I have been following scoring patterns in six European football leagues (EPL, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A, Eredivisie and Primera) in the 2017-2018 season.
I have a particular interest in the outcome of scoring first and not losing in games in these leagues.
Prior to midweek games on 13 December 2017, the range of my data (n=875 games) thus far is:
In Ligue 1, the % of games in which the team that has scored first and not lost has ranged between 86% and 89%. In Serie A, the range is 72% to 80%. The other four leagues fit between these two leagues.
My BoxplotR visualisation of nine observations for these leagues is:
The box plot statistics are:
The EPL is about to enter an intense fixture period and I will be interested to observe any changes in pattern.
A separate project is to examine the games in which the team that scores first has lost (n=96 of the 875 games played). The Eredivisie has the largest number of these games (n=23 out of 134 games) and the Primera the smallest number (n=12 out of 150 games).
Photo Credit
Marco Verratti (PSG Officiel, Twitter)
Fireworks (AjaxDaily, Twitter)
It would be interesting to overlay mixed-mode ‘Match Flow Analytics’ by Sports Wizard(R) to identify ‘human intelligence’ about causes for those patterns. First-up we would look at pre-match ‘Vulnerability.’
That kind of triangulation of data would be very interesting, Tony.