If you read my initial article on "Passing - An oddity in how it's measured in Soccer Part I"; I hope you find this article of value as well as the onion gets peeled back a bit further to focus on Crosses. To begin please consider the different definitions of passing identified in Part I... Continue Reading →
Passing – An oddity in how it’s measured in Soccer (Part I)
In my passion to better understand how soccer is statistically tracked I've come across what I would call is an oddity about the general characterization of "passing" in the world’s greatest sport. Here's the deal - go to Squawka.com, whoscored.com, reference the "Stats" tab on mlssoccer.com, or review Golazo information, and you'll notice they all... Continue Reading →
Headline match-up in Week 13 – Real Salt Lake v Seattle Sounders
Pedigree and consistency of purpose are two words/phrases that come to mind when I consider these teams. Both are currently doing very well and in my Composite PWP Index, after 12 weeks, they sit in positions four and five. In considering this early-to-mid-season marquee match-up I've put together a few diagrams that might help paint... Continue Reading →
PWP thru Week 12 + Home or Away who’s better/worse in PWP?
If you've been following my Possession with Purpose and Expected Wins articles/streaming research you should know by now that the data had a pretty strong correlation to the MLS League Tables last year. So how do things look for PWP at this stage in the MLS this year? A few thoughts.... It's early days... Continue Reading →
You say you want a Revolution – A different angle on PWP and Team Performance
A superb run with five wins and a draw in six games; by most standards that is a compelling argument for consistency. I agree and their overall Composite Possession with Purpose Index rating continues to climb. They've (New England) climbed from 17th in PWP (week 5) to 7th after week 11; a superb shift of 10... Continue Reading →
Hurried Passes – Could this be a new statistic in Soccer?
Aye... the NFL track 'hurried throws' - why doesn't a Statistics agency involved in Soccer track "Hurried Passes"? I'll get to that but first I need to set some conditions. If you've read my article on Expected Wins 2 (XpW) it seems reasonable that a teams' Passing Accuracy in the Final Third has great value... Continue Reading →
MLS Coaches – Leveraging Possession with Purpose to Analyze Coaching Performance
I promised this year, at various times, to offer some thoughts about how Possession with Purpose can be used to support analysis on how well Head Coaches might be performing compared to others. As a reminder from last year; five of the bottom six teams in my PWP Composite Index had coaching changes, Columbus, Chicago, San Jose, Toronto, Chivas USA,... Continue Reading →
Expected Wins 2 – After 184 Events (10 Weeks of MLS Games)
Hopefully most of you read Part I of my series on Expected Wins in Major League Soccer. As a quick reminder the Expected Wins analysis is my internal data quality review on the seven data points I use to support my quantitative Possession with Purpose analysis; the stronger the correlation these data points have the... Continue Reading →
Possession with Purpose – An introduction and some explanations…
If you’ve been following me the last 2-3 years, through Columbian Newspaper, out of southern Washington, you’ll know that I’ve been researching data with the intent of creating some Indices to analyze "team performance" in Major League Soccer. The initial version of my Possession with Purpose approach was published on 10 February, 2013 on the Columbian... Continue Reading →
