Statistics never Lie?

Peter Gilbert

Have you ever heard of Opta or Carling Opta to give it's full sponsored title?
Well it's not a drink, I would hate to hear of anyone going into a pub and saying 'I'll have a pint of Carling Opta please'.
Carling Opta are in fact the official player performance statisticians to the Premier League.   The company is little more than three years old but it has already had a major impact on the way that clubs can monitor player performance.
It was devised by a certain Suzie Randall with the assistance and advice of Don Howe. They took video footage of Premiership games and analysed their content in terms of player performance.   Work got underway with a software developer to create a unique database system that fulfilled Don Howe's specifications.   In short every game in the Premiership last season was scrutinised for player and team performance and their results have just been published.

Naturally enough I flicked straight to the Leicester City section and discovered some very interesting statistics.  It's absolutely mind boggling to view the statistics in full, the detail is quite phenomenal and next season even more detail will be included.

Leicester City's OPTA Stats.
Goals:
Scored: 29 from in the box, 10 outside the box and 1 penalty.
People are always saying we rely on set pieces when in fact we scored none from such situations.  Of our 40 goals scored over 50% were either just before half time or full time.21 were scored with a right foot, 8 with a left foot, 9 with the head and 2 were own goals.
Our top scorer was Tony Cottee who scored 10 in the league, he had 25 shots on target, 14 off target and a shooting accuracy of 64%.He provided 1 goal assist, 22 long passes and 650 short passes.   His pass completion was 93% in our half and 77% in opposition half.   He committed 34 fouls was caught offside 25 times and received just 1 yellow card.Impressed?
Steve Guppy provided 415 crosses and 153 dribbles.  The nearest to him was Emile Heskey with with 43 and 119 respectively.
Neil Lennon put in 193 tackles and won 63% of them.

Conceded: 39 from in the box, 6 outside, 1 from a set piece and no penalties.
Kasey Keller spent 3166 minutes on the pitch for us conceding 43 goals in all which is one goal every 73.6 minutes.  He made 133 saves with a success rate of 76%.   He caught 89 crosses missed only 6 and made 15 punches which is a success rate of 97%.

Points are awarded for these stats. and our most successful player last year was Neil Lennon with 980 followed by Matt Elliott with 969 and Steve Walsh 957.

Looking at the team as a whole there is only 1 statistic that counts in the end and that is the final league table but believe it or not, there are other tables to look at:

Goalscoring we came 15th with a 10.2% goal/shots ratio. We scored 40 goals which averages out at 1.05 per game.

In shooting we came 3rd with a 42.7% accuracy.

Our passing overall saw us placed 7th. (Passing is everything Man Utd came 1st)
Although Steve Guppy can cross brilliantly the rest don't back him up and we came second from bottom here with surprisingly Arsenal coming last  (They play without wingers Crossing is a British characteristic.)

Neil Lennon is a brilliant tackler but once again the rest of the team apparently can't tackle a paper bag as we came second from bottom again in that table.

It would appear though that our disciplinary record suggests that we are the cleanest team in the league ( all those fairy tales about Robbie Savage!)

Goals against we were 8th most successful.

Steve Guppy was the 5th most effective goal creator and the 2nd best crosser of the ball but when it comes to crossing from the left there is no-one to touch him and don't forget he does this from wing back. Steve also came 10th in the dribbling.
Neil Lennon came 6th in the tackling. Kasey Keller came 7th in the goalkeeping.
Matt Elliott came in as 9th best defender with Neil Lennon in the same slot as a holding midfielder.
We were not placed in the attacking midfielder/striker section.

Tony Cottee is our best short passer, Matt Elliott our best defender, Steve Guppy our best crosser and Neil Lennon our best tackler but all of these players need help in these departments, more help than they are getting.

The impact of foreign imports is interesting but only Matt Elliott gets into the British Isles XI. When it comes to the best team of individuals in the Premiership only Sol Campbell gets into the line up. That's strange - he always has a 'mare against us.

Looking at these statistics as a whole then who is the best player in the Premiership in terms of making the biggest contribution match-by-match?
You might remember that David Ginola was voted player of the year by the players and football writers. The Young Player of the Year was Nicolas Anelka ( what ?)
But do these choices match up the facts and figures.   The Carling Opta index monitors each touch of the ball by every player and offers a more objective view as opposed to a more human and maybe emotional approach.   The players who feature in the Index played for more than 1,200 minutes in total and completed at least 75 minutes in more than 15 Premiership matches.
Taking all this into consideration Carling Opta's player of the season for 1998/99 was Dietmar Hamann of Newcastle United, so watch him(oh he's injured already) this season.  Do you find that surprising?  I always found him rather anonymous personally but obviously he's very effective.
Take heart though: I believe Neil Lennon came second.

City finished in the Premiership's top 10 for the third year running although we lost 7 more games than the previous season.   Neil Lennon was our best player but his partnership with Muzzy Izzett was one of the features of last season.   Their willingness to receive the ball, protect the back three and create goalscoring opportunities while always willing to strike at goal themselves made them the inspiration of the side. Typically towering form from Matt Elliott providing a cool head at the back was also noted. Combine this with Steve Guppy's running,dribbling and crossing and we begin to understand why we turn teams over from time to time, it's no fluke - the statistics back it all up. Fine sporadic performances came from Kasey Keller and Emile Heskey but more consistency is needed here which is generally the overall reason why we couldn't finish higher than we did or win a trophy.

So everyone take a look at out statistics and EMail me, telling me what (or who) we need to improve our side in 1999/00. Don't forget statistics never lie.

ps So why did Peter Schmeichel come out as 13th best 'keeper?????