Replacing Brede

Posted January 7th, 2009, 02:28 by Colin Baker

Disclaimer: I don't think Brede Hangeland is going anywhere this month. I'm not convinced he's leaving in January, either. We're 7th in the league in Marginal Goals and Goal Difference, which is as good a predictor of future success as anything. That would likely put us in Europe, which is always a great selling point when recruiting (or trying to keep) players.

But that's not the point. What I want to know is, what happens if Real Madrid jumps in with a €20m bid? My previous post is encouraging. Chris Baird, in his limited action, has actually outperformed Hangeland. Being realistic, we know he's not going to keep that up, but let's say he settles at the midpoint between this season (.188 MGP per 90 minutes) and last (.083). That puts him around the level of the underrated Dejan Stefanovic, a level which would also be easily obtainable in the transfer market.

At our current pace, Hangeland is worth just over 1 win. By having Hangeland in the lineup instead of someone like Dean Leacock, we are 3 or 4 points better. That might not sound like much, but for a half season, that's a huge impact from a single outfield player. Surely, we can do better than a player of Leacock's ability. Let's say we replace Hangeland's .18 MGP per 90 minutes with Chris Baird's target MGP per 90 of .13. Over the remaining 19 games, that's a difference of 1 marginal goal prevented - about a single point the rest of the way for team like Fulham. I can live with that, but a long-term replacement would be ideal. Can Baird even keep pace at that level, equivalent to that of the outstanding Aaron Hughes? Will we suffer from the lack of a taller, more "dominant" centre half? The numbers can't really answer these questions, unfortunately. Fortunately, we can probably say that no one player's loss will doom us to relegation. No "I" in team, right?

Outfield Defence

Posted January 6th, 2009, 23:09 by Colin Baker

The holiday season is over, so it's back to business around these parts. Awhile back, I pointed out how our outfielders and goalkeeper have been about equally good at preventing goals. Mark Schwarzer has been the most valuable keeper in the league, and one of only 3 keepers to prevent more goals than their team's outfield unit (Gomes at Tottenham and Turnbull at Middlesbrough being the others).

But that isn't to say that our outfield defence is bad! Last summer, I calculated Marginal Goals Prevented for each player in 07/08. I've added these numbers to the squad stats page, so they will be updated as the season progresses. Here's a look:

PlayerMinutesMGPsort iconMGP/90
Brede Hangeland16203.2420.180
Aaron Hughes17102.6080.137
John Paintsil16962.3460.124
Danny Murphy16831.2480.067
Paul Konchesky16201.1080.062
Simon Davies17080.7550.040
Zoltan Gera10420.6440.056
Clinton Dempsey9060.5640.056
Jimmy Bullard15540.5440.032
Chris Baird1160.2420.188
Andrew Johnson13790.1310.009
Dickson Etuhu1420.1210.077
Bobby Zamora15240.0910.005
Toni Kallio740.0810.099
Seol Ki-Hyeon1970.0810.037
Leon Andreasen230.050.196
Erik Nevland440.040.082
Fredrik Stoor80.010.113
Andranik80.010.113

Brede Hangeland has earned lots of attention, and deservedly so. If you look back at last season, our leader in MGP was Aaron Hughes at 2.759. Hangeland has passed this already, Hughes himself has almost matched that total, and John Paintsil is getting close. How's that for some perspective? In a few weeks, we'll have three players who have prevented more goals each than our best defender did over the entire 07/08 season.

Update: Apologies for posting before I had the table populated. Hopefully we're all set now!

Player contract status

Posted December 3rd, 2008, 19:01 by Colin Baker

I've added a contract status page. I believe all Fulham players under a professional contract are included, and all are accurate to the best of my knowledge.

Most of the info is taken directly from official announcements on fulhamfc.com, but now you can see it all in one page.

Premier League's Most Valuable Goalkeeper

Posted December 3rd, 2008, 14:09 by Colin Baker

I've started crunching the Goals Prevented numbers for individual players this season - in doing so, came across this interesting bit:

SOGASave %MGP-GK
Fulham560.8046.818
Bolton740.776.545
Chelsea390.8466.409
Man Utd470.8095.954
Aston Villa680.7655.636
Tottenham820.7445.091
Middlesbrough810.7414.773
Liverpool400.84.727
West Brom950.7163.227
Everton790.7223.136
West Ham760.7112.182
Arsenal630.6981.045
Stoke810.6910.773
Portsmouth760.6910.725
Newcastle710.690.591
Wigan600.6830.091
Man City650.646-2.318
Sunderland680.647-2.364
Hull670.642-2.682
Blackburn690.594-6.046

This shows the Marginal Goals Prevented by Goalkeepers for each team in the Premier League. While Schwarzer hasn't necessarily been the best goalkeeper in the Premier League, his contribution has been the most important to his club. So even though Petr Cech might be a better keeper, his greatness is less important to Chelsea because they have such good outfield defence. It's also worth noting that Fulham is 4th in the league in Marginal Goals Prevented by outfield players. This is still very good, and it tells us that no one player (not even Schwarzer) is carrying the team on his back.

