Football Truisms Tested

[jimmylibel]

Football truisms tested

 

11:39, 29 Jun 2011

Miguel Delaney

 

Is a team most vulnerable after conceding a goal? Do results even out over the course of a season? Miguel Delaney looks at the actual evidence

 

A team is most vulnerable immediately after scoring a goal

 

Sammy McIlroy was giddy with excitement. He’d just scored an equaliser that, four minutes earlier, would have been much more unexpected than Manchester United going another 14 years without the league title. It was the 1979 FA Cup final and with 85 minutes gone Arsenal had been 2-0 up and cruising.

 

With 88 minutes gone, however, United were on level terms and looking like the only winners. McIlroy’s goal had immediately followed Gordon McQueen’s. Arsenal were utterly deflated, United energised... but also distracted. An unmarked Alan Sunderland thrillingly made it 3-2 within seconds. After an awfully dull final, it took only a minute to win it. Most notably, the minute after United equalised.

 

It’s a memorable moment that’s become an eternal touchstone for those who preach caution after scoring. But the problem here is that it’s exactly that: a memorable moment. It takes precedence in recollections over the countless more times when teams didn’t concede. Indeed, what’s often forgotten when the example is cited is that it was immediately preceded by a counter-claim: McQueen’s first goal wasn’t followed by a display of vulnerability, but another United strike.

 

If the myth were to be true then surely teams would tend to concede more in the period immediately after scoring than at any other stage of the game? And, if we take that period to be the five minutes following a goal, then we can measure it. There are 18 five-minute periods in a match and 684 over the course of a 38-game season. Looking at Arsenal, for example, they conceded 41 goals in the 2009-10 season. Dividing that figure by 684, that meant they had a 6% chance of conceding in any given five-minute spell. However, they only conceded twice in the immediate aftermaths of the 83 goals they themselves scored – a rate of 0.02. This means Arsenal were 4% less likely to concede after scoring. By extension, they were less vulnerable.

 

Looking across over a 1,000 Premier League games in the last half-decade, this proved the case for a majority of teams. Indeed, last season, only three –surprising – sides were more vulnerable after scoring: Aston Villa, Liverpool and Manchester City.

 

Verdict False

 

In European ties, it’s an advantage to play at home in the second leg

 

It’s this logic on which the Champions League draws are based. As well as facing a runner-up, teams who win their groups get to play at home in the second leg. The thinking behind it is that, in front of a roaring home crowd under conditions with which they’re already comfortable, a team knows exactly what it has to do.

 

In the first few decades of the European Cup, to be fair, there was a statistical truth to it. But this was also a time when clubs travelled abroad much less frequently as well as having to overcome a lot of unfamiliarity. It was out of these concerns that the away-goal rule was devised in the late ’60s.

 

It’s that very rule, however, that also perhaps illustrates how illogical the myth now is. How often have we seen a home team competing only for a sudden sucker-punch to put the tie out of reach? Chelsea will know this feeling all too well. In two of the last seasons, Andres Iniesta and Samuel Eto’o have subjected them to it at Stamford Bridge.

 

The greater frequency of European ties these days seems to be removing much of the aura of such trips. To test this, we analysed the outcome of 90 quarter-final and semi-final ties since the Champions League began. And those results were... dead-level – 45 were won by the team who played at home in the second leg, 45 by the visitors.

 

Verdict False

 

It’s always better to go first in a penalty shoot-out

 

This is something Dave O’Leary might disagree with. But then, at Italia 90, he had the advantage of Packie Bonner saving Daniel Timofte’s kick just before he stepped up. In truth, it was the easiest kick to take. A miss had no terminal consequence.

 

That’s also the rationale behind this belief. There’s no cumulative pressure on the player who kicks first since he sets the score, he doesn’t respond to it. Because, as English players know too well, footballers don’t practice penalties mechanically. This means ‘pressure’ becomes a disproportionately large factor. In general play, 70% of penalties are scored. In shoot-outs, that’s much lower. However, since the first kicker starts with a clean slate, he doesn’t have that same degree of necessity. And this translates to reality. Out of 66 top-level penalty shoot-outs in the last four decades, a majority of 39 have been won by the side that go first.

