This page is set aside for a bit of a hobby of mine: analytics. Now granted I’m not the SMRTEST guy at this but over the past few years, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on predictive analytics with respect to football.
One of the things that I’ve really been interested in is the correlation between goals conceded and challenging for the title. I genuinely believe that is one of the best indicators of League position (besides points). This season, however, I’m investigating a different stat altogether – total shot ratio and more specifically total shot ratio on target.
I’m curious to see that if we use the two metrics together, can we accurately predict League position this season.
This is not about vast amounts of data and tracking every statistic out there, it is a very pointed effort to see if these two metrics can accurately predict League position come May – so you won’t find Assist stats or Possession percentages here. In short, are Goals Conceded and Total Shot Ratio on Target true Performance Indicators?
UPDATE: Starting in Week 19, I’ve begun to investigate how I can combine Goals Conceded with Total Shot Ratio (on Target) to come up with a single metric. If you’re a statistician, look away now. Essentially, what I’ve done for this new Combined Metric is used Goals Conceded per game and multiplied it by (1-) the TSR on Target.
Combined Metric = (Goals Conceded/Game) x (1-TSR*)
The logic behind this is that Goals Conceded should be low and TSR should be high – however TSR is a ratio which means it has a maximum of 1. So by saying you want a high TSR, you are essentially attempting to minimize the difference between your TSR and 1. By doing this, you can now say that both numbers being low is a positive metric, and the subsequent sum of these numbers (lower is better) may prove to be an indicator of League Position. I still think Goals Conceded is the more indicative of the two numbers so I will investigate weighting this number in future weeks.
I’ve been collecting the data from WhoScored.com and Four Four Two Stats Zone (which uses Opta) and feeding it into a spreadsheet to see what I can see. I’m an amateur at this so don’t beat me up too badly.
Every week (or couple of weeks), I’ll post the latest results and hopefully some observations. In the graphic section to the right, you’ll see a chart sorted by points (section 1). It also lists Goals Against and Total Shot Ratio and Total Shot Ratio on Target. Below that, you can find out the top and bottom three’s for a variety of stats which are up to date (section 2). Finally, in the top right, you can see Arsenal’s average goals for and goals against (section 3). The bracketed number in gold represents the average needed to win the League since the 1990/91 season.
Youknowit!
OG
Click the thumbnails below to see the posts for the 2016/17 and 2015/16 seasons:
