How do we gauge how influential a player is to his team’s performance? To most fans, it is safe to assume that goal scorers like Ighalo, Vardy, and Lukaku are crucial to their side’s attack, but how do we determine how important? How can we determine who has the most impact on a team’s passing […]
The first half of the EPL season has certainly featured some impressive individual performances. Jamie Vardy scored in an EPL record 11 straight games, Mesut Ozil is already approaching the single season assist record, and players like Ighalo and Lukaku can’t seem to stop scoring. In a season of such astonishing performances, I broke down […]
Merry Christmas! It is a time for family, fun, and EPL midseason review! The soccer season is almost halfway through, and there have certainly been plenty of surprises so far. Certainly, there will be plenty more entertainment the rest of the season, but I spent some time this week scouring through stats to try and […]
Some of the biggest story lines in the EPL this season have revolved around the styles of Mourinho’s Chelsea and Van Gaal’s Manchester United. Both managers have been under pressure for their team’s “boring” styles of play, albeit with entirely different results. There are a million different ways to win a soccer match. Sit back […]
The MLS season is now well into the second half of its season, and the team styles and playoff picture are starting to become clearer. I decided to compare teams’ styles regarding shot distances, percentage of long balls, successful dribbles, aerial wins, and defensive actions. First, below shows the top performing teams of the season […]
I’ve been looking a lot at goal scorers lately, and it reminded me of a project I read in The Numbers Game on marginal points per goal. The gist of the study was that goals are a means to an end, namely points. If we look at goals in this way, then a goal is […]
We have all heard that “money can’t buy happiness”, but does this saying hold true in the world of sports? One would think that the teams with the most money can buy the best players, and therefore would have the most successful teams. Well, the MLS released its salary information last month so I set […]
What makes a great goal scorer? The obvious answer (and probably the correct one) is that he scores goals. However, that can often be an oversimplified version of the truth. Say player A scores 20 goals in a season but takes 15 shots a game, while player B scores 15 goals in a season, while […]
My projection models for the 2015-2016 EPL Season
The 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup has officially concluded and the US Women are world champions! It is a huge accomplishment for US soccer, and one that soccer fans all over America should be proud of. The tournament itself was a huge success as well, with solid attendance numbers throughout and the final broke the […]
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