Blog Posts

  • Player and shot maps via Tableau

    To mark opening day, I’ve made all my individual player xGs from last season available via Tableau. Choose any player you like and you’ll get a map of his shots on target. As an example, here’s the one for Alexis Sanchez: The full interactive map is here. Hover over the circles for all the players…

  • Player Relations – Distin, Jagielka and Baines

    When it comes to both key passes and assists, Leighton Baines was main man again for Everton last season. There isn’t another full back in the big leagues who comes close to being the main man for his team on these measures year in, year out like Leighton is. In the 7 Premier League games…

  • Boardroom Analytics and Black Cat’s jobs

    Last week’s manager piece only included attacking numbers and there’s been a huge clamour (cough) for the defensive side too. So, I’ve jammed them both together on my first ‘proper’ Tableau viz. Both axis talk about ‘efficiency’. This is done by dividing actual goals per game by expected goals per game in attack and vice…

  • The Premier League. Should he stay or should he go?

    The Premier League. Should he stay or should he go?

    It’s the stage of the season where nearly everyone is asking questions of the manager of their football club. What people should be doing is asking questions of the board of their football club. Back in September, Aston Villa extended Paul Lambert’s contract until 2018. Early in the season, Villa had been flying high and…

  • Tim Howard – Leaving the Comfort Zone

    After a decent showing in the FA Cup replay at West Ham and two subsequent Premier League clean sheets, Joel Robles is starting to make Evertonians much less nervous than they were a few weeks ago. However, speculation continues around a new goalkeeper signing after Roberto Martinez said this a few days ago: ‘Tim is…