Here are ten assertions about football, each one in search of just a single word answer -- "TRUE", or "FALSE". (1) Teams are at their most vulnerable when they have just scored (2) Corners lead to goals (3) In any game, the team which has more shots at goal usually wins (4) More passes completed leads to more shots on goal, which in turn leads to more goals scored (5) Luck plays some part in any game, but skill is far more important to the outcome (6) Skill in executing a pass is virtually equal across all players and teams in a league (7) The team which dominates possession usually wins the game (8) Teams which dominate possession in their games, finish higher in the table (9) 3 points for a win has increased the number of goals scored compared to the days of 2 points for a win (10) A team's success is determined by its weakest players, not it's strongest ones The answers can be found on the Visitor Messages on my Profile Page. My source is the book referred to in my signature The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football Is Wrong by Chris Anderson and David Sally.
[nsfw](1) false - Presumably the stat here is that the average goals conceded in the 2-5mins after a goal is less than the average across a game? (2) false - An odd one, but I'm guessing it's that the chance conversion rate for corners (calling every corner a chance), is less than from open play? (3) false - shots at goal or shots on target? I'd be surprised if there was statistically significant data suggesting fewer shots on goal correlates with winning. (4) true - very interesting, i do like this one. Presumably greater pass completion means the ball is generally lost higher up the pitch, meaning the frequency of posession turnovers due to shots is higher, and that because there's been lots of passes the eventually shooter gets a decent opportunity? (5) false - expected that one, too highly skilled teams can cancel each other out, one moment of luck can decide it. (6) true - is this in terms of pass completion? I'd as the quality of passing increases up the leagues, the marking and intelligence of players increases similarly, cancelling out the better passing. (7) false - I guess it's the old adage it's not how much you have it's what you do with it rings true then. (8) true - Seems oddly counter-intuitive where paired with number 7! (9) false - I just think defending has markedly improved. (10) true - expected that. Man for man you'd expect most of, say United's, players to be better than ours, but if their LB is being turned inside out by Snodgrass every few minutes, it'll create chances the other 3 quality defenders couldn't help much to prevent.[/nsfw]
Well done DH. Re. (9), what really did increase markedly was the number of fouls as measured by yellow cards. As the authors say, the football became more "attacking" but not in the manner anticipated Re. (5), the answer holds even if the two teams are far from evenly matched! Skill does make a difference, but it is astonishingly marginal. I will post some explanations later but don't want to spoil the fun too much before people have had a chance to work it out for themselves.
Well this has gone down like the proverbial lead balloon; do we actually prefer arguing about the manager? . Whatever, here's a comment about (1). I'll comment on the rest as and when -- but if nobody is interested please tell me; I do have other things I can do . (1) Teams are at their most vulnerable when they have just scored FALSE If it were true, plotting the times at which a team scores and subsequently concedes should result in a curve which peaks at or near the beginning of the axis representing minutes elapsed since the time of scoring. In fact the opposite is true; it shows that teams are LEAST likely to concede immediately after scoring. Yes, we can all think of examples of a team scoring and almost instantly conceding, leading the spectator next to you, or the radio commentator to pronounce sagely "Teams are at their most vulnerable just after scoring"; but it is nonsense. I think the idea is that teams tend to lose concentration after scoring. Well sometimes they do, but mostly they don't; and they can lose concentration and concede at any time.
Looking at your answers, I would like to see more of the back-up (not because I don't believe you, but because I'd like to see what the means of assessment and the margins are) because I find the answers to (2), (3) and (6) very difficult to believe and the answers to (7) and (8) contradictory by definition. So it's not that your post isn't interesting! It's just that I've got nothing to say until the answers are up...
Thanks Rob. I will expand on all the answers as and when I can, but it won't now be until into next week at the earliest. Re (2), apparently when he first arrived at Chelsea (first time round) Mourinho was astonished that English crowds roared at the winning of a corner, remarking that they were greeted with almost as much rapture as a goal. He couldn't believe it -- or how misguided fans here are .......
