Sky Sports Football NewsAnd the countdown begins. 1071 scorers, 62 years, and 1,931 goals. This is the countdown of the Top 50 Big Game Scorers. To see the other pages with rules and workings, click HERE Treble Dutch – All three of these players have scored in major finals, but only two make the Top 50 50. Karl-Heinz Riedle (Germany) […]
Argentinian? Check. Prolific striker? Check. Skilful and small enough to be described as diminutive? Check. That’s basis enough to be the next in line for the player comparison series Contenders First up is keen golfer, Carlos ‘Carlitos’ Tevez. Born and raised in the tough Buenos Aries area of Fort Apache, Tevez has played for some […]
Part 2 of the Serie A Season Review focuses more on the team stats, Part 1 can be found here with the individual player stats. With Juventus winning the Title in such commanding fashion, it’s to be expected that they will dominate the Team Statistics. They didn’t rely on one outstanding performer, but rather it was […]
The second part of the Premier League Season Review will focus mainly on the team stats, as well as defences. Part 1 can be found here. Premier League Season Review 2011-12 Part 1: Team Stats The importance of beating those around you – In what was a famous season for Manchester City, it’s no surprise […]
Well that was quite the season. Regarded by many as the best in the Premier League’s 20 year history, we were treated to goals galore, last day drama, and a few surprise packages (Swansea, Norwich, Newcastle), whilst there was still plenty of familiarity with Scholes, and Henry’s names returning to the scoresheet, and Joey Barton […]
Not a full blown player comparison as Henry has already featured (and come out on top) against van Nistelrooy here, but a quick look at the two Arsenal strikers that hit 30 league goals – who they did it against, and how important they were With it looking increasingly likely that van Persie has played […]
Argentinian? Check. Prolific striker? Check. Skilful and small enough to be described as diminutive? Check. That’s basis enough to be the next in line for the player comparison series Contenders First up is keen golfer, Carlos ‘Carlitos’ Tevez. Born and raised in the tough Buenos Aries area of Fort Apache, Tevez has played for some […]
Granted, they’re not in the same league (in every sense), but with the recent Champions League Final in mind, I thought it was interesting to note that the whereabouts of the Trophy could have been very different if the strikers had swapped teams. This is less a comparison of two equal competitors, more a study […]
Hot on the heels of the Lampard vs Gerrard comparison, the third in the series is another of the Premier League’s most discussed duos – Thierry Henry and Ruud van Nistelrooy. For the 5 years, that they both played in the Premier League they dominated the goalscoring charts with five winners, three runners up and […]
Post and open comments now appearing here: http://www.averageopposition.com/2012/01/player-comparison.html 2011-12 Stats: http://www.averageopposition.com/2012/12/goal-scoring-player-comparison-for-2011.html This Season: http://www.averageopposition.com/p/premier-league_16.html After starting the Player Comparison series with the two best players in the world, how do you follow that? In terms of quality of player, you can’t (unless I had the Pele/Maradonna stats handy). But the idea behind this series […]
average opposition .com
Love it mate, these are the kind of stats that offer proper comparables!
Look forward to seeing how this develops.
Cheers mate, I thought you might enjoy the Dutch angle with RvP!
Site and method looks very interesting Liam. Definitely addresses some of the points of contention when measuring players on, for example, Opta stats alone. Lots of players get accused of never scoring in the big games. I’ll be interested to see how it develops.
I’m sure you’ve got your work cut out already, implementing the index you’ve proposed, but I can’t help but offer suggestions for subsequent development, being a coder and a bit of a stats nerd myself 🙂
1. The ranking of a team, at the time of the goal, offers a good weighting for a goal’s value, but it doesn’t address form, which is often included in argument e.g. “So what, he scored a brace against a side who haven’t won for weeks”. A team in 11th might have the worst form in the league.
So I’d propose a calculation of rank that’s weighted on:
– league position of opposition at the time of the game
– form of the opposition at the time of the game.
Keep a separate form table, and allow joint positions: e.g. if top 3 all won last 5, they are all in position 1.
Now you have a table of teams in your database with 4 columns:
Team name, League Table Position, Form Table Position, Rank Score
Then you just need to weight form against league position to calculate Rank Score. Lets say that form is 1/5 and league position is 4/5.
At the end of each week, populate RankAndFormScore with:
(4/5 * League Table Position) + (1/5 * Form Table Position)
You’ll end up with non-integer values for Rank Score, but if you sort by ascending Rank Score, the position of each team’s row will give you your new (weighted) rank.
Different criteria can be used to temper the absoluteness of scoring based on the opposition’s league position but you’ll quickly balloon the amount of data you need for your calculations, down to storing a full list of results to date in a season.
2. You might consider goals against in the weighting too. The Newcastle sides of old used to go out and aim to simply score more than the opposition. A good striker might stand a great chance of scoring against a side that is ‘decent’ on paper, but actually lacks a decent defence (though this levels out for everyone, and would be difficult to score – you’d need to weigh up goals conceded by a team against total goals scored in league or something)
3. It would be interesting to calculate the probability of a goal in next game, as a measure of scoring record against strength of next opposition. This would create a good test of your index, as you can score probabilities of scoring a goal against actual goals in some interesting striker head-to-heads. When you’ve calculated your odds on scoring a goal, it might be fun to measure them against the bookies.
Cheers Rónán.
Yeah, I’ve got a few ideas to implement in future weeks, also some stuff to add as features, though I must admit that i’d never thought of incorporating form as well. That would definitely give a clearer picture of the opposition at the time – maybe on a 3 game or 6 game basis. I’ll have to include that one down the line, if I ever finish building the historical and foreign leagues in! I’ll give you a nod in the commentary.
With regards to point 2, I’m traking goals against in the database and plan to use it at some point. Though was thinking more about a defence analysis rather than tying it in with the goalscorers. There is some benefit in seeing the importance of the goal though – whether it be an equaliser, winner, or just one of many in a rout.
Probability index might be have to be a long term measure, and I may have to reach out on that one!
Thanks for the input – this is exactly the type of thing I was hoping for.
Cheers,
Liam