Not every player gets the same scoring opportunities from the same spots on the field – this is obvious. And not every every shooter has the same talent at putting the ball in the net from the same spot. It’s that second talent that we’re interested in here, so I put together an expected shooting percentage grid across the five major European pro leagues and compared individual shooting performance to expected performance. Continue reading →

This is a little bit of a toy for the moment, but here’s the basic idea: I looked at the number of passes each player completed per game and weighted this by the likelihood that the pass was incomplete. Essentially, this gives us a measure of how much each player moved the ball into threatening areas. Is the #1 guy on our list in any way a surprise? Continue reading →

First, and foremost, this is a stats site.  We have one stats report posted so far, which is our weekly “possession tied” report.  By default, I have that report pointing to Spanish league results – you can see stats for France, Spain, Italy and Germany over the last four seasons, and the EPL over the last six seasons.

I’ll explain more of that report later, but for now, here’s some discussion of the work that drove the development of this site: Continue reading →