It hasn’t been the easiest road for Brendan Rodgers and Liverpool this season. With Luis Suárez gone and Daniel Sturridge injured, two of their main offensive threats from last year’s title challenge have been out of the picture. Yet Liverpool would have faced a difficult 2014-15 even if both of those players had been available. Let’s put expected goal models and positional tracking aside for a moment. For Liverpool, a glance at some basic statistics can be quite revealing. Here’s how their shots looked for the past four seasons: For starters, the edge in penalty shots in 2013-14 was so…
Read more →
Month: January 2015
Luck or skill, Alan Pardew edition
Success in managing soccer teams isn’t all about merit – just ask Roberto di Matteo, who took control of Chelsea for just a few months and came away with a European Cup winner’s medal. There are managers whose teams can’t catch a break, and there are managers whose teams always get the goals just when they need them. Alan Pardew, who is apparently leaving Newcastle after four years for Crystal Palace, belongs definitively to the latter category. Yet this doesn’t necessarily mean he was lucky. One of the big topics in soccer analytics is distinguishing luck (or other unknown factors) from…
Read more →
Player contributions to cash flow
With the European transfer window opening, millions of dollars will soon be changing hands as soccer players shuttle back and forth between clubs around the world. But how do clubs know the right amount to pay for a new player? In most cases, there are only a few buyers and sellers for players who fit a specific profile, so the market won’t necessarily generate a price that truly represents the players’ values to their new teams. Moreover, every player has a different value to every team. So how much is that new signing really worth? I think there’s room for…
Read more →