I suppose what I can't believe about (2) is the statement because there are quite obviously goals scored from corners, but I suppose it just needs fine-tuning to explain.
Teams can lose concentration at any time, but the rest of the time there isn't a blindingly obvious reason to, whilst there is after a goal. Most people can see the logic "Ah we've scored, we can relax a bit now", and then accept it actually happens. It's funny actually because it's like a "Correlation vs causation" argument, except the causation is there, not the correlation, when usually it's the other way around.
Hi Robbie. I agree with Canary Rob that guessing the answers isn't very interesting (especially since we will be double-guessing due to the heading that this is counter-intuitive) but the real answers will be fascinating, so please tell us what is real when you have time. As for not showing an interest, I'm on a different time zone so I haven't had a chance until now.
Robbie, I think that your thread is one of the best on the board recently and the only reason that i have not responded is because they are thought provoking questions that require time that I haven't got this afternoon. Me arguing against the likes of Carrubah can be done very succinctly and quickly as it requires very little thought at all (sadly). I hope to answer you properly over the weekend mate.
I should point out that I didn't actually try and guess the answers, I copied them from Rob's visitor page and hid them in a NSFW tag, then added my interpretation to each. If it's the pure answers you want, they're not too hard to find. The reasons are obviously the interesting bit.
I suppose the other thing this does is it makes me think about other perceived wisdoms that may be true or false: (11) the team that wins more corners is more likely to win
Yes, I tried to find a still succinct but more precise wording for it. As you say, corners do sometimes produce goals. However, as a matter of fact, they don't do so with greater regularity than other routes to scoring, which is what people seem to assume. A corner doesn't in fact represent a particularly good opportunity to score. While corners do lead to shots on goal, the conversion rate for the resulting shots is actually low; after all, the defending team is crowding its box, has organised itself man to man or zonally, often has defenders on the goal line, has a goal keeper primed to catch, punch or otherwise deal with the in-coming ball, etc. etc. Added to which, the whole thing depends on a decent delivery. People who notice e.g. that Barcelona virtually always take a corner short, may think it is because they lack tall forward players; but it isn't that; it is because they know that not playing the ball into the defending team's hands (or onto their heads) gives a better chance of scoring. People who despair at short corners and shout "Get the f***ing ball into the box" at a corner simply don't know how low the probabilty of scoring from a corner actually is. Of course, there will be exceptions; if like Tony Pulis you build a team designed to score goals from set pieces as opposed to from open play, you will score more regularly from corners than others. But a Rory Delap long throw from by the corner flag will be better than a corner, since with the help of a towel he can direct the ball more accurately with his hands than a corner taker can with his foot.
When you think about it, there are actually a lot of ways in which teams can become distracted. Indeed so many you might marvel at teams/players managing to retain concentration throughout a game. I'd say that Villa's goal last Saturday was very possibly due to our team losing concentration because they are under so much pressure to score. We were on the attack, with a lot of players forward when Guzan got the ball. Look at the space Agbonlahor was in when he received it. Where was the covering defence? Another example: remember the goal we conceded at Stoke which resulted from the linesman wrongly awarding a throw in to Stoke. We were defending in the last few minutes of a game heading for a draw. Players were incensed at the linesman, realising that a throw in for us would virtually guarantee the game ended drawn. Stoke took a quick throw and scored, winning the game. I agree, it seems plausible to suggest lowered concentration after scoring, but the facts prove otherwise.
@vietnam @Thurnby Many thanks. By not expanding on the answers straight away I hoped that people would do exactly what you are doing Thurnby, trying to work out how it can be that the bits of "received wisdom" can actually be wrong, or how what appears so counter-intuitive can in fact be right. Incidentally I am not on commission to sell Anderson and Sally's book .
