4.06 – A Brief Appreciation of Jordan Rhodes – Post 43

Jordan Rhodes has scored 35 league goals for Huddersfield Town. 19 were in 2009/10, and 16 were in 2010/11. That’s a more than respectable tally – indeed, only Rickie Lambert and Lee Barnard have scored more in League One over that time (though Grant Holt has scored around 2,000,000 in that time, largely against Jordan’s former team Ipswich). Now, that fact alone points to the fact that there aren’t many strikers of his quality around the divisions – if someone scores goals, they’re given a chance higher very quickly indeed now – witness Charlie Austin, scorer of 19 goals in 2009/10, and even Billy Paynter, with 26 that season, even though it seems to have been an anomaly in a sea of otherwise average goal-scoring seasons. Jordan has remained in League One and will be looking to score a similar amount this time around – if he is successful, his run of three 15 goal League One seasons will be the longest active streak (Rickie Lambert currently owns that, but of course will by plying his trade a division higher this time around).

Now, this isn’t what I want focus on in this mini-post. I want to draw focus to the shots per goal figure that these strikers have carried with them. A value per goal, if you will. It was something I did an extensive post about on the then-extant 606 when Jermain Beckford left Leeds to go to Everton – he required a lot of shots, at that stage, for his goals to come; far more, when I worked it out, than Simon Cox and Rickie Lambert did for the same tally. He has adjusted bit-by-bit to the Premiership.

Anyway.

In his first season, Jordan’s 19 goals came from 106 shots (53 on, 53 off target) which was a rate of a goal every 5.58 shots – good for only 10th best in the division, behind such goal-fiends as Charlie Austin, Nicky Forster and, erm, Ian Harte. Last season, Jordan may have only scored 16 goals, but they were from far fewer shots (partly because he didn’t play as often) at only 4.06 shots per goal. Thinking about that, scoring a goal every four attempts, is impressive indeed; counting that slightly over half were on target, that’s 16 goals out of 36 shots that found the net – a goalkeeper success rate of only 20/36 (or 56%) and leaving him third in League One, behind only Craig Mackail-Smith (of course) and Ashley Barnes, neither of whom will provide competition this season.

There’s a few interesting nuggets on the table – Rickie Lambert being so ineffective last season (?), Ian Harte…just generally – but this is a slight going over of old ground (refer to my minute-by-minute Jordan Rhodes post a few months ago) with a reminder of something I’ll be keeping a close eye on this season – expect updates, then, every goal that Jordan scores with all players on the same or more goals – obviously depending on circumstance. The conclusion I would draw, though, is that Jordan appears to be improving every season, and hopefully will do the same again. Will be interesting, too, to see the seasons Bradley Wright-Phillips and Gary Jones have, particularly BWP.

5.43 – Welcome To Donal McDermott – Post 38

Yesterday, Huddersfield Town unveiled two new signings, one more unexpected and exciting than the other. I mean no disrespect to Oscar Gobern, but we knew what to expect with his signing, but Donal McDermott, tormentor-in-chief for Bournemouth during the playoffs was unexpected and, coming off the back of the news that the previous next-best-thing wanted to move on, lightened the mood a little. I wanted to do a little statistical analysis about what we might expect, and, as luck would have it, the two players’ pre-Town careers haven’t been a million miles apart. You’ll remember I did a post about Pilks a few days after his injury. All the stats from then remain the same, and have been used here, though I’ve deleted the Huddersfield Town ones from a lot of them. Firstly, if we start with games played.

Before he signed for Town, Pilks had played 91 games (all for Stockport); Donal has played far, far fewer – only 38 appearances, and a good proportion of those off the bench – similarly, Pilkington’s 19 goals overwhelms McDonald’s 7.

However, where they are even is in games PER goal – Pilkington’s 19 came one every 4.79 games, and McDermott’s came at an only slightly less impressive 5.43 games per goal; coincidentally, he has the same ratio for games per assist, too, which outstrips Pilkington’s, which was at an assist every 7 games when he joined. Pilkington was scoring at a goal every 8 games, and McDonald at one every 8.29 games – again both very similar.

Here’s the chart (obviously, Pilkington is at the top)

The only other thing I wanted to look at was McDermott’s AMMP – which was 0.67 to Pilkington’s 1.50 – they were both hamstrung by team-mates here; Town’s best run came with Pilks out of the team, and Bournemouth’s run-in was pretty poor in terms of points, so McDermott lost out there.

The stats, then, say that we’re getting someone a little more raw than Pilkington was, but perhaps with a shade more emphasis on assisting goals than scoring them. However it end up, he’s an exciting signing, and I wish him all the best – as I will to Pilkington when he leaves the club. Good move by Lee Clark, and full thanks to Dean Hoyle.

2.03 – Kevin Kilbane And AMMP – Post 34

I saw Kevin Kilbane play a few times last season, and although there was a couple of amazingly good passes in the game against Sheffield Wednesday, his other performances were pretty forgettable – I thought he was awful in the playoff final; so much went astray, and he never seemed to be anywhere he needed to be.

One of the things I’ve been working with lately (which I posted some information from a wee while ago) is the minutes each player features for Town. Using that data set, now complete for the 46 league games, I can see how many points each player won; in terms of minutes on the field. Peter Clarke, having played all 90 minutes of all 46 league games, can claim 87 points, as can the two goalkeepers between them.

The formula I’ve used to work this ratio out is one I’ve called AMMP. It might sound complicated, but it only stands for Appearance Made / Minutes / Points, which is basically how I worked it all out. There is a maximum AMMP of 3 (because there’s three points for a win) and a minimum, as you’d expect, of 0. Given that most teams average about 1.5 points per game, I’d expect an average AMMP for a first team player to be about 1.40; allowing for substitutions throughout the season – Damien Johnson was the closest Town player to that mark, with an AMMP of 1.44.

