Thursday 15 January 2015

Championship Week 25: Charlton sack Peeters, Leeds' troubles grow

So, Bob Peeters’ chickens have finally come home to roost.
Charlton’s sacking of Peeters (and subsequent appointment of Guy Luzon) was probably the biggest story of this week in the Championship and comes smack in the middle of the transfer window.
With the team in relative mid-table safety it might seem a strange dismissal to many, but it was probably the right one in the long term and really could have been done sooner.

Position Team Played Won Drawn Lost Goals For Goals Against Goal Difference Points
1 Bournemouth 25 14 6 5 55 27 28 48
2 Derby 25 14 6 5 47 23 24 48
3 Ipswich 25 13 8 4 41 23 18 47
4 Middlesbrough 25 12 8 5 38 17 21 44
5 Brentford 25 13 4 8 41 35 6 43
6 Watford 25 12 5 8 44 29 15 41
7 Norwich 25 11 7 7 46 30 16 40
8 Wolves 25 11 7 7 29 33 -4 40
9 Sheffield Weds 25 9 10 6 20 21 -1 37
10 Blackburn 25 9 8 8 35 34 1 35
11 Cardiff 25 9 7 9 33 35 -2 34
12 Birmingham 25 9 7 9 30 38 -8 34
13 Nott'm Forest 25 7 10 8 33 35 -2 31
14 Charlton 25 6 13 6 24 29 -5 31
15 Huddersfield 25 8 7 10 34 43 -9 31
16 Bolton 25 8 6 11 27 32 -5 30
17 Reading 25 8 6 11 30 40 -10 30
18 Fulham 25 8 4 13 35 44 -9 28
19 Brighton 25 5 11 9 27 32 -5 26
20 Rotherham 25 5 11 9 21 31 -10 26
21 Leeds 25 6 7 12 26 37 -11 25
22 Millwall 25 5 8 12 24 41 -17 23
23 Wigan 25 4 8 13 25 34 -9 20
24 Blackpool 25 3 8 14 19 41 -22 17

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve been concerned about Charlton’s underlying stats pretty much all season.
Back in week seven I highlighted the Addicks rather precarious position (along with Reading) and they rode that PDO wave until late October when it finally started to break.
At week six Charlton were sitting in fifth (Reading in sixth) and full of early season promise for many Championship watchers.
But since then the Addicks’ shot metrics have remained pretty much unchanged (a bit of a dip with then recovery to where they were), with PDO being the only long-term fluctuation.
Looking at their position now, Charlton are the (joint) worst team for overall shot share (Corsi/TSR), the third worst side in terms of shots on target share, and heaven forbid what would happen if they hit a prolonged spell of maintaining a season total PDO of below 100 average.
That PDO score has already seen an almost inevitably major fall – from up around 120 at week 13 to now a shade over 102 (just above average) 12 games later.


Position Team Shots for total Shots against total Corsi/TSR shots on target for total shots on target against total Shots on target share Shooting % For Save % PDO
12 Birmingham 348 407 0.461 108 133 0.448 27.78 71.43 99.21
10 Blackburn 395 343 0.535 130 121 0.518 26.92 71.9 98.83
24 Blackpool 285 402 0.415 90 124 0.421 21.11 66.94 88.05
16 Bolton 316 388 0.449 100 130 0.435 27 75.39 102.38
1 Bournemouth 412 294 0.584 152 89 0.631 36.19 69.66 105.85
5 Brentford 333 365 0.477 128 124 0.508 32.03 71.77 103.8
19 Brighton 377 329 0.534 105 98 0.517 25.72 67.35 93.07
11 Cardiff 324 370 0.467 99 109 0.476 33.33 67.89 101.22
14 Charlton 274 387 0.415 88 117 0.429 27.27 75.21 102.48
2 Derby 331 334 0.498 118 109 0.52 39.83 78.9 118.73
18 Fulham 324 372 0.466 106 118 0.473 33.01 62.71 95.73
15 Huddersfield 369 359 0.507 130 121 0.518 26.15 64.46 90.61
3 Ipswich 368 363 0.503 121 99 0.55 33.88 76.77 110.65
21 Leeds 297 376 0.441 82 117 0.412 31.71 68.38 100.09

