6.515 – Another Point About Substitutes – Post 42

It struck me, while discussing the number of substitutes in League One yesterday, that I might be missing something quite obvious; its about those time-wasting substitutions at the end of games, and how they might skew the figures. I know, for example, that Paul Tisdale played about a minute for Exeter at the end of their season, and his one appearance (which was about 90 seconds long) counted in the figures. So I needed to try something that would balance it out a bit more; I was drawn, as often in these circumstances, to percentages.

Basically, what percentage of a teams’ playing time was taken up by substitutes? There’d be a maximum of somewhere around 27% (3 players coming on for 90 minutes a time) but I didn’t expect we’d trouble double figures, to be honest. What I didn’t expect to find is that Huddersfield Town topped the table for time played by substitutes, with 6.515% of the total league game time being taken up by replacements – this figure being in no small part due to Jordan Rhodes’ seeming inability to fulfil his 90 minutes whenever he played and the willingness of Lee Clark to remove Benik Afobe from the fray.

My thinking was, then, that the more successful teams would use their substitutes later, just to waste time, and the worse teams would use them sooner, so as to try to change things. I was, as yesterday, misguided.

Look at the percentage line (in red) dipping massively from almost six to just over 4.5, despite the wild inconsistencies (Sheffield Wednesday, with their huge squad, showing up there) from individual team to team. I took into account, for this, the total minutes played (11 x 90 for each game, less the minutes lost for sendings off) and balanced that into percentages with the total time played by the substitutes. Those of you who read yesterday’s post won’t be surprised to see MK Dons featuring so highly; the top three being Town 6.515, Sheffield W 6.432, and MK Dons on 6.430. It’s a fair bit, that, really; its about 65 minutes of game time every match being played by a substitute. Because this table is a bit more compact, I’ve put it in at the bottom. Enjoy reading it, and well done to Oldham and Dagenham, who had the most faith in their starting XIs last season, or the least faith in their substitutes, depending on how you sway. The three columns, if you’re interested, are total minutes (including playoffs), total substitute minutes, and % of Total Minutes that were played by Substitutes.

3 – Comebacks (Pt II)

Well, it nearly happened, didn’t it? This is a quick post to let you know I haven’t forgotten about this blog, but there’s been a bit of upheaval at work, where most of my stats are, and the ones I have been working on have got a lot of research to be doing – so they’re taking a while. Sorry.

49 – Unlikely Comeback? – Post 9

After my bubble of Johnstone’s Paint optimism was so cruelly pricked last week, I dusted myself off and wondered how I could fight back with numbers. I could cut a number seven out of wood, fashion it down, and use it as a boomerang to throw at Carlisle players in the return leg, but that would involve a lot of sanding and shaping which is a bit too much like hard work for my taste.

Or I could do this. I could see how good (or bad) Town have been when in credit or debit by goals in two leg ties they’ve played. Now, when I worked these out, I was disappointed to discover I’d only been to both legs of a two-legged tie on two occasions, both of which were over 10 years ago. In those games, Town led after the first leg in Mansfield and drew at home (there was some sort of news furore over the aged Tony Ford in that home leg) and drew at home to Everton before losing in a game they led and saw Marco Materazzi sent off in.

So I’ve made myself a big list of all the times Town have played two legs; these are in three competitions – the first, the League Cup, which had a two legged first round for a long time, and even a two legged semi-final for Town a long long time ago; the second, the Football League Trophy, which has two-legged semi finals of which Town have won one and lost one before the current mid-point against Carlisle. The third, and the ones I remember the best, are the two-legged playoff semi-finals. I know for a fact that Town have never won a play-off game at home, so I’m not expecting much favour from those. Those three competitions add up to 49 two-legged ties, and Carlisle is the 50th, with a split of 2 Football League Trophy, 5 Playoff and 42 League Cup.

Overall Tie Results first, then.

        P49  W28  D00  L21

 

Of those ties, there has been a split as follows between the location of the first leg of the tie. Home – 27; Away – 22, so Town have been slightly better than winning all of their home ties; it does takes into account both random drawing and the home/away seeding system of the playoffs. But that’s all pretty much by the by. I want to know what happened after the first legs of all those ties, and how Town reacted to it. Here’s the first leg results.

        P49  W22  D14  L13

 

Decent record in those games, then, remembering that a few of them are against teams such as Arsenal (1967/68, 1986/87, 1993/94) that Town wouldn’t be expected to beat anyway. That gives us half the story, then. A first leg draw sets both teams up well – the away team needs to win, the home team needs to win and the pressure is cranked up a little bit – the draws don’t especially interest me here; they’re balanced, whoever they’re against. It’s the wins and the losses that interest me. 22 and 13 aren’t a massive sample size, but they’re enough to work on. So, of the 22 games Town have held a lead going into the 2nd leg, this is the outcome.

        P22  W06  D07  L09

 

Lost 9! That’s more than I was expecting. Those 9 defeats have contributed to 4 eliminations from competitions (in this case, all in the league cup)

1982/83 R2 v Brighton & HA                1-0 (h)   2-0 (a)   1-2 (agg)
1995/96 R2 v Barnsley                     2-0 (h)   4-0 (a)   2-4 (agg)
1997/98 R2 v West Ham U                   1-0 (h)   3-0 (a)   1-3 (agg)
2000/01 R1 v Oldham Ath                   0-1 (a)   0-2 (h)   1-2 (agg)

 

All of those except one Town won their home leg only to see their opposition make better use of home advantage. 2000/01 was a dark time for the club. The reverse of those games, then, is the 13 games that Town have trailed after one leg. These are the ones like the experience we’re having against Carlisle at the moment. What sort of form do they have in those. The full record of second legs Town start one or more goals down is like this. P13 W5 D4 L4 More wins than losses. That’s not so bad. Three of those five wins have been enough to see Town qualify to the next round of their competition. That’s 60% of the times Town win a second leg after losing a first, they win it by enough to qualify. If only it weren’t four goals deficit, eh? Those three in full?

