First of Sounder At Heart Match Statistics - Updated *2

by Dave Clark on Mar 21, 2009 2:33 PM PDT in Sounders: MLS Regular Season

I'm tracking some slightly different things than you can find in the box score, or play by play. Some of these will look unorthodox, and will take time to explain, and so the comments may need time. There will shortly be a menu bar where you can find all of this data, and it will be kept as a running total for regular season matches. Depending on the response I hope to maintain this for each season, MLS Cup Playoffs and US Open Cup. Maybe next year we get to add on the SuperLiga or CONCACAF Champions league.

I will not track this for friendlies or reserve match.

Goals and Assists are the official league numbers.

Team Goals per 90 and Team Shots on Goal per 90 are built using ratio for minutes played and the success of the team in both areas. This is done in order to account for offense being both an individual and a team accomplishment.

Plus/Minus indicates goals scored minus goals against while a player is on the pitch. Again a team based stat, that over time should indicate offensive success of a player beyond their personal numbers.

Man of Match, yeah, that. Currently I am using the one announced by the team, but I may adjust that in the future.

[table=11]

Again the table should sort, ~~and in a bit I will have the defensive version up as well~~. Now with Defense as well.

[table=12]

Starts/Subs should make sense

% Minutes Played will use the baseline 90 (or for Extra Time matches 120)

Cards Y=Yellow and R=Red

Clean Sheets - I want to credit the team defense for this and not just the keeper.

Team Goals Against per 90 and Team Shots on Goal Against per 90 are similar to the offensive stats. In this case I think both numbers are important, as any player can effect those numbers based on their performance on the pitch.

[table=13]

% Played is from above

App.=Appearence, whether start or sub

Pts Earned in Appearence, are total points earned by the team in any appearence by the player

Effeciency is total pts earned times playing time.

Questions and comments are appreciated more than usual. Over time we may be able to see a player who doesn't get glamor statistics, but has a team consistently perform better while he is on the field than when he is off of it.

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Comments

God I love statistics.

I definitely agree with your take on clean sheets. They are probably more to do with the team defense than the keeper. Kasey saved two really nice ones, but the team prevented many, many more.

I like that MLS awards joint assists, like the NHL; Seba and Alonso definitely played a large part of the lead-up to that first goal.

Will you keep the MLS, CONCACAF, and USOC stats separate? The different levels of competition could make a difference. Or, keep separate stats for v. USL, v. MLS (could include USOC and/or CONCACAF), v. other.

Also, will you keep separate home and away stats? Might give a strong indication of our home field advantage. But the sample size will be smaller, too.

The main problems I see with soccer stats are the sample size and the “team” factor. Baseball has such a long season that AB and IP stack up pretty quickly into something that can demonstrate a trend. Also, while a player can certainly affect a game without touching the ball, there can definitely be long stretches of time when a given player might not be involved in the run of play (unlike baseball, where everyone’s going to get the ABs, or throw the pitches, though this does come into play with fielding, when a player can go nine innings without a put-out, assist, or error, and possibly no meaningful interaction). Also, baseball is a team game, but the stats kept are mostly individual, and depend solely on said individual (except for a few, like RBI), instead of a team effort.

I look forward to seeing how you tackle this project.

by Cornchops on Mar 21, 2009 3:35 PM PDT reply actions

Great stats Dave. I look forward to seeing what trends develop as the season goes along. I am interested how adding Freddie and most likely subracting Evans will play out. For those of us who follow stats, the plus/minus is a stat that is used regularly in basketball. It really looks nice seeing all those plus 3’s. Keep up the good work.

by Coug1990 on Mar 21, 2009 3:37 PM PDT reply actions

Good job Dave. Thanks for doing this. This is where the Sounders site is sorta lacking.

by Joel on Mar 21, 2009 4:10 PM PDT reply actions

Damn, your recent posts have been awesome. I love the stats, I’m glad you’ve got all of this setup.

by Jon on Mar 21, 2009 5:49 PM PDT reply actions

Over time we can start looking at trends and meaning. Right now they don’t tell us much. The future should be good.

I will track both the Open Cup qualifiers and the Open Cup as one set. The CCL/SL will be kept seperately. There will also be a master with ALL non-friendlies.

Depending on how much effort I put in I may track in my spreadsheet Home/Away/Neutral.

I’m wondering if the Man of Match should be just what the club announces, if I should just use Prost Amerika’s as Steve will have one every time, or if I should just put up a vote here. Feedback would be welcome.

by Dave Clark on Mar 21, 2009 6:01 PM PDT reply actions

Do you mean that it is too early to read into this data a trend? Dave, I was positive we were going to set a trend and win every game 3-0 and that Montero was going to score 60 goals and have 30 assists ?

by Coug1990 on Mar 21, 2009 6:09 PM PDT reply actions

Coug, I received an email and a phone call asking for analysis based off of those stats. I can’t do that yet, but as players are rested we can start to learn things.

by Dave Clark on Mar 21, 2009 6:34 PM PDT up reply actions

Great work Dave.

I hope to work with you to read some conclusions into all this hard work over time. I’ll be tieing it into my player ratings work over time and hopefully, we can start to see patterns emerging.

by Prost Amerika on Mar 22, 2009 6:29 PM PDT reply actions