Stats 24/25 Season

Matt Stevenson

Star Player
Hi all,

We'll try and focus all our stats analyses for the season within this thread. I'll post the xG timeline now and the average positions soon after. The other stats will have to be later on as there is a family get together about to happen which meant I couldn't be at the WFCG (will this become as often used as the WACA :) ).

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Here is the xG timeline for the Nottm Forest game. I couldn’t listen to the game so I can’t fill in many details as I was following the game via Sky’s commentary. The first big chance fell to AFCB in the 4th minute which was a header by Ouattara rated as about 1 in 5. The game was then disrupted due to a bad injury to Danilo, and after this Forest took control. A kid bounce of the ball fell to Yates, whose shot – rated 1 in 8 was spilled back into the danger area by Neto presenting Wood with an easy chance (rated 7 in 10). The game then became scrappy with the only chance of note before half-time fell to Sinisterra (rated 1 in 9). Although Ouattara had a goal disallowed after a VAR check for a tight offside. At the break, the xG was Nottm Forest 0.95, AFCB 0.55.

The second half also began with limited chances with Forest happy sitting on their 1-0 lead. Although the Sky highlights focussed on a tackle by Williams that looked a clear second booking. After the unlucky send off Forest had last season for 2 yellow cards, the luck had been evened out. Neto made a good save from a Boly header (rated 1 in 14) on the hour mark, Then, a deflected cross found Tavernier in the 6 yard box although he headed over (rated 1 in 4). Late on AFCB got our own luck from a poor clearance with the ball dropping at the feet of Semenyo. The xG of 0.30 feels low although there was the keeper and a defender to beat and the keeper getting a touch on it. Forest had a couple of minor chances, and AFCB had a dangerous cross intercepted before it reached Jebbison (hence no xG). A draw seems by consensus to have been a fair result which is backed up by the xG which ended Nottm Forest 1.30, AFCB 1.22. Understat had an xG far more in our favour at Nottm Forest 1.24, AFCB 1.91.

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The staring 11 had some surprises with Senesi, Christie and Kluivert not starting, presumably due to illness, with the latter two making the bench. Without Solanke, this meant we were missing the spine of our team, but we have good replacements in Huijsen, Scott and whoever wouldn’t have started. The back 4 was as expected with Kerkez (3) playing the highest and level with Cook (4) and Scott (14). The average positions of Ouattara (11), Tavernier (16) and Sinisterra (17) are hard for me to interpret. Not being at the game I don’t know if the players were very fluid or Ouattara and Sinisterra switched wings. Semenyo (24) was largely played upfront. The first subs came in the 64th minute, with Scott, Smith (15) and Sinisterra being replaced by Christie (10), Araujo (28) and Kluivert (19). All were fairly straight swaps and allowed the Christie and Cook partnership to form again. Int eh 69th minute, Iraola withdrew Ouattara and brought on a specialist centre forward in Jebbison (21) although the average positions showed him less advanced than both Semenyo and Kluivert. In the 84th minute Cook, who had been booked was replaced with the more attacking Billing (29).Av Pos.png
 
The "three" in the formation did a great deal of switching for most of their minutes. I would say Tavs was central more often than not, but the setup was generally very fluid, and sad to say did not generate much attack.
 
I am going to produce the points tracking chart again this season. It starts out looking like this:

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There's no red and black lines for actual points yet because you need two points to draw a line and I can't be bothered to insert zeroes at the beginning.
The first two seasons I made these, the target point value was 40. This year I have raised it to 51. That happens to be the average total (rounded) of the 10th place finisher in the last three PL seasons. The figures for the two seasons before that were quite a bit higher. My method for this season "expects" about 1.1 points per away match and about 1.5 points per home match. I adjust those figures slightly for each match according to the Opta power ratings of our opponents from a couple of weeks ago. SInce chronic cheaters Man. City's rating is 100, the method assigns no points for us to those matches, but only those.
I have also retained the dashed lines that separate the season into 6 "blocks" of 6 or 7 games each. Good progress toward 51 points would have us on 9 or 10 after the first 7 matches (Block I). The blocks this season seem pretty uniform to me until we get to Block V. From Match 29 (home to Brentford in March) to the end, we should be picking up quite a few points at Dean Court.
I'm looking forward to further progress against last season's solid performance.
 