    1979/80 R2 v Grimsby Town               0-1 (a)   4-1 (h)   4-2 (agg)
    1991/92 R1 v Darlington                 0-1 (a)   4-0 (h)   4-1 (agg)
    1994/95 R1 v Scunthorpe                 1-2 (a)   3-0 (h)   4-2 (agg)

 

There is, then, precedent for coming back, but only from one goal down. However, in all the comebacks, Town have ended up with four goals. That will have to be surpassed to beat Carlisle. All the evidence points to Carlisle going to Wembley. Even a cursory look at the Football League Trophy Semi Finals over the years doesn’t really fill you with much hope.

Tw0 teams have come from behind to win FL Trophy Semi Finals, outlined below

    1992/93 Wigan Ath v Stockport County -  2-1 (a)  2-0 (h)  3-2 (agg)
    1996/97 Peterborough v Colchester U  -  2-0 (a)  3-0 (h)  3-2 (agg)

 

This, then, all points to bad news for Town; they’ll need to do something the team has never done and has never been done in the competition before. Come back from more than two goals down after a first leg.

However, we all know that four goal leads aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, don’t we?

58 – JPT Runs: Post 7

At the moment, Huddersfield Town are the favourites to win the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, something they’ve never done. Obviously, it’d be nice to win the trophy, but the important thing, as everybody knows, is league position. Every year, the same statements are trotted out ‘Yeah, it’d be nice, but not if it affects league form.

 

So I wonderered whether it did. When thinking about it, my initial impression was that the teams who tend to do well in the JPT are teams that are on the rise generally – maybe outside the play-offs in Tier 3, but with designs on better the season after; in this case, the league form could be forsaken in favour of a good cup run and a trip to Wembley.

 

How, then, could I find out whether or not teams in the JPT were under- or over-performing compared to what one would expect for the seasons they had the runs? I decided to work on the basis that the Northern and Southern Finals (the last four, effectively) would be what I considered as consisting of a ‘run’. To get to play Carlisle, Town have won only three games, and the most anyone has played could be four, and I think that’s a good boundary. This is the stage now where actually getting to Wembley feels like a reality; up to this point, the games are a necessarily evil, really, of being in the bottom two divisions.

 

How could we know, then, how teams would perform in any given season? Well, the method I chose was to take a five year summary of league positions, and see how the JPT winning season fitted into it with two seasons either side – generally, a team progressing would expect a better league position each season, and one getting worse would see the opposite. The table below is the 21-year average for teams who got to this stage – the year they won is in bold.

 

Lg Pos Av	Winners	66	65	58	53	52
	Runners-Up	78	73	67	57	56
	Semi N	76	75	73	68	67
	Semi S	75	71	64	57	58

 

 

What, then, did my statistics reveal? Firstly, and perhaps most surprisingly, was the fact that Carlisle have now made 8 appearances in the Regional Finals or better since 1993 – that’s almost one every two years – not bad at all considering they spent a season out of the league in that time, too. Secondly, the average league position of the winner of the JPT is 58^th. That’s 14^th in Division 3/League One; a position Brentford, Carlisle and Exeter are all hovering a little above but currently occupied by MK Dons (as at 16/12). The average league position of the runners-up is 67^th – 23^rd in Division 3.
That in itself is not entirely revealing; teams like Carlisle themselves (71^st in 1996/97) have won the trophy, so its not just the big boys in Division 3 who triumph. What is revealing, though, is that for each of the four teams who reach the regional final stage, there is an average position increase every season in the two-before, two-after graph. Not once does that average position drop. Basically what that graph says is that by getting to the Regional Final stage, chances are that your team has been improving for two years and will continue to improve for another two; which certainly rings true of Town. Having said that, of the 21 winners since the tournament ceased to be post-season, no winner has recorded a five year increase – this largely being because promotion has been achieved before either the 4^th or 5^th season of the survey.

 

So what does this mean for Town? It means, truthfully, that the JPT won’t boost league form, but it won’t affect it negatively either – once we’ve got to this stage. There is something more sinister worth bearing in mind, though.

 

Only eight teams have been automatically promoted from the third tier whilst getting to the Regional Finals of the JPT; five divisional runners-up (Stockport 1996/97 – Northern Semi-Finalists; Walsall 1998/99 – Southern Semi-Finalists; Colchester Utd 2005/06 – Southern Semi-Finalists; Bristol City 2006/07 – Runners-Up; Leeds Utd 2009/10 – Northern Semi-Finalists) and three Division 3 Champions (Bristol Rovers 1989/90 – Runners-Up; Swansea City 2007/08 – Southern Semi-Finalists). The big fish, and the one to emulate…. Birmingham City in 1994/95. The Blues extra-time winner by Paul Tait makes them the only team to have won the Lower League Double, which is something for Town to aim towards this season.

 

History, then, shines kindly on the achievements of those who get to the semi-final stage of this competition, but history, too, suggests that the teams who get here often aren’t the best teams in the division in which they compete. Huddersfield Town vintage 2010/11 – you’d better prove history wrong.

 

I’d love to know what causes that jump in the average positions of the losing Southern Semi-Finalists the year they win the trophy; that must just be a quirk of fact – probably helped by Colchester/Southend and Swansea’s successes.