Tuesday 21 October 2014

Championship Week 12: Watford on top, Birmingham sack Clark... finally

Just a quick post today with the next round of games coming up tonight.
First up, leaving the stats to one side, this Championship season is starting to have the look of a bit of a corker about it.
No team has managed to pull away at the top of the table and just nine points separate first and seventeenth - that's just three wins.
Yes for a season that's 12 games old that's a decent number of wins, but with another 34 games still to play, that means basically three-quarters of the division are still in with a shout of promotion.


Position Team Played Won Drawn Lost Goals For Goals Against Goal Difference Points
1 Watford 12 7 3 2 23 12 11 24
2 Derby 12 6 5 1 22 10 12 23
3 Middlesbrough 12 7 2 3 18 9 9 23
4 Norwich 12 6 3 3 21 11 10 21
5 Nott'm Forest 12 5 6 1 20 11 9 21
6 Ipswich 12 5 5 2 17 11 6 20
7 Wolves 12 5 5 2 17 14 3 20
8 Charlton 12 4 7 1 14 11 3 19
9 Bournemouth 12 5 3 4 17 14 3 18
10 Brentford 12 5 3 4 15 16 -1 18
11 Sheffield Weds 12 4 5 3 11 11 0 17
12 Cardiff 12 4 4 4 15 15 0 16
13 Blackburn 12 4 4 4 17 19 -2 16
14 Leeds 12 4 3 5 12 15 -3 15
15 Rotherham 12 4 3 5 11 14 -3 15
16 Reading 12 4 3 5 15 20 -5 15
17 Huddersfield 12 4 3 5 16 22 -6 15
18 Millwall 12 3 4 5 13 16 -3 13
19 Wigan 12 2 5 5 12 14 -2 11
20 Brighton 12 2 5 5 11 14 -3 11
21 Birmingham 12 2 5 5 12 19 -7 11
22 Fulham 12 3 1 8 13 22 -9 10
23 Bolton 12 2 2 8 9 21 -12 8
24 Blackpool 12 1 3 8 8 18 -10 6


Sure that's probably a pretty fanciful suggestion for many clubs, but all it takes is a run of pretty good luck over ten games or so and a team can shoot up the table. From there, anything, as they say, is posisble.
We've seen in the NHL (primary submission the Toronto Maple Leafs) that a 48 game season can still mean outlying teams achieve positive results thanks to PDO.
Even a 60-ish game season still leaves room for luck to factor in - it wasn't until around the 65 game mark last season (the NHL plays 82 games) that the wheels finally fell off for the Leafs and their poor possession numbers kicked-in.

So Watford and Derby's simultaneous 3-0 away wins, coupled with Norwich and Nottingham Forest's one-goal away defeats rearranges the top of the table significantly - as did Middlesbrough's 2-1 win down at Brighton (poor Brighton).
I've been bigging up Middlesbrough for a while now and I'm quite pleased to see them coming through. Anyone dominating games the way they are deserves to be rewarded (again, poor Brighton).
And at the other end, Birmingham's 1-0 home defeat by fellow strugglers Bolton finally sealed Lee Clark's fate.


Position Team Shots for total Shots against total Corsi/TSR
1 Watford 165 193 0.461
2 Derby 168 156 0.519
3 Middlesbrough 195 111 0.637
4 Norwich 220 128 0.632
5 Nott'm Forest 158 147 0.518
6 Ipswich 165 177 0.482
7 Wolves 175 147 0.543
8 Charlton 107 181 0.372
9 Bournemouth 174 151 0.535
10 Brentford 153 171 0.472
11 Sheffield Weds 164 139 0.541
12 Cardiff 137 188 0.422
13 Blackburn 186 170 0.522
14 Leeds 120 195 0.381
15 Rotherham 177 174 0.504
16 Reading 145 162 0.472
17 Huddersfield 177 171 0.509
18 Millwall 174 145 0.546
19 Wigan 143 139 0.507
20 Brighton 203 124 0.621
21 Birmingham 160 186 0.462
22 Fulham 151 149 0.503
23 Bolton 146 205 0.416
24 Blackpool 133 187 0.416

As we can see from the shot share table (Corsi/TSR) Birmingham's rate is pretty poor - seventh worst at 46.2% of all shots taken per game - although it is actually on a par with Watford (46.1%).
However the real problem comes when you look at shots on target share - something which is arguyably a greater measure of player and team skill. Here Birmingham really struggle, getting just 41.7% of shots on target - fifth worst in the league.

