Norwich, QPR, and Swansea: How Are the Promoted Clubs Faring This Year?

Now that the January transfer window is closed, clubs are gearing up for the rest of the season. It's a particularly intense time for the three promoted clubs. Before the season, many observers had them on their list of likely candidates for relegation. But judging from the league table at the moment, Norwich and Swansea look to be in a good position to stay up. QPR, in contrast, seem to be a more obvious candidate for a prolonged relegation battle. 

But looks and even results can be deceiving sometimes, so I thought I'd take a closer look at some of the underlying trends in performance among the three promoted clubs. First things first: goals for and against. The graph below shows goals for (green) and against (red) for each club; each dot is a match, and the red and green lines indicate what the performance trend has been this season.

The patterns are remarkably different. While Norwich's offensive and defensive production have been roughly equal (with slightly worse defensive performance generally) and consistently so, Swansea's performance early in the season was a bit all over the place and not all that good. However, since the early days, the Swans have done well, and their offensive and defensive performance levels have been better than they had been early in the year. Contrast that with the pattern we see for QPR: The Rangers' defense has been consistently and significantly worse than their offense. What is more, their offensive production has taken a dive in the second ten weeks of the year.

So how did we get here?

Looking at trends in chance creation and efficiency (in the next graph), we see that all three promoted clubs have been consistently outshot by their opponents - for all three, the red trend line measuring opponent chances is above the green of own shots. There are a couple of interesting differences, mostly with regard to Swansea's defensive performance - the trend in shots allowed has been downward-sloping for the Swans, indicating improvement at that end of the pitch. At the other end, both QPR and Swansea have seen a notable decrease in chance creation since around Week 5 - relatively early in the year. So on chances created and allowed, QPR and Swansea have looked very similar of late (and not good).

Finally, efficiency (goal to shot ratios) is an interesting way of measuring what teams do with the chances they have (or what they allow their opponents to do with theirs). Here, we see that all three clubs' offensive efficiency looks like an inverted U (though this pattern is less pronounced for Swansea): after becoming more efficient in the first 10 weeks, they became ever less efficient since then. The same is true on defense for Swansea and Norwich, but not QPR. The Rangers present the opposite pattern on defense, with their opponents shooting most efficiently early in the season as well as in recent weeks. Unfortunately for QPR supporters, this increase in opponents' levels of efficiency coincided with an increase in the number of chances opponents were allowed to create.

Where does this leave the three promoted clubs at this point in the year? Clearly, looking at goal performance, shots allowed, and defensive efficiency, QPR have been performing below the level of the other two promoted clubs. This suggests the Rangers were well advised to bring in defensive reinforcements as they have done (and more generally, all the help they can get everywhere on the pitch).

To me, Swansea present an intriguing pattern as well: they have done very well this season, points-wise. Yet, despite a more defensive tactical setup generally, the higher level of chance creation by the their opponents coupled with a downward trend in chance creation for the Swans themselves should worry Brendan Rodgers. Eventually, shots and goals will line up - it's hard to escape the long-term trend in the data for an entire season.

But nothing in these data tell us that these clubs are radically different from one another half-way through the season, with the possible exception that QPR's defense has not performed as well as the other two. So I would venture this guess: despite their current table position, none of the promoted clubs will be safe until late in the season.