The two centre backs had the highest number of touches with Huijsen having 78 and Zabarnyi 72. Tavernier had most touches in the opponent’s half (46) followed by Semenyo with 44. In the final third this order was reversed with Semenyo having 35 and Tavernier 31.

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Our players tried to take on a man 20 times being successful 5 times (once each from 5 different players). Kluivert and Christie were both successful once from 2 attempts.

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AFCB players were tackled 29 times, Semenyo was tackled 5 times, with Ouattara, Scott and Tavernier tackled four times each.


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AFCB attempted 25 crosses, being successful with 4. These were from 4 different players, with Smith being successful in his only attempt.

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Huijsen attempted most passes with 68, being successful with 58. Tavernier attempted most in the opposition’s half (29) and in the final third with 16. We averaged 78% completion with Huijsen, Scott and Kerkez of the starting 11, having values over 85%.

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AFCB created 7 chances (2 big Ouattara’s and Tavernier’s headers). Tavernier set up 3 chances, including a big chance with Cook setting up the other big chance. Nottm Forest created 11 chances, none big.


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We had 13 attempts (3 big) noting that chances can be provided after saves, deflections or a defensive error and not created. We hit the target 4 times. Nottm Forest had 14 attempts, 1 big, and hit the target 8 times. Semenyo and Tavernier had 5 attempts each, with the big chances falling to Semenyo, Tavernier and Ouattara.

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AFCB had 23 touches in the opposition’s penalty area with Semenyo and Tavernier having 5 each. Forest had 29 touches in our penalty area.


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AFCB won 15 of 40 aerials duals. Huijsen won 9 out of 13 duels. Cook was the only player to be above 50% with 1 from 1

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AFCB won 18 of 27 tackles. Kerkez won 2 from 2 and Scott won 8 from 9.

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Huijsen made most defensive actions with 13. Scott made most interceptions (3), Neto made most recoveries (10) and Huijsen and Zabarnyi made joint-most clearances (6). Cook, Huijsen and Semenyo made our 3 blocks.

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According to Opta, AFCB made one error leading to a chance (made by Neto). This led to the Forest goal.
 
The foul count was AFCB 8, Nottm Forest 17. Cook and Kluivert made joint-most fouls (2). Scott was fouled five times.

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The Opta expected goals had Semenyo as most likely to score (0.44) closely followed by Tavernier at 0.42. Ouattara (0.22) and Sinisterra (0.15) were the only other players with a non zero value. For assists, Cook (0.21) was top, with only Tavernier (0.12) above 0.05.

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Two points from the first two games leaves us about 1 point off the hoped-for 51-point pace.
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A win away at Everton next weekend would put us about 1 point ahead.
 
Here is the xG timeline from the Newcastle game, although the incidents in the last 5 minutes will not appear (as shots from “fouls” and fouls are not recorded. The first half was largely uneventful with Newcastle dominating the ball early on, but AFCB coming back into the game, with Semenyo hitting the bar from long-range (rated 1 in 50). There was one big chance which was Tavernier’s goal (rated 81%) although at home I was holding my breath in case there was an offside call. At half time, the xG was AFCB 0.99 Newcastle 0.15. The second half started with a flurry of minor chances for Newcastle, until we imposed ourselves again and created a big chance for Evanilson (rated 7 in 10). This value is high as he was stretching and just couldn’t reach it, think Gascoigne in Euro 96, and was just unlucky not to have made meaningful contact. Immediately after this, Christie was replaced by Scott and AFCB lost their way. Newcastle had 3 big chances in the next 5 minutes, with Barnes firing just past the far post (1 in 6), Isak having a header blocked (1 in 9) and Neto saving from Joelinton (1 in 3). In the 76th minute it was 1-1, good play from Barnes crossing deep to the far post where Gordon was waiting (45%). AFCB were hanging on, although Scott fizzed one wide (rated 1 in 33) and Ouattara headed wide (rated 1 in 8), but Burn had a header saved in the 81st minute (1 in 5) and with the way the momentum had changed, I’d have taken the draw if offered it. There were no more major chances recorded by xG in the game, although Ouattara’s goal does not count due to VAR intervention. It will be discussed heavily on the message board so I’ll not comment beyond saying that at the time of writing there has been near unanimous consensus that it was the wrong decision. The Joelinton foul does not show up in the xG timeline, but as it happened with hardly any time left it would have unlikely made a difference. The final xG was AFCB 2.26 Newcastle 1.69. Understat had a similar margin at 2.54 vs 1.89, but the xG does not tell the whole story.

