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Fewer shots but more goals: how teams became more efficient
This season is on course to be the highest scoring in the English top flight in more than half a century despite teams taking fewer shots. Alan Smith explains why
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The Times, January 10 2019, 5:00pm
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This Premier League season is on course to be the highest scoring in the English top flight in more than half a century and much of it is down to teams using data to inform their players’ in-game decisions.
Through 210 fixtures the Premier League’s goals per game average stands at 2.85, the highest since 1967-68 (3.02), despite teams shooting less and a decrease in errors leading to goals.
At first glance that seems to make little sense. Surely to score more goals you need to create more attempts? Well, no. Managers, soaking up the information provided by their clubs’ data analysts, have realised that sometimes less equals more, reaching the conclusion that it is more profitable to work your way into a better shooting position than having a go from distance.
Both shot conversion rate and the percentage of attempts on target are at their highest since Opta began tracking such data in 2003-04, and although teams are shooting marginally more than last season’s lowest on record (25.1 attempts per game compared to 24.5), the wider trend is clear: quality trumps quantity.
As Omar Chaudhuri, head of football intelligence at 21st Club, a consultancy that advises clubs on making smarter decisions via advanced statistics, says: “This is one area of the sport where analytics has had a real, measurable impact.”
He cites the creation of the now omnipresent expected goals model, the metric which assesses the likelihood of every opportunity being converted, as a turning point because it has led to teams becoming more selective about when and, more importantly, from where to shoot.
“One of the fallouts from these models has been to evidence how few shots outside the box are actually scored — around three in 100 attempts, compared to around 15 in 100 inside the box, excluding headers,” Chaudhuri says. “Of course, it’s harder to create chances inside the area, so teams have increasingly given up shooting opportunities from range in order to give themselves a better chance of creating a fewer number of high-quality chances in the box.”
It is beyond coincidental, then, that teams that take a higher proportion of their shots from outside the area are struggling near the bottom of the table. Fulham, for instance, have taken 49 per cent of their attempts from 18 yards or more, while Southampton are the next most prolific from long-range at 47 per cent. By comparison just 32 per cent of Manchester City’s shots are from outside the box, while a third of Tottenham Hotspur’s efforts and 36 per cent of Liverpool’s are from distance.
When it comes to shots inside the six-yard box, those results are inverted. A tenth of Liverpool and City’s attempts have come from six yards or less, with Spurs on 11 per cent. On the opposite end of the scale, a mere two per cent of Huddersfield’s shots are from close range, they have had none from open play but three of their five efforts from six yards or less originating from set pieces have been goals.
32 per cent of Manchester City’s shots have been taken from outside the box this season; for Liverpool the figure is 36 per cent
Fulham have the highest proportion (49 per cent) of shots from outside the penalty area. Huddersfield have only five shots from inside the six-yard box
Burnley are a fascinating outlier because 16 per cent of their shots are from inside the small box and a third from outside. They are yet to score from outside the penalty area and have the highest ratio of goals scored from close range. That, however, is at least partially a result of them being the league’s most shot-shy team (9.2 per game) and also thriving from dead-ball situations.
The continuing shift towards patient build-up may also explain why this season could see a record number of games where a team, in most instances one of the top six, has at least 65 per cent possession. So far there have been 58 occasions in 2018-19 and if that continues at the same pace it will threaten last year’s record of 108. Eight seasons ago there were just 40 games where teams finished with such a dominant share of the ball. Ultimately, it means that those desperate pleas for your central midfielder to shoot 30 yards from goal when the ball breaks to him will be ignored even more than before.
Maurizio Sarri’s death by a thousand passes approach at Chelsea has had a pronounced impact. The number of passes attempted per game has been rising steadily year-on-year since 2009-10 but the average of 920.2 so far this campaign is a sharp increase. There is also a notable shift in pass selection. Crosses have been in consistent decline and the decrease in 2018-19 has been dramatic, with the average of 24.4 almost half the amount when Opta started tracking pass types 16 seasons ago.