4
Middlesbrough 371 268 0.581 120 73 0.622 31.66 76.71 108.38
22 Millwall 330 331 0.499 99 115 0.463 24.24 64.34 88.59
7 Norwich 423 258 0.621 134 89 0.601 34.33 66.3 100.62
13 Nott'm Forest 365 317 0.535 104 113 0.479 31.73 69.03 100.76
17 Reading 315 320 0.496 95 108 0.468 31.58 62.96 94.54
20 Rotherham 349 357 0.494 107 106 0.502 19.63 70.75 90.38
9 Sheffield Weds 335 308 0.521 90 89 0.503 22.22 76.41 98.63
6 Watford 349 364 0.489 125 110 0.532 35.2 73.64 108.83
23 Wigan 305 303 0.502 86 103 0.455 29.07 66.99 96.05
8 Wolves 358 338 0.514 106 108 0.495 27.36 69.44 96.8

Although in stats terms that’s a pretty steep and quick drop off [see graph below], it feels like Charlton’s decline has been more of a slow motion car crash given the length of time it’s taken for them to descend from their lofty perch.
Given how tight the bottom half of the Championship is, it may be a high speed car crash if their PDO does continue dropping and hit below 100.
Many Charlton fans are upset with owner Roland Duchatelet and his ways of moving players and, apparently now, managers around his clubs.
But in this instance it’s hard to fault the decision to sack Peeters – but once again it seems to have been made following a PDO crash, rather than change in actual performances.




Someone else experiencing a pretty severe PDO crash is Leeds manager Neil Redfearn. While things are looking a bit nervy for Charlton, Leeds fans should be very worried indeed.
Leeds are third worst in terms of shot share and dead last in shots of target share. Perhaps more worryingly for Leeds, without such a massive PDO boost at the start of the season, the team is now staring the relegation places full in the face.
For most teams that would probably signal a change in managers (yet again, in Leeds’ case) but does Neil Redfearn deserve the opportunity to try and save the season?




Well actually, he probably does.
Looking at the graph we can see that Leeds’ shot share and shots on target share have both been steadily increasing over the course of the season – and Redfearn has had a hand in that twice. (The brown lines indicate a change in managers).

This is part of a larger post I’m hoping to do, but because owners use small sample sizes to judge managers, sadly so must we.
The table below shows how Leeds' managers over this season have performed during their time in charge.

Leeds United managers Champ games played Total shots for Total shots vs Corsi/TSR Total SoT for Total SoT vs SoT share Goals for Goals against Sh% Sv% PDO
Hockaday 4 27 59 0.314 8 15 0.348 2 8 25.00 46.67 71.67
Redfearn 4 39 71 0.355 15 19 0.441 8 2 53.33 89.47 142.81
Milanic 6 71 103 0.408 16 43 0.271 4 10 25.00 76.74 101.74
Redfearn 11 160 143 0.528 43 40 0.518 12 19 27.91 52.50 80.41

First up was Dave Hockaday.
Even ruling out the PDO slump, Hockaday’s time in charge was epically bad. A shot share and shots on target share of barely 30% are just horrific. There really is no other way to describe that.

Then came Redfearn’s first spell, this one as caretaker.
Immediately we see an uptick in shot share and, more significantly, shots on target share. To be honest, it would have been tough to get any lower, but Redfearn did fairly well in that regard, although his positive perception was aided by an out of this world PDO of 142.

Massimo Cellino obviously wasn’t sold on this and brought in Darko Milanic for a 30-odd day reign of, well, odd-ness.
Milanic got the team to record its first period of shot share of 40% so far in the season, but had a shots on target share of just 27%. I may go back and look at those games in more detail to see where the shots were coming from, but the only thing I can think of is either lots of those shots were futile and being blocked, or they were coming from a very long way out.
That, or Leeds' need for a decent striker was even more urgent than it seemed at the time.
The PDO of near average 101 means Milanic more or less got the results he deserved.
And those results got him the sack.

Cellino again turned to Redfearn, this time on a slightly longer term basis and Redfearn has really turned the team around, or so it would seem.
Averaging more than half the shots and shots on target for each game over this spell, Redfearn has the team playing more effectively and is slowly but surely pulling the season-long scores up.
But could an awful PDO of 80 during that spell really mean the end for him soon?

It wouldn’t be the first time a manager has been sacked for a ridiculous PDO slump when otherwise performing fairly well, but it could be a mistake if the new boss changes a much improved formula.
Or perhaps he (it’s always a he!) will be the luck recipient of a PDO bounce.


Random thought

As a final side note, can anyone explain to me why Redfearn would experience two wildly extreme PDO scores in his two spells in charge with basically the same players?
Assuming not much changed tactically in those two spells, this gives another crutch to the "PDO is largely random variance" theory.

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