The phrase “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” is certainly appropriate when discussing football data at a time when data is now readily available to the public should they be inclined to look at it. Manchester City have tried to raise the bar by offering data in the hope that [...]

In this article I am looking at the late goals in the EPL as historically more goals are scored 76-FT then any other time range. Currently there have been 124 goals scored 76-FT making up 20.8% of total goals and 2011 this was 22.3% and 2010 it was 23.2% and 2009 it was 23.6% and [...]

I would like to take you through a tour of data for the Newcastle v Everton game to see if Football is not random and your betting decisions are. We need to have a look at a football predictive model to guide us through goal expectation because when a bookmaker prices over and under 2.5 [...]

I wrote a few weeks ago about the correlation between goals and final third passing and I think it would be a good time to review the current data as we come to the end of the year. If you look at the table at the bottom of the page you will see that Man [...]

I thought it would be interesting to review the games which took place on 29th and 30th of December, focussing on the time of the first goal. In six of these games the first goal was scored by the away side within the first 20 minutes; of the other four games, three of them saw [...]

The bet BTTS, which stands for ‘both teams to score’ is very popular at the moment with the betting public. However, the chances of winning such a bet are smaller than you might think. The average number of goals per game this season is 2.86. In effect, this means one goal roughly every 32 minutes. Waiting [...]

Stoke are aware of the value of teams not getting into their final third. In general there is a correlation between final third passing and goals and when a team attacks the Stoke danger zone the Potters make sure that they get behind the ball and allow the other team ball retention. If a team like [...]

There will be hundreds of reviews of the Manchester United v Newcastle game discussing formations and showing how exciting the game. I would like, then, to show the raw data, mapping the game, to show that it is possible to predict the expectation of goals during a game by looking at shots as time decays. Background data [...]

As the game started at Elland Road the rain was falling. Some pundits expected Leeds to pressure Chelsea early on by employing the kind of fast tempo that the downpour might allow. The Yorkshire side did not disappoint in the opening minutes, easily controlling the first five or so. In the opening half both teams [...]

Many of you may have seen the movie (or read the book) Moneyball. The story charts Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis, getting the most out of what were considered to be very average players. Can we transfer the idea of computer-generated analysis [...]

In this post I am looking at how often a team Win , Lose  or Draw when scoring or conceding the first goal. I also want to look further into the time of the first goal so offer an info-graphic to show the time of the first goal in 15 minute bands. We can look [...]

Shots on target data (SOT) is now easily accessed, so it can be of interest when analyzing how good a team is. One way of looking at the strengths and weaknesses of a team is to give a value to the attack and the defense respecitvely. This can be done using SOT analysis. There are obviously other [...]