“The reduction in crosses probably contributes towards the trend in shooting distances/patterns,” Chaudhuri says. “It’s difficult to score from headers, so again teams are probably prioritising ball possession over putting it into the box.” (A yawning contrast between highest and lowest scorers exists when it comes to headed goals, too, with 10 per cent of City’s goals coming from that method in comparison to 38 per cent of Huddersfield’s.)
There is an obvious temptation to apportion praise (or blame depending on your viewpoint) to Pep Guardiola, with other teams seeking to imitate the City manager’s quest for dominance. Yesterday’s 9-0 thrashing of Burton Albion in the Carabao Cup was a stunning example: City had more than 70 per cent of the ball and converted 32 per cent of their attempts.
Chaudhuri notes that “the success of managers like Guardiola and [Liverpool’s Jürgen] Klopp has meant that clubs of all sizes have sought to emulate this exciting, attacking style of play.” He has previously been told by a club owner during a head coach recruitment process that they wanted “their team to be a bit more like Dortmund, when [Thomas] Tuchel was the manager, and Tottenham under [Mauricio] Pochettino.”
The compulsion to pour forward may not all be a result of analytics, though. Another possible explanation for the spike in attacking play is centred on the idea of football as an entertainment business. As Klopp said in September, following Liverpool’s absorbing 1-1 draw away to Chelsea: “I really think the most important job of football is entertaining the people, because it’s only football. We don’t save lives, we are only good at football. If we do not entertain the people, why do we play it?”
When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer stated that Manchester United needed to reintroduce “excitement and entertainment” before his first home game as caretaker manager, it was inevitably portrayed as a dig at his predecessor Josè Mourinho but there was a wider point too. The most valued form of entertainment on the pitch is a goal and, forgive the cynicism, more entertainment means more eyeballs on televisions around the globe. And that, as a result, means more money in the league.
Entertainment is, of course, subjective and celebrating a tap-in from six yards is rarely a match for the explosion of joy that greets a 30-yard piledriver. However, the implementation of data-driven strategies has indisputably led to more effective play and an increase in goals should never be considered a bad thing.
This season is on course to be the highest scoring in the English top flight in more than half a century despite teams taking fewer shots. Alan Smith explains why
new
The Times, January 10 2019, 5:00pm
Share
Save
This Premier League season is on course to be the highest scoring in the English top flight in more than half a century and much of it is down to teams using data to inform their players’ in-game decisions.
Through 210 fixtures the Premier League’s goals per game average stands at 2.85, the highest since 1967-68 (3.02), despite teams shooting less and a decrease in errors leading to goals.
At first glance that seems to make little sense. Surely to score more goals you need to create more attempts? Well, no. Managers, soaking up the information provided by their clubs’ data analysts, have realised that sometimes less equals more, reaching the conclusion that it is more profitable to work your way into a better shooting position than having a go from distance.
Both shot conversion rate and the percentage of attempts on target are at their highest since Opta began tracking such data in 2003-04, and although teams are shooting marginally more than last season’s lowest on record (25.1 attempts per game compared to 24.5), the wider trend is clear: quality trumps quantity.
As Omar Chaudhuri, head of football intelligence at 21st Club, a consultancy that advises clubs on making smarter decisions via advanced statistics, says: “This is one area of the sport where analytics has had a real, measurable impact.”
He cites the creation of the now omnipresent expected goals model, the metric which assesses the likelihood of every opportunity being converted, as a turning point because it has led to teams becoming more selective about when and, more importantly, from where to shoot.
“One of the fallouts from these models has been to evidence how few shots outside the box are actually scored — around three in 100 attempts, compared to around 15 in 100 inside the box, excluding headers,” Chaudhuri says. “Of course, it’s harder to create chances inside the area, so teams have increasingly given up shooting opportunities from range in order to give themselves a better chance of creating a fewer number of high-quality chances in the box.”
It is beyond coincidental, then, that teams that take a higher proportion of their shots from outside the area are struggling near the bottom of the table. Fulham, for instance, have taken 49 per cent of their attempts from 18 yards or more, while Southampton are the next most prolific from long-range at 47 per cent. By comparison just 32 per cent of Manchester City’s shots are from outside the box, while a third of Tottenham Hotspur’s efforts and 36 per cent of Liverpool’s are from distance.