xG timeline.png
 
There were 5 changes to the team although none were real surprises. Araujo came in for Smith and Senesi (5) for Huijsen. Christie (15) came in for Scott, Kluivert (17) for Ouattara and Evanilson (9) for Sinisterra, although 4 of those benched came on, showing it will be a squad game. The shape was typical, with Araujo (28) and Kerkez (3) playing more advanced than the centre backs (Senesi (5) and Zabarnyi (27) with Cook (4) and Christie (10) holding. We started with Semenyo (24) on the right, Tavernier (16) on the left with Kluivert (19) nominally behind Evanilson (9) although he often pushed further forward when pressing defenders, as he also did with Solanke. The first change was on 64 minutes (and it appeared pivitol), Christie was replaced, presumably as he was still recovering from injury and was on a booking to be replaced by Scott (14) and we lost control (see the xG timeline). On 72 minutes Evanilson and Kluivert were replaced by Ouattara (11) and Sinisterra (17) which meant we didn’t have a focal point up top. From the tv, I wasn’t sure who was playing centre forward as Tavernier and Sinisterra switched about. In the 86th minute at 1-1, we took off Tavernier for Jebberson (21) which regained some shape as he played as a 9, and a like for like swap with Smith (15) for Araujo.

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Senesi and Cook had equal number of touches with 59. Semenyo had most touches in the opposition half with 40, closely followed by Tavernier (39). Tavernier had had most touches in the final third with 31 followed by Semenyo on 30.

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Our players tried to take on a man 15 times being successful 2 times (once by Evanilson and once by Kluivert). Semenyo tried 4 times but was unsuccessful each time.

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Cook attempted most passes with 41, with Senesi and Zabarnyi attempting 40 each. Cook and Semenyo attempted most in the opposition’s half (21) with Tavernier attempting most in the final third with 14. We averaged 76% completion with Semenyo, Christie and Tavernier of the starting 11, having values 85% and over.

All passes.pngPass Opp Half.png
 
AFCB players were tackled 21 times, Semenyo was tackled 7 times and Tavernier four times.

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AFCB attempted 19 crosses, being successful with 4. Cook was successful with 2, which would have been 3 had Ouattara’s goal not been disallowed.

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AFCB created 14 chances (3 big). Semenyo set up 2 big chances with Cook setting up the other big chance. Newcastle created 14 chances, four big.

Chances Created.png

We had 16 attempts (2 big) noting that chances can be provided after saves, deflections or a defensive error and not created. We hit the target 4 times. Newcastle had 14 attempts, 3 big, and hit the target 5 times. Semenyo had 7 attempts each, with the big chances falling to Tavernier and Evanilson.

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AFCB had 25 touches in the opposition’s penalty area with Semenyo having 11. Newcastle had 31 touches in our penalty area.

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The foul count was AFCB 19, Newcastle 8. Cook made most fouls (5). Evanilson and Neto were both fouled two times.

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According to Opta, AFCB made no errors leading to a chance
 
AFCB won 14 of 23 aerials duals. Zabarnyi won most (3) from 5 duels

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AFCB won 22 of 28 tackles. Tavernier won 3 form 3, Kerkez won 2 from 2 and Cook won 5 from 6.

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