I should also point out that Anderson & Sally's book is really intended to inform people about football analytics, i.e the application of statistical analysis to performance and other data to football (in which project soccer lags way behind several other sports, in particular baseball and American football). My ten questions are drawn from some of the illustrations used in the book of how the collection and codification of metric (i.e. numerically measurable) data, which is then subjected to powerful statistical analytical techniques, can revolutionise not just how we understand the game but also how clubs, managers and players go about their business of developing their clubs, building their teams and winning football matches (and ultimately Championships and silverware). The book draws on various bits of research, and of course is far from comprehensive. So it would be wrong to treat it as gospel. Football analytics is in its infancy, and has really only been able to take off with the setting up of companies like OPTA who systematically collect and make the data available. Working out which are the right concepts to apply in describing what happens on the pitch is an intellectually challenging task (comparable I suppose to the insight that "speed" is not an adequate concept for theoretical physics and the consequent "invention" of the concept of velocity). If you ask why the stats collected by OPTA and others take the particular form that they do, the answer is that those are the types of data which are currently held to provide the most analytically meaningful and explanatorily powerful descriptions of action on the pitch. There's no real point in counting Cruyff turns, or Ronaldo-esque stepovers however entertaining they may be!
Hi Robbie (this is my home computer and my alter ego name) but here is my promised response 1. false - 2. false - to be honest this is something that I have never actually come across anyway 3. false - I have looked at a lot of stats over the last couple of years and perversely it seems to be almost the exact opposite if anything. 4. false - I think it depends where the passes take place. Against Villa we had lots of passes across the back but this would simply skew the stats 5. false - luck is far more influential than skill although of course it shouldn't be. In my opinion this is because football is often decided by small margins 1-0, 2-1 etc and it only takes a backside deflection for one of the scoring shots to be deflected and for a miss o become a goal and the 2-1 becomes 1-2 - luck. 6. false - I would say that there has to be a quality in the top 4 say that isn't reflected through the rest of the league otherwise srely there would be little point in paying millions for no obvious improvement. The more I type this answer the more nervous I am. 7. false - again it depneds where the possession is and often you can have lots of possesssion in the back four going nowhere which has a misleading effect on the stats. Away teams tend to counter-attack more and generally have less percentage possesion but when they have it they are more direct. 8. false - this is an extension of the previous question and therefore has to have the same answer 9. true - surely this has to be right 10. true - this answer must relate to the increasing dependance on squad players and so in the Winter with injuries and the odd suspension weaknesses are found out and thta is because of the 'weaker' players. I promise I haven't cheated Robbie but I suspect that my score is not great. May I say though a very entertaining OP
@Bushby Canary Your score is pretty good -- 6 out of 10 -- even if not always quite for the reasons you cite. Good effort though, and thanks for taking up the challenge. Here are three more "answers", adding to the above comments about numbers (1) and (2): (3) In any game, the team which has more shots at goal usually wins FALSE Shots at goal is a poor indicator of who wins a particular game. A team may have only one shot at goal, or even no shots at goal, but score and win the game; alternatively a team can have a large number of shots at goal but fail to score. But the question is about how it works out in the long run, i.e. whether if team A has more shots at goal than team B in a given match, the probability is that team A wins that match. Well actually the probability is that the team with more shots at goal will actually lose the game. Stats from the top four European leagues between 2005-6 and 2010-11 show that the team which shoots more, actually wins less than half the time (47% over the four leagues, 45% in the Bundesliga and Serie A). A team which manages more shots on target than the opposition is more likely to win the game, but the percentage probability remains low, somewhere between 50% and 58% depending on the league. So next time you are tempted to shout "Shoot!" at Bradley Johnson as he approaches the opposition penalty area, keep in mind that you are likely encouraging him to add to a statistic which has little bearing on the outcome of the game. (4) More passes completed leads to more shots on goal, which in turn leads to more goals scored TRUE The important thing to ask in this case is whether we are talking about a particular game or the perfomance of a team over e.g. a season. Unlike (3), statement (4) isn't about an individual game; it says that a team which boasts a high pass completion rate is also a team which finds its attacking players most often with accurate passes, and finds them in the optimum goal-scoring areas. Every Saturday