It’s not hard to see why Wigan Athletic suffered relegation at the end of the 2012-13 English Premier League season. If a club gives up 73 goals, as Wigan did, chances are it’s going down. In fact, since the league went to 20 teams, every single one that conceded 73 times or more was relegated. But why did Wigan leak goals like a sieve? I ask this question because Wigan’s then-coach, Roberto Martínez, has been running into defensive problems at Everton, too. It’s also an interesting question because, by at least a few popular statistics, Wigan didn’t look that bad….
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What happened to Liverpool?
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…
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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…
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