Blog Posts

  • Do The Black Cats really have another life left? Defoe.

    Well, last time out I had some concerns that City were looming on the horizon following an easy-ish run of opening fixtures for Everton. The numbers underneath the draw with City, weren’t pretty (albeit with two pens chucked in). They suggest that a 3-0 drubbing would have been the most common result, and that even…

  • On Everton, Spurs and Man City

    Last month’s post looked at how Maarten Stekelenburg couldn’t hope to keep his early season shot-stopping performance up. Fast-forward a month and the Dutchman has conceded 3 goals from the 4 shots on target he’s faced in the Premier League since then. However, the good news is that based on my expected goals model, Everton…

  • Are Everton’s defensive nightmares fully behind them? Don’t Stek your life on it…

    It’s been a positive start to the season for Everton and the fans are happy. Which players have been impressive so far? Idrissa Gueye is a new fan favourite, Romelu Lukaku is back scoring goals and Maarten Stekelenburg is looking pretty damn solid compared to what we’ve seen in recent times between the sticks. The…

  • How does Funes Mori v Williams effect the team?

    So I was watching the Tottenham game back, studying it move by move to sort out a passing sequence map and ended up tweeting this: how long we giving funes mori? — Paul Riley (@footballfactman) August 24, 2016 I laughed all over again about him ending up on the deck after trying to bounce Kane…

  • Left, right, left, right…

    A couple of weeks ago Ben Torvaney wrote an interesting piece about left footed players converting chances at high rates from the right side of the pitch. Ben put forward a number of possible theories as to why this might be the case. I’m going to suggest another one using Steve Fenn’s jazzy viz of…