 

Verdict True

 

Appointing a new manager mid-season gives a team a bounce in results

 

Just before his side travelled to a Newcastle United for one of his own last games as Liverpool boss, Roy Hodgson cautioned about his fear of the new-manager factor. “When a club changes managers sometimes, that does produce an effect where they play a lot better.” And, rarely in his time at Liverpool, Hodgson was right. Alan Pardew’s new team won 3-1. That contributed to a ratio of 1.8 points per game in his first five at Newcastle. It was leap of 1.4 points from Chris Hughton’s last five.

 

Indeed, out of 20 mid-season managerial changes in the last half-decade – including Hodgson’s own at Anfield – 15 have seen a significant jump in results.

 

That is quite probably down to human factors like looking to impress a new boss. But, to some extent, it is also self-fulfilling since it’s usually an unacceptable sequence of results that causes the change. For the most part, however, it would appear to justify desperate measures as clubs look for any sort of jump to avoid relegation.

 

Not that it always works of course. It didn’t for Alan Shearer at Newcastle in 2009. Nor should it be any kind of guide to long-term thinking. One of the few managers to not illustrate that jump was Owen Coyle at Bolton (a drop of 0.4 points) – and that was in direct contrast to his unpopular predecessor Gary Megson (a bounce of 0.8).

 

Verdict True

 

Bad refereeing decisions even out over the course of a season

 

The thinking behind this is in accordance with the belief that the league table doesn’t lie; that a season is so long, results always average out. And that may be true when it comes to a team’s quality. But not when it comes to their rub of the green.

 

If that were accurate, then reversing all of the 2009-10 season’s contentious decisions would leave no change to the Premier League table. Our findings show that wouldn’t have been the case. Indeed, although Manchester United actually had more contentious decisions go for them than against them (they gained a point), reversing all incidents would have seen them win the league. The teams to most benefit from contentious decisions were Chelsea (eight points), Aston Villa (five) and Sunderland (five). The teams that could have been most aggrieved were Everton (cost six points), Bolton (five) and Tottenham (four).

 

As a statistician would tell you, this is not down to any bias but the fact that a 38-game season – with one contentious incident every four games – isn’t high enough a sample for the ‘chance’ element to even out.

 

Instead, try a few thousand games, as both Kenny Dalgish and Alex Ferguson found out back in January. On one of Ferguson’s first visits to Liverpool in the late ’80s, he left moaning about a debatable penalty. On Dalglish’s first match back at Manchester United, he left moaning about a debatable penalty. No bias. Just statistically probable.

 

Verdict False

 

The worst time to concede is just before half-time

 

Another example from Manchester United that disproportionately sticks out in the memory. In last season’s Champions League quarter-final, they were ripping through Bayern Munich and into the semi-finals with a 4-2 aggregate lead... until, moments before half-time, Ivica Olic scored. From then on, it seemed only a matter of time until Arjen Robben did the inevitable. As Edwin van der Sar said, “It was tremendous... but we conceded just before half-time.”

 

And so, as the theory goes, United were “unsettled”. In reality, it’s bunkum. Last season, there were five incidents where a goal before half-time could have been said to change the course of the game. But that’s no greater than similarly momentum-altering strikes at any other stage of a game. Indeed there have been far more examples of sides scoring in the few minutes before half-time only to then concede immediately after it.

 

Verdict False

 

Miguel Delaney is a football journalist, formerly of the sadly departed Sunday Tribune (1982-2011). He has covered the last five Champions League campaigns as well as Euro 2008 and the 2010 World Cup. He is also the author of Stuttgart to Saipan: the players’ stories and is the owner of www.footballpantheon.com

 

Link

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

I like this

 

only 70% of pennos are scored? I don't believe that. I'd say 85-90%

[Coyler]

I love this s***.

[John am Rhein]

Moneyballers should read this:

 

http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=3806

[Hassony]

I like this

 

only 70% of pennos are scored? I don't believe that. I'd say 85-90%

 

I'd say 70% is about right

 

good article, enjoyed that

[johngibo YPC]

Football truisms tested

 

Do results even out over the course of a season?

 

Verdict: False

Team finish on different numbers of points, so results don't even out over the course of a season

 

Easy this

[surf]

it's not just ref decisions, it's also when do you play teams. every team has a period when they're unbeatable and a period where they can't win a game. if you happen to play all the teams in their unbeatable period then you're going to have far fewer points than if you played them all when they're going through a rough patch. as the season is usually decided by a couple of points the luck of this draw could decide the champions