Blog Posts

  • David De Gea – The Premier League’s Premier Shot-Stopper

    Goalkeepers are under ever more fan and media scrutiny these days. A slip from Joe Hart against Roma overshadowed an otherwise impeccable performance midweek while a segment from Carragher and Neville on Monday Night Football tore into Tim Howard and Simon Mignolet for the derby goals they conceded. Everton travel to Old Trafford today facing…

  • Krasnodar Scouting Report

    Ever seen the Russian’s play? Nope, me neither. Either? Whatever, let’s see what we can gather purely from the data. Here’s the most used line up this year. The players are set in their average touch positions and the bigger their circle the more touches they have during a game: The ridiculously high centre-back pairing are part…

  • The Defenceless Derby

    Everton have conceded 13 goals from 20 shots on target. That really takes some doing. Here’s how it looks visually (I resisted the urge to scribble wildly on a bit of paper). Yellow dots are shots that ended up in the net, blue dots are shots that Howard saved: Using my expected goal model I…

  • Wolfsburg and Kevin De Bruyne

    Everton host Wolfsburg on Thursday night as the Europa league campaign kicks off. The Germans have some familiar names in their ranks with nigh on half the side featuring at the World Cup. Swiss keeper Diego Benaglio has recently recovered from flu so will start, as will compatriot Ricardo Rodriguez at left-back. Scolari favourite Luis…

  • On GIFs, West Bromwich Albion and Saido Berahino

    The Blues travel to the Hawthorns this weekend in search of their first win of the season. Following the Chelsea preview when  I talked about Everton (naively) trying to go toe to toe with Mourinho’s men, I started wondering about how to best visualise team approaches over a short time. The obvious answer was to…