Following
my earlier piece on the limitations of a statistical approach to football analysis, the sight of Bolton at the top of the shooting accuracy
chart caused me to set myself a little challenge: to see if each team in the
Premiership could in fact claim to be ‘number one’ at something.
 |
| Fig. 1 - the Anfield Cat |
Now,
I’ve rigged numbers before (things like fig. 1 don’t just happen), considered
it on several other occasions (giving up plotting the relative positions of
Didier Drogba’s head and ground level in Chelsea v Barcelona because sitting
down at half-time was too difficult to force on the x- axis), and screwed up a
couple of times (the form guide that suggested certain teams were averaging
more than three points a game early on in the season) but I can assure you that
all these numbers are echt, coming as
they do from the lovely people at
http://www.football-data.co.uk/ (thus, certain stats such as
shots / on target may differ from other data sources, and I don’t have
possession / pass completion stats).
Not
Opta, I’m afraid. I can’t afford Opta. If anyone is interested, my birthday is
in January...
The
rules – each achievement must be positive (i.e. no ‘best at letting in goals’),
so yes, I was most worried about finding something for Villa; and the Occam’s
Razor approach applies, start with the obvious stuff and only apply filters
where necessary.
Notes:
- ‘accuracy’ is the percentage of shots deemed on target; ‘efficiency’ the percentage of shots on target resulting in a goal; ‘conversion rate’ is the percentage of total shots resulting in a goal; ‘save rate’ is the percentage of shots on target against that did not result in a goal.
- Filters applied include home / away record, 2011 / 2012 split, and, when I got desperate, results by month and multiple combinations of the above.
Here
are the results – well done everybody.
- Manchester City – most goals (93), most shots (666), most shots on target (399), most shots and shots on target in a single game (35, 24 – v QPR), fewest goals conceded (20), most home points (55), most home wins (18) and at that point I stopped writing down any more things. There were lots of others.
- Manchester United – most first half goals (40), most away points (42), most away wins (13) and again, stopped writing them down, and again, there were lots of others.
- Arsenal – highest 2011 away accuracy (64.18%), most goals in February (14)
- Tottenham Hotspur – highest number of corners in a game (19 v Villa – joint with MCFC v QPR and NUFC v SAFC), most points in September (9) November (9) January (10) and May (7), most goals in November (8) January (9) and May (7)
- Newcastle United – highest 2012 away efficiency (28.89%)
- Chelsea – most shots in 2011 (314)
- Everton – highest 2012 home save rate (92.31%) and efficiency (27.54%), most goals in April (14)
- Liverpool – most corners (308)
- Fulham – the only team with no red cards this season. Good lads, they are. Also, recovered two half time deficits to win, so highest turnarounds.
- West Bromwich Albion – most away goals in February (6)
- Swansea – fewest fouls (309) and yellow cards (40), highest home save rate (87%)
- Norwich – most away goals in January (4 – joint with Liverpool and Sunderland)
- Sunderland – highest 2012 efficiency (24.47%) and save rate (86.36%)
- Stoke – highest home efficiency (26.6%)
- Wigan Athletic – most points in April (9)
- Aston Villa – I swear I am not doing this on purpose but I genuinely can’t find a thing...
- Queens Park Rangers – highest percentage of points at home (70.27% - rising to 95% in 2012)
- Bolton – highest home accuracy (64.96%) and 2011 accuracy (67.45%)
- Blackburn Rovers – highest 2011 away efficiency (31.37%) and conversion rate (18.6%)
- Wolverhampton Wanderers – highest percentage of points away in 2012 (87.5%)
This of course proves absolutely nothing, but it was interesting to see how difficult it was to find 'winning metrics' for teams high up the table - Arsenal, for example; one might expect a more obvious skill or facet to the game to emerge from the dataset for a team that finishes third; ditto Newcastle and Chelsea. What this perhaps indicates is the weird up-and-down nature of the season, with teams having slow starts, slumps, collapses etc - and conversely, with Wigan and Everton doing their usual end-of-season thing.
While Villa is the only team I couldn't find anything for, the QPR and Wolves stats are, of course, a half-the-story story, meaning mostly that they were shocking away from / at home respectively. But I am a slave to the numbers.
Anyway, I have failed, so it really doesn't matter. As you were.
