Blog Posts

  • Team Styles and Quality of Shot Position

    Last time out at Differentgame we looked at the consistency of finishing from different areas of the field. Today we’re going to look at which teams consistently shoot from good positions. Using the positional data collected for our expected goals model we can calculate the % chance of scoring for each shot taken. From there…

  • There’s Trouble Outside – How Hard is it to Continually Convert from Distance?

    So this is the third and final part of the series looking at the repeatability of converting chances from different areas of the pitch. This last one looks at shots from outside the box from both a team view and from that of the top strikers in the Premier League. In our first piece looking…

  • Blocks: The demonization of not working a pass

    Ok, so we’re back on the block again here at Differentgame. It’s becoming a slight obsession of ours that we try to defend the block. We just don’t think they’re as bad as is generally made out. Last time out we looked at the ratio of shots that were blocked from different shooting areas and…

  • Where shooting goes wide of the mark

    So last week at Differentgame we started to look at how repeatable a skill finishing from the central area of the box was. This week we edge further out where the angles get narrower and the shots get more speculative. Do some teams and individuals still retain that ability to regularly finish these chances? Let’s…

  • Converting Shots – Repeats and Repeatability 1

    So there’s been lots of recent ‘chat’ on Twitter about how much conversion rates vary and how much of it is down to skill or luck. Well, we’ve got some data here at Differentgame so we thought we’d wade into the debate with some of it. We say ‘wade’, we’re not skilled mathematicians here at…