Since my last report about conversion and shot records for various teams in the EPL, I've been wondering how things were looking so far this season on the shot frequency & conversion front. But instead of analyzing one league at a time, I thought it'd be interesting to compare several leagues together. This has the nice advantage of providing a greater number and range of teams to analyze.
So here we go. Below are average shot frequency and conversion ratios for all teams in the Bundesliga, the EPL, La Liga, and Serie A at the end of 2010 (that is, roughly halfway through the 2010/11 season).
Here's what else we can see:
First, with some notable exceptions that I'll get to in a moment, the very top teams across the four leagues tend to cluster in the upper right hand corner. These teams stand out in generating lots of shots, and they are great at taking their chances. No wonder they're having great seasons.
Second, most of the other clubs having outstanding seasons either fall into the top left or bottom right - that is, they either take lots of shots but don't convert all that well, or they don't shoot quite as frequently as, say, Barcelona, Real Madrid, or Dortmund, but they have conversion rates that rival these teams (or better, even). Teams in the upper left need to improve conversion rates to equal the truly outstanding Barcelona, while teams in the lower right need to find ways to generate more shots.
Third, many, if not most, of the struggling teams cluster in the lower left hand corner - they don't generate many chances and they don't take them when they get them. Simple as that.
Finally, there are some really interesting exceptions to these general rules: see if you can find Man U and Borussia Moenchengladbach on the graph. They look awfully similar in shot frequency and conversion. How can that be? One is leading the EPL, while the other is dead last in the Bundesliga. Seems that Man U's middling shot statistics - when compared to all of the top European teams - is good enough to lead the EPL, so my hunch is that they are doing something we can't observe that turns shots into wins at the right time (with maximum efficiency, so to speak). This is in line with people's general observation that Man U aren't playing a dominant game this season, but somehow have remained unbeaten (to the surprise of many, including Arsene Wenger). In contrast, Gladbach on occasion have scored lots of goals - winning at Leverkusen 6-3, for example - but aren't able to sustain this kind of performance and mostly find ways of losing the match (a nightmare for an old fan like me).
The Man U and Gladbach examples highlight an interesting analytic issue with these kinds of statistics. It's important to keep in mind that these numbers are averages, calculated over all matches for the entire season (so far). But they do not tell us what the shot frequency and conversion statistics are during individual matches or what the distribution of statistics is.
As a result, a few bad (or great) games can throw off a team's stats (not a surprise, given that teams have only played about half a season's games). Here are Man U's and Gladbach's match by match frequency and conversion rates. As you can see, Man U has typically fallen into the category of teams that take more shots than most teams and have converted reasonably well. In contrast, Gadbach is just all over the place. But what you also see is that a few good games (with lots of shots or high conversion) elevated M'Gladbach's statistics, while a couple of awful matches (in which they avoided defeat) brought down the Man U numbers. If you're curious, these were a 0-0 draw at Sunderland in early October, when the Black Cats completely dominated Man U and van der Sar was the hero for Ferguson's team. The other one was another 0-0 draw, this time at Man City.
First, with some notable exceptions that I'll get to in a moment, the very top teams across the four leagues tend to cluster in the upper right hand corner. These teams stand out in generating lots of shots, and they are great at taking their chances. No wonder they're having great seasons.
Second, most of the other clubs having outstanding seasons either fall into the top left or bottom right - that is, they either take lots of shots but don't convert all that well, or they don't shoot quite as frequently as, say, Barcelona, Real Madrid, or Dortmund, but they have conversion rates that rival these teams (or better, even). Teams in the upper left need to improve conversion rates to equal the truly outstanding Barcelona, while teams in the lower right need to find ways to generate more shots.
Third, many, if not most, of the struggling teams cluster in the lower left hand corner - they don't generate many chances and they don't take them when they get them. Simple as that.
Finally, there are some really interesting exceptions to these general rules: see if you can find Man U and Borussia Moenchengladbach on the graph. They look awfully similar in shot frequency and conversion. How can that be? One is leading the EPL, while the other is dead last in the Bundesliga. Seems that Man U's middling shot statistics - when compared to all of the top European teams - is good enough to lead the EPL, so my hunch is that they are doing something we can't observe that turns shots into wins at the right time (with maximum efficiency, so to speak). This is in line with people's general observation that Man U aren't playing a dominant game this season, but somehow have remained unbeaten (to the surprise of many, including Arsene Wenger). In contrast, Gladbach on occasion have scored lots of goals - winning at Leverkusen 6-3, for example - but aren't able to sustain this kind of performance and mostly find ways of losing the match (a nightmare for an old fan like me).
The Man U and Gladbach examples highlight an interesting analytic issue with these kinds of statistics. It's important to keep in mind that these numbers are averages, calculated over all matches for the entire season (so far). But they do not tell us what the shot frequency and conversion statistics are during individual matches or what the distribution of statistics is.
As a result, a few bad (or great) games can throw off a team's stats (not a surprise, given that teams have only played about half a season's games). Here are Man U's and Gladbach's match by match frequency and conversion rates. As you can see, Man U has typically fallen into the category of teams that take more shots than most teams and have converted reasonably well. In contrast, Gadbach is just all over the place. But what you also see is that a few good games (with lots of shots or high conversion) elevated M'Gladbach's statistics, while a couple of awful matches (in which they avoided defeat) brought down the Man U numbers. If you're curious, these were a 0-0 draw at Sunderland in early October, when the Black Cats completely dominated Man U and van der Sar was the hero for Ferguson's team. The other one was another 0-0 draw, this time at Man City.
