Premier League 2022/23: A Data Analysis - Part II

This series and analyses is still work in progress. You can follow the progress of the analysis on my Github. Of course you can follow the progress of the series here.

Here is Part I

In the first installment of the series, we examined how teams ranked in various attacking statistics, with a particular focus on shooting. In a follow-up appendix, we explored the correlation between their final season standings and their ranking in these statistics. The conclusion drawn was that teams ranking higher in attacking/shooting statistics tended to finish higher in the table.

Next up, we'll be delving into possession statistics.

Possession

How does how much you have the ball and where you have the ball matter to how good you are as a team? I first looked at the Average Percentage of Possession for the teams.

Average Percentage of Possession

No surprise that Manchester City topped this category, Liverpool and Arsenal were in the top 5 as expected as they finished in the top 5 last season. The other teams that finished in the top absent from the top 5 in percentage of possession are Manchester United and Newcastle.

Brighton is showing up, not only were they masterful at creating shooting chances but they were also dominant in possession, so it seems like they are more of a possession based team as opposed to counter-attacking team. Liverpool are in the same boat, they are usually perceived as a counter-attacking team but last season they were more of a possession based team.

The biggest surprise here is Chelsea considering that they finished a tragic -- 12th.

Correlation

There is a pretty strong correlation of 0.76 but it is weaker than all the shooting statistics.

Touches in the Attacking 3rd

Next, we look at how Touches in the Attacking 3rd was related to final performance. From first view the more you have the ball in the attacking third the better your chances of winning.

The same top 5 in Average Percentage Possession are the same top 5 here, so it is safe to assume these are the best teams in possession.

How is performance in this statistic related to where the team finished at the end of the season?

Moderately strong correlation of 0.69, not as much as the Average Percent of Possession but it can be a good indicator as to how good a team is.

Touches in the Middle 3rd

The same culprits here, I am not convinced they were the best teams at keeping the ball.

Another moderate correlation of 0.57, it seems as we move backwards down the field, the less the touches in that area help your chances of winning. It makes sense, you need to spend most of your time near the opponents goal to improve your chances of scoring. Like football, field position matters.

Touches in the Defensive 3rd

A new batch shows up here. Chelsea and Liverpool are still in this batch so they probably were not as fast as Manchester City, Arsenal and Brighton at transitioning the ball down the field. There is a mixed batch of teams here when it comes to final position - Tottenham finished 8th, Wolves 13th, Chelsea 12th, Leicester 18th and Liverpool 4th.

I would presume that you are more likely to concede a goal if you hold the ball a lot in your defensive 3rd, we got an indication of that in the last piece as Tottenham finished 3rd in goals scored but ultimately finished 5th. This is most likely the case considering that the correlation between Goals and final league position of 0.82.

What does the correlation say?

We see a slight negative correlation of -0.04, it is better to not have too much possession in your Defensive 3rd as it might have a negative effect on your performance.

Progressive Carries

When looking at Touches in the Defensive 3rd, we theorized about transitioning the ball forward. Progressive carries is a metric that can give us an indication into that.

A carry is defined as any movement of the ball by a player which is greater than five meters from where they received the ball. A progressive carry is towards the opponents goal.

Back to our usual suspects. Not only the best at keeping the ball but moving it down the field.

This is one of the more correlated possession metrics to final position. With a correlation of 0.72, in this analysis it is second only to percent of possession.

Successful Take-On Percentage

In lieu of advancing the ball. Lastly I wanted to look at successful take-ons.

To ground us I asked perplexity to define a successful take-on:

A successful take-on in soccer refers to a player successfully dribbling past an opponent in a one-on-one situation. This skill is crucial for breaking down defenses and creating goal-scoring opportunities. The success of a take-on is measured by the completion rate, which indicates the percentage of attempted dribbles that are successful.

We would come back to the idea of creating goal-scoring chances. In the meantime.

I looked at the top 10 for this metric because it was not topped by our usual suspect so I wanted more context, we can already smell a low correlation here.

As expected a low correlation of 0.11 between Successful Take-Ons and Final league position. It is insignificant how well your team can dribble, if it is not almost completely in the service of creating shooting chances. This might even be a sign of poor discipline and ball control that you have to have a higher volume of dribbles.

From the definition of Successful Take-Ons from my friend perplexity, there is a suggestion that successful take-ons are likely to lead to goal-scoring/shooting chances. Last season that was not the case .

There is a low correlation of 0.11 between Successful Take ons and Shots. This might not be the case all the time but it certainly was last season. Dribbling gets fans off the seats but there is no indication that it leads to winning.

Takeaways

Man City

As I might have mentioned, part of this project is using the data to validate some assumptions we have of teams play styles.

Pep Guardiola and Spanish football is known for Tiki-Taka. This usually a slow passing game. I know Tiki-Taka is more nuanced but in the interest of time...

Were 2nd for Successful take-ons and 1st in progressive carries. Pep and Man City do not employ the stereotypical Tiki-Taka, they play a variation I would like to call Vertical Tiki-Taka (got this from football manager). Man City's game does not only rely on keeping the ball and moving it around, it is also important to have good dribblers and look to progress the ball. The data is consistent with what we know of Pep.

Chelsea

One of the best teams not only in possession but progressing the ball down the field. This is counter-intuitive considering Chelsea finished 12th, they give you insight about how not to be a possession team. Keeping possession and moving down the field is useless if you are not creating shooting chances.

Liverpool

Liverpool last season were more of a possession based team than a counter-attacking team which is a deviation from what Jurgen Klopp is known for. They were still in the top 5 for progressive carries so they can still move the ball, they just keep more of the ball than I initially imagined.

General

Possession metrics are not as correlated to final league position as shooting metrics - this is expected. With this in mind to be a successful team in the Premier League you have to be elite at keeping the ball in the middle and attacking thirds and also moving the ball towards your opponents goal.

You have to look to progress the ball in search of scoring opportunities and at the same time have the technical skills and tactical discipline to move the ball around the middle and attacking when the opportunities are not forthcoming.

Thanks for reading, the next analysis would be on defensive statistics. As usual you can follow the analysis in the Github repo.