When it comes to shots inside the six-yard box, those results are inverted. A tenth of Liverpool and City’s attempts have come from six yards or less, with Spurs on 11 per cent. On the opposite end of the scale, a mere two per cent of Huddersfield’s shots are from close range, they have had none from open play but three of their five efforts from six yards or less originating from set pieces have been goals.
32 per cent of Manchester City’s shots have been taken from outside the box this season; for Liverpool the figure is 36 per cent
Fulham have the highest proportion (49 per cent) of shots from outside the penalty area. Huddersfield have only five shots from inside the six-yard box
Burnley are a fascinating outlier because 16 per cent of their shots are from inside the small box and a third from outside. They are yet to score from outside the penalty area and have the highest ratio of goals scored from close range. That, however, is at least partially a result of them being the league’s most shot-shy team (9.2 per game) and also thriving from dead-ball situations.
The continuing shift towards patient build-up may also explain why this season could see a record number of games where a team, in most instances one of the top six, has at least 65 per cent possession. So far there have been 58 occasions in 2018-19 and if that continues at the same pace it will threaten last year’s record of 108. Eight seasons ago there were just 40 games where teams finished with such a dominant share of the ball. Ultimately, it means that those desperate pleas for your central midfielder to shoot 30 yards from goal when the ball breaks to him will be ignored even more than before.
Maurizio Sarri’s death by a thousand passes approach at Chelsea has had a pronounced impact. The number of passes attempted per game has been rising steadily year-on-year since 2009-10 but the average of 920.2 so far this campaign is a sharp increase. There is also a notable shift in pass selection. Crosses have been in consistent decline and the decrease in 2018-19 has been dramatic, with the average of 24.4 almost half the amount when Opta started tracking pass types 16 seasons ago.
“The reduction in crosses probably contributes towards the trend in shooting distances/patterns,” Chaudhuri says. “It’s difficult to score from headers, so again teams are probably prioritising ball possession over putting it into the box.” (A yawning contrast between highest and lowest scorers exists when it comes to headed goals, too, with 10 per cent of City’s goals coming from that method in comparison to 38 per cent of Huddersfield’s.)
There is an obvious temptation to apportion praise (or blame depending on your viewpoint) to Pep Guardiola, with other teams seeking to imitate the City manager’s quest for dominance. Yesterday’s 9-0 thrashing of Burton Albion in the Carabao Cup was a stunning example: City had more than 70 per cent of the ball and converted 32 per cent of their attempts.
Chaudhuri notes that “the success of managers like Guardiola and [Liverpool’s Jürgen] Klopp has meant that clubs of all sizes have sought to emulate this exciting, attacking style of play.” He has previously been told by a club owner during a head coach recruitment process that they wanted “their team to be a bit more like Dortmund, when [Thomas] Tuchel was the manager, and Tottenham under [Mauricio] Pochettino.”
The compulsion to pour forward may not all be a result of analytics, though. Another possible explanation for the spike in attacking play is centred on the idea of football as an entertainment business. As Klopp said in September, following Liverpool’s absorbing 1-1 draw away to Chelsea: “I really think the most important job of football is entertaining the people, because it’s only football. We don’t save lives, we are only good at football. If we do not entertain the people, why do we play it?”
When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer stated that Manchester United needed to reintroduce “excitement and entertainment” before his first home game as caretaker manager, it was inevitably portrayed as a dig at his predecessor Josè Mourinho but there was a wider point too. The most valued form of entertainment on the pitch is a goal and, forgive the cynicism, more entertainment means more eyeballs on televisions around the globe. And that, as a result, means more money in the league.
Entertainment is, of course, subjective and celebrating a tap-in from six yards is rarely a match for the explosion of joy that greets a 30-yard piledriver. However, the implementation of data-driven strategies has indisputably led to more effective play and an increase in goals should never be considered a bad thing.
