of dedication to the numbers game helped bring statistics to where they are now in the sport. I wanted to use the concept of efficiency to see how we have performed this season despite our issues with possession.
Now onto the actual numbers and beyond the history of analysts in football (if you are interested in more, "The Numbers Game" is a fantastic book to read). I chose a few key parameters to decide different cases of efficiency so as to allow for the broadest collection of data. While defensive efficiency should be noted, I'm going to be primarily looking at offensive efficiency and seeing how we stack up in attack for now.
I've broken offensive efficiency down into 4 parts: Shots per goal, key passes per goal, passes per goal and defensive actions per goal. These all offer different bits of information, the first 3 being fairly obvious but in terms of defensive actions per goal, it can show us how successfully we turn over the ball. Are was smart and forward thinking when we win the ball back?
The answer is not really, at least in terms of turnovers per goal. You can see from the table below where we stand on the defensive actions per goal table and we are 14th. Note that defensive actions are purely successful tackles and interceptions (Blocks haven't been considered as we can't guarantee that blocks will go to one of our players after they've been made, however looking at the numbers, I doubt they'd be particularly result changing).
Next up is passes per goal, which suggests how quickly we can move the ball from back to front and get a goal. This was what Charles Reep believed was the key to efficiency. Here we are extremely efficient, coming in 3rd in the table for this particular variable. This suggests one of two things: 1) we win the ball very high up the field and don't need to play many passes forward to get the ball in the box; or 2) We have a very direct game style. In any case, the table below shows the overall league table for this particular analytic.
Next is key passes per goal, which shows how effectively we convert big chances into goals. This shows in a sense more than any other analytic how deadly our finishing actually is and the results are a solid 9th place in the table.
Finally, shots per goal which in a similar way to the above analytic shows how good we are at converting chances and whether the chances are actually good. Here we are 8th, which suggests a fairly close link between key passes and shots as expected.
All in all the results show the that we are quite an efficient team with a few improvements being needed to really set us on a good stead for promotion in the coming season. I could have looked at all these analytics compared to shots instead of goals but I felt that goals were a better suggestion of output in general. Burnley are deserved champions after showing in all these tables an incredible level of efficiency in all cases.
Hull however have shown almost no efficiency relative to their position, suggesting that the ludicrous amount of chances they may create (2nd most shots in the league behind Reading) are really not converted well enough. Similar can be said for Middlesbrough who's position is not indicated by their efficiency but by quantity.
Is quality better than quantity in this league? Burnley certainly suggest that but the two teams behind them are almost showing the exact opposite effect.
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