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.