As I would have expected, Paul Robinson is terrible, and Heurelho Gomes isn't nearly as bad as perceived (just very busy). Tim Howard had a very rough start to the season, but has turned it around in recent weeks. I suspect Joe Hart will come good as well, but hopefully not until after Saturday.

Bobby Zamora is useless in the air

Posted November 11th, 2008, 17:16 by Colin Baker

No, not really.

I'll admit that he was ineffective early in the season. In the first 4 games, he only won 1 of 10 headers. I think this is another case in which a player gets off to a rough start, earns a reputation, and can't get rid of it no matter what he does. Since the West Ham game, Zamora has won more headers than he's lost. It might not sound like much, but that's hard to do for a striker. To put things into perspective, Brian McBride won 34% of his headers last season. Clint Dempsey won about 36%, and Shefki Kuqi 42%. Zamora is sitting at 43% so far, despite the slow start.

Goalscoring Chances Created

Posted November 6th, 2008, 17:59 by Colin Baker

I've added a table on the right-hand side of the site for a Chances Created stat. This is essentially the same as Goals Created, using the assumption that each chance is attributed 50% to the shooter, and 50% to playmaking. This looks at all shots and passes leading to shots. The Nevland fans should enjoy this, although his 17 minutes doesn't really tell us a whole lot:

NameMCCCC/90
Erik Nevland17210.588
Jimmy Bullard893383.830
Clinton Dempsey16763.233
Zoltan Gera845252.662
Bobby Zamora867242.491
Simon Davies899212.102
Andrew Johnson569132.056
Seol Ki-Hyeon19741.827
Danny Murphy886151.524
Brede Hangeland90060.600
John Paintsil88650.508
Paul Konchesky81030.333

All in all, this is probably just another way of looking at the numbers I posted yesterday, all of which can be seen on the squad stats page.

The Killer Pass

Posted November 5th, 2008, 13:32 by Colin Baker

I had a post all ready to go explaining further why we can get by without Jimmy Bullard in the lineup, but then he just has to turn around and put in a solid performance at Everton. Roy's comments leading up to the game lead us to believe that Jimmy would be on a shorter leash, but he's probably earned himself some slack.

Regardless, no sense wasting some good stats. Good teams tend to take lots of shots. Good passes set up these shots, more often than not. Who makes the passes that lead to scoring opportunities? Opta is nice enough to tell us how many assists each player could have had, provided the shooter put the ball in the net:

Player Assist Attempts Total Passes % of Passes Leading to Shots
Johnson 7 117 6.0%
Davies 17 343 5.0%
Dempsey 3 66 4.5%
Bullard 24 610 3.9%
Gera 14 355 3.9%
Zamora 11 288 3.8%
Seol 2 65 3.1%
Murphy 14 504 2.8%
Paintsil 5 441 1.1%
Konchesky 4 400 1.0%

We're already tracking goals created here, but with all the talk going on about creating chances, this gives us the base for calculating that. More in a bit.

On an unrelated note, I've updated the league tables with the latest marginal goals. Whoever says that there are no pushovers in the Premier League this season is right on. On their current pace, worst team in the league is 42 marginal goals better than Derby last season, and better than all of the bottom 6 of 06/07!

What Happens with Jimmy?

Posted October 27th, 2008, 18:01 by Colin Baker

In any given game, Jimmy Bullard will pass the ball between 50-70 times. When you pass the ball that many times, you need to be accurate, and for the most part, Jimmy has been just that. Lately, there have been rumblings of too many misplaced passes and turnovers, leading to a lot of suggestions that he should be dropped.