Add in that this Corsi/TSR score is basically the same as last year (45%) and you can see why the Blues owners had enough. As ever though - the sacking was really prompted by a dip in PDO. All was well in the early season when Birmingham had a PDO 106 four weeks in.
That dipped and rebounded a little, but now having dipped again Clark suffered.
It's clear the situation behind the scenes is not great at Birmingham - whether a new manager will be able to get anymore out of what seems to be a squad low in skill will have to be seen.



Position Team shots on target for total shots on target against total Shots on target share
1 Watford 58 55 0.513
2 Derby 60 56 0.517
3 Middlesbrough 54 30 0.643
4 Norwich 64 44 0.592
5 Nott'm Forest 49 48 0.505
6 Ipswich 56 50 0.528
7 Wolves 51 44 0.537
8 Charlton 37 49 0.43
9 Bournemouth 61 47 0.565
10 Brentford 58 57 0.504
11 Sheffield Weds 43 41 0.512
12 Cardiff 44 45 0.494
13 Blackburn 64 59 0.52
14 Leeds 35 62 0.361
15 Rotherham 56 50 0.528
16 Reading 44 50 0.468
17 Huddersfield 63 57 0.525
18 Millwall 54 44 0.551
19 Wigan 33 52 0.388
20 Brighton 53 33 0.616
21 Birmingham 43 60 0.417
22 Fulham 49 50 0.495
23 Bolton 44 72 0.379
24 Blackpool 38 56 0.404


Speaking of PDO (luck), Derby and Watford are now first and third in that measure respectively.
Watford's shot share score is deceiving - the team played large portions of two games (almost a tenth of the season so far, I'd guess) with only ten men on the pitch, and have also been victimised by score effects considerably - see the Sheffield Wednesday victory last weekend.
More realistic is probably the Hornets shots on target share of 51.3%. Again that's not great, but anything above parity is always a welcome place to be.


Position Team Shooting % For Save % PDO
1 Watford 39.66 78.18 117.84
2 Derby 36.67 82.14 118.82
3 Middlesbrough 33.34 70 103.34
4 Norwich 32.82 75.01 107.83
5 Nott'm Forest 40.81 77.08 117.89
6 Ipswich 30.36 78 108.36
7 Wolves 33.34 68.18 101.52
8 Charlton 37.82 77.54 115.37
9 Bournemouth 27.87 70.21 98.08
10 Brentford 25.86 71.93 97.79
11 Sheffield Weds 25.57 73.17 98.74
12 Cardiff 34.08 66.68 100.76
13 Blackburn 26.56 67.81 94.37
14 Leeds 34.28 75.8 110.08
15 Rotherham 19.64 72 91.65
16 Reading 34.11 59.99 94.1
17 Huddersfield 25.4 61.4 86.8
18 Millwall 24.08 63.62 87.7
19 Wigan 36.35 73.07 109.42
20 Brighton 20.75 57.56 78.31
21 Birmingham 27.91 68.34 96.24
22 Fulham 26.54 56.02 82.55
23 Bolton 20.45 70.83 91.27
24 Blackpool 21.06 67.85 88.91

Tonight's games include a couple of crackers - at least on paper.
Watford v Forest and Wolves v Middlesbrough should be very good attacking games. Well worth watching if you're not being distracted by the Champions League.



Position Team Corsi/TSR Shots on target share PDO
1 Watford 0.461 0.513 117.84
2 Derby 0.519 0.517 118.82
3 Middlesbrough 0.637 0.643 103.34
4 Norwich 0.632 0.592 107.83
5 Nott'm Forest 0.518 0.505 117.89
6 Ipswich 0.482 0.528 108.36
7 Wolves 0.543 0.537 101.52
8 Charlton 0.372 0.43 115.37
9 Bournemouth 0.535 0.565 98.08
10 Brentford 0.472 0.504 97.79
11 Sheffield Weds 0.541 0.512 98.74
12 Cardiff 0.422 0.494 100.76
13 Blackburn 0.522 0.52 94.37
14 Leeds 0.381 0.361 110.08
15 Rotherham 0.504 0.528 91.65
16 Reading 0.472 0.468 94.1
17 Huddersfield 0.509 0.525 86.8
18 Millwall 0.546 0.551 87.7
19 Wigan 0.507 0.388 109.42
20 Brighton 0.621 0.616 78.31
21 Birmingham 0.462 0.417 96.24
22 Fulham 0.503 0.495 82.55
23 Bolton 0.416 0.379 91.27
24 Blackpool 0.416 0.404 88.91

Exciting news

Well, I think it is.
I've stumbled across a new data source so this blog is hopefully going to be getting better... well bigger, and of course bigger is *always* better.
More next time when I have time to address it.

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