produces examples of teams who out-pass the opposition (often in terms of number of passes as well as pass completion rate) but still lose -- last Saturday Swansea (v Arsenal) are an example. But over the length of a season, the teams with the highest pass completion rates rise like cream to the top, not just in league position but also goals scored (and goals not conceded). (5) Luck plays some part in any game, but skill is far more important to the outcome FALSE The operative phrase here is "far more". And of course there is also a question about what exactly counts as "luck". However a whole raft of different studies all produce a similar conclusion: football is the least predictable, most uncertain team game. Of course, this wouldn't apply if Premier League teams were up against teams of primary school children, but even where there are quite marked differences in ability (as in international tournaments or competitions like the FA Cup which pit teams of widely different abilities against each other), the statistics tell the same story: the odds of the underdogs upsetting the favourites are always high and not that far off evens. The same holds if you look at goals: of all goals scored, around 45% owe more than a little to luck. In sum, the ratio of luck to skill is at best 45/55, 0.9/1.1, close to evens but slightly favouring skill. Put another way: all the money, time and effort put in by clubs, their management teams and their players in improving skill and fitness levels and getting their tactics right is simply trying "to deny fortune as much of its role as you possibly can". It's about improving things at the margin. As Canary Rob said, it makes you wonder how many other bits of football lore and received wisdom (to which we unthinkingly subscribe) might turn out to be just myths and fallacies. I'd guess quite a lot.
I'm glad I now have statistical evidence to back up me and my mother always willing him NOT to shoot! To the best of my memory Johnson has only scored one goal from a long range effort for Norwich, against Bolton, and it took a wicked deflection. It boggles my mind when the crowd want him to have a pop!
Here are explanations of the answers to (6) -- (8) in the OP: (6) Skill in executing a pass is virtually equal across all players and teams in a league TRUE The ability to propel the ball with foot and head are clearly useful attributes for a professional footballer. It seems obvious that some are better at doing it than others. Most teams, for example, have one or two players charged with delivering at set pieces or taking penalties. You might think that the same holds for the more mundane task of passing to a team mate. But not so. The stats show that when it comes to successfully executing a pass, differences in skill are insignificant. Far more important is the situation the player is in when he attempts the pass. Once stated you ask yourself how it ever escaped your notice. If Bradley Johnson and Leroy Fer are passing the ball between them in the pre-match warm up, the ball zips from Bradley to Leroy as efficiently as it is returned. And the same would go for any two players in that situation. Furthermore, it would pretty much go for any two players in the pre-match warm-up prior to any match in any professional league. So what is it that teams with consistently high pass completion rates have that the others lack? In essence teamwork and movement, i.e. they are teams who make it easy for each other by always making someone available for a simple pass. Quote: "Good teams are not better at passing than bad ones. They simply engineer more easy passes in better locations and thereby limit their turnovers". (7) The team which dominates possession usually wins the game FALSE The key word here is "usually"; it's a vague word which would be naturally understood in the context of (7) to mean "more often than not"; so (7) says that a team which dominates possession in a game will win that game more often than not (i.e. has a greater than 50% chance of winning the game). Not so. Teams which enjoy greater possession do have a better chance of winning the game, but the probability of their winning is only 39%, not in excess of 50%. Hence every weekend the Premier League provides plenty of examples of teams which dominated possession but lost the game. Those are among the 31% of games which are won by the team which enjoys less possession than their opponents. Last night in the Champions League Celtic only had about 20% possession compared to Barcelona's 80%, but they weren't that far off drawing the game and had Brown not been sent off might even have managed to win it. (8) Teams which dominate possession in their games, finish higher in the table TRUE Teams which dominate possession in a particular game have only a 39% chance of winning it. But that's better than the 31% chance enjoyed by teams which have to make do with less possession. Over a full season, or over even longer periods, the teams which consistently keep the ball better than their opponents finish at the upper end of the table. They are the teams with consistently high pass completion rates and consistently low turnover rates (i.e. they consistently give the ball away less than their opponents), as a result of which they score more goals and concede fewer. They may not always win the knockout competitions, but they qualify for Europe and pick up the monetary rewards that buy and pay the gifted players who maintain their dominance of both possession and league. Explanations for (9) and (10) to follow.