Passes Completed Passes %
@Hull City 46 38 0.826
Arsenal 72 55 0.764
Bolton 53 45 0.849
@Blackburn 63 52 0.825
West Ham 67 58 0.866
@West Brom 66 55 0.833
Sunderland 58 46 0.793
@Portsmouth 57 44 0.772
Total 482 393 0.815

He has regressed in each of the last 4 matches, but only the last two have really been sub-par. What can we say about this? That it's a bad run of from, it's just two games, and therefore not a big deal? Or that it's a disturbing trend? We won't know for sure without allowing him to play, but Bullard is our primary playmaker, and we can't afford mistakes. I see three options: 1) play better; 2) step aside and let Murphy (or Davies, or Gera) run the attack; or 3) Drop Bullard for a game.

Option 1 is no guarantee. Option 2 could work, but would we expose the back four? Option 3 might be the safest bet. Clint Dempsey has been in excellent form for club and country. He's even moved up to the top of Fulham's passing charts (among those with a minimum 90 minutes logged, at least). He defends well. He can score goals. While Dempsey hasn't shown to be a better midfield player than Bullard thus far in his career, it is growing more evident that he is the better player right now.

That all said, Jimmy Bullard isn't the beginning and the end of our problems. Don't worry, I've got more to blabber on about.

Scouting Survey

Posted September 19th, 2008, 17:41 by Colin Baker

It's been awhile since my last post. I just moved into a new house, and most of my time has been spent on things related to that. With the move now out of the way, I expect things to be back to normal around here. Normally, I'll post a story on here whenever I see something interesting, and decide to investigate further. Such is the case today. Every year, Tom Tango does a survey where he invites fans to rate baseball players' defensive skills on a 1-5 scale. I decided to do the same sort of thing. I've included every current Fulham player with at least 90 minutes (from league play) logged with the club. Each player gets rated in 17 categories, and then we add up the results and see how everyone turns out. If I get a good response, I'll probably post a survey for each Premier League club.

The ballot can be found here.

Individual Goals Prevented

Posted August 21st, 2008, 19:42 by Colin Baker

Lately, I've been trying to come up with a defensive equivalent to the goals created statistic. Ideally, I would like to be able to add the two, and come up with an overall value of each player. I'm not quite there yet, but I've found something that makes sense for defensive contribution. When looking at Marginal Goals, we can determine how many goals (compared to a fictional "marginal" team) we prevented. With the percentage of shots saved by the goalkeepers, we can break it down further to see how many goals were prevented by the keeper, and how many were prevented by outfield players.


In the 06/07 season, I rated our outfield defence 15.768 goals better than the marginal team (think Sunderland of 05/06). How do we divide this up among individuals? The most fair method I've come up with this equation:


Here, we have MGP for marginal goals prevented; DA as defensive actions - including all clearances, blocks, interceptions, tackles, and offside provocations; and M as minuses - the number of goals conceded with a player on the pitch. The same variables with a lower-case t are the team totals for each. This gives us the following table for 06/07:

Name Marginal Goals Prevented
Hughes 2.759
Bocanegra 1.820
Stefanovic 1.761
Hangeland 1.744
Baird 1.344
Konchesky 1.327
Stalteri 0.704
Davies 0.640
Murphy 0.628
Dempsey 0.622
Davis 0.622
Andreasen 0.376
Knight 0.358
Volz 0.211
Bullard 0.182
Smertin 0.176
Bouazza 0.170
Seol 0.141
Nevland 0.059
McBride 0.047
Kuqi 0.041
Ashton 0.041
Diop 0.012
Kamara 0.006
Johnson 0.006
Pearce 0.006
Christanval 0.006
John 0.000
Healy -0.041

So what this means is that, by having Aaron Hughes start at CB instead of a generic player from the 05/06 Sunderland team, we prevented almost 3 goals. Brede Hangeland and Dejan Stefanovic still managed to prevent almost 2 goals apiece in their limited time. I think that all of this tells us that there isn't a huge difference between our top 4 CBs, but the difference does amount to about half a win, or 1-2 draws. As we have found out, that can be the difference between staying up and being relegated.


Another thing I found interesting is how this relates to our current central midfield dillema. I predicted that Danny Murphy and Jimmy Bullard will finish this season with almost exactly the same total of goals created, with roughly the same number of minutes. In defence, however, they differ quite a bit. Murphy, while not an idea defensive midfielder, was still ahead of Bullard. Leon Andreasen, projected over a full 3000-minute season, would have been more than a full goal better than Bullard. Would that goal make up for the loss in attacking ability? Or would Andreasen's presence allow Murphy and the rest of the team to attack more effectively? It's all difficult to say, but we're getting a little bit closer to understanding just what it means to replace a player in the lineup. The fun begins when we can look at marginal goals created. That's (hopefully) coming soon, and it should give attack and defence statistics a common ground, a way to say "Player A is better than Player B".