Blog Posts

  • Luis, Roo and Bob Too!

    So we’ve turned our goalkeeping model about face to apply to strikers. Basically, we have split the penalty area and surrounds into 46 locations. We’ve then popped each of the last 11,000+ open-play shots on target from the last 3 and a half seasons into those 46 bins to give us an average conversion rate…

  • A Short (?) History of Expected Goals Models

    Expected Goals Models aren’t new. They’ve been around for a long time now. In October 2012, my blog here at differentgame was in its infancy and I was writing for other sites trying to get exposure. Being an Everton fan I was looking at them in particular and why, despite being shot kings of Europe,…

  • Shot Stopping and Defensive Pressure

    Yesterday we published our keeper shot-stopping rankings on Twitter. These dated back from the 2010/11 season and were fully up to date – apart from Ben Foster’s season with Birmingham. Here’s how it looked: It raised a fair few comments about Tim Krul being so bad. We pointed out that Krul in fact would be…

  • Dropping Jaaskelainen

    A few weeks ago Jussi Jaaskelainen was dropped by Sam Allardyce after keeping 9 clean sheets in 16 Premier League games. He was top of our shot stopper rankings for the season too. It seemed a bizarre decision at the time and the Finn was quickly re-instated after a couple of Premier League games in…

  • Striking Questions – Part Two

    Happy New Year, folks. Last time out we answered the question of who were the best finishers in front of goal (the green zone in the graphic below). Today we move wider and further out where the numbers tell us it’s generally very difficult to score. Here’s how many shots it takes on average to…