That’s useful in a few ways, but most of all it can be used as a direct comparison. Ian Bennett registered 47 points, and Alex Smithies 40 – which means Bennett’s appearances counted for an average of 1.96 points, and Smithies for 1.82. These numbers for the goalkeepers are helped by each one only playing full matches, but I don’t think its too controversial to say that it suggests what people already knew – that Bennett had been a little better than Smithies when he got into the team.

So far, so obvious. There was never any great discussion about who should be playing in goal, though, that decision was pretty much made for Lee Clark. The more controversial positions were elsewhere; up front, at centre back (Kay or McCombe?) or in midfield. This is where we should be able to draw some differences with AMMP.

Looking at the second graph here (players arranged by squad number)

of the strikers AMMP; there’s a definite points advantage to Rhodes and Afobe both playing (though note how low the figures on the left are there – nothing higher than 1.2 for Jordan Rhodes. There’s a relatively straightforward reason for the lower scores in that Lee Clark loves to change his forward line relatively early in the second half – there’s lot of 76, 65 and 45 minute appearances made. After Afobe and Rhodes, though, the other four – Novak (31 apps), Lee (28), Garner (16) and Cadamarteri (11) – are much of a muchness, ranging from 0.82 to 0.94 AMMP – the highest being Lee Novak.

I can’t help but think that the fact that there is no striker even close to 1.5 may well be one of the reasons we seemed to struggle up front. Rhodes scored a lot of goals, but was regularly substituted. Afobe played a lot of (successful) games, but scored – relatively – few goals. Alan Lee and Lee Novak would be regarded as having disappointing seasons, yet they were equally effective as Garner and Cadamarteri, one of whom was shipped out in January.

Moving onto centre backs, then. Peter Clarke is a representation of the team, as I mentioned, as he played all 46 games. Kay played 27 and McCombe played 34, so we’re not looking at small sample sizes there, and there’s a very noticeable difference. Town were more successful when John McCombe played. I quite like Antony Kay as a player, and accept how gangly and ungamely Jamie McCombe looks, but the numbers don’t lie; Antony Kay’s 1.57 AMMP is a long way lower than Boom Boom’s 1.81 – both are a little below Peter Clarke’s 1.89, but it certainly seems that McCombe and Clarke would’ve been the better centre-back pairing over the course of the season – not sure how they would’ve been different given those three goals against Peterborough. I only used Clarke, Kay and McCombe because there wasn’t really evidence that any other players were anywhere close to first choice in this position throughout the season.

This, then, leads us onto the midfield, which is, I’d say, the positions that have caused the most debate. I’ve included,

because of their playing time/importance, eight midfielders. Four I’d class as wide (Roberts, Ward, Pilkington, Carey) and four central (Gudjonsson, Johnson, Arfield, Kilbane). There’s a happy mirroring with this, too. With an AMMP of 2.03, Kevin Kilbane stands alone as the midfielder who’s performances have earned the most points this season, followed by Danny Ward, Gary Roberts and an incredibly close call between Joey Gudjonsson and Scott Arfield (1.60 v. 1.59). Those four (you’d have to take Joey, I guess, being that 0.01 higher) would make a pretty impressive midfield four, particularly if Gary Roberts was in his early season form rather than later. It is worth noting that for all his goals, Anthony Pilkington didn’t get to play in too many winning Town teams, and Graham Carey was the least successful of all the midfield. There’s mitigating circumstances, mind you, in that Gary Roberts was, for a while, the only player who COULD play on the left flank, so he was the only chance.

For the record, I’ve include an AMMP graph for the whole squad here at the bottom. Chris Atkinson gets a rough ride, in my opinion, but there’s big performers in the defence – Naysmith, Clarke, Peltier… it was a good season.

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4.00 – Congratulations to Pilks – Post 27

On 17th April, Anthony Pilkington, whose continued improvement as a football was discussed earlier on these pages, was named to the PFA League One Team of the Year. It’s a tremendous achievement for the lad, even if most of the votes possibly came as a result of his goal against Sheffield Wednesday on Sky in early January – the month the votes were cast. He was joined by a motley crew of other success stories of the season, 5 from Southampton, 3 from Brighton and 1 each from Peterborough, and a Plymouth/Charlton switch (though I’ll take him as Plymouth, because that’s where most of his playing time before voting was).

2004/05 – 3.27

2005/06 – 5.45

2006/07 – 8.27

2007/08 – 2.27

2008/09 – 4.72

2009/10 – 4.54

2010/11 – 4.00

Pilkington is the first Huddersfield player in the TOTY since Efe Sodje was in the League Two team in 2003/04, but he joins former Town ‘favourites’ Phil Jevons (while with Yeovil), Joe Skarz (this season, at Bury) and loanee David Graham (the year he pipped us to promotion from Division 3 with Torquay); not a lot of representation, though, I’m sure you’ll agree. Why? Well, for a start, Town have been pretty average. That’s important. I want to know the figures of whether Town’s 8th or 9th placed finishes would rule them out of the reckoning. The average finishing position for a player in the TOTY is 4.5. Here’s a table of the averages season by season since our return to League One. Other than in 2007/08, when nobody outside the top five made the list, there’s been at least one representative of teams who weren’t challenging for promotion – a berth Bradley Wright-Phillips fills this year – but I don’t think anyone can argue that any Town player was (for a season) the best in their position until perhaps last season, when I think there was a few in blue and white who were unfortunate to be ignored. The other interesting feature about this year’s team is the proliferation of Southampton players – 5 – to Brighton’s 3. This has never happened before; every other season, the top team has led the way in terms of players selected – the most being Luton’s 6 in 2004/05. So what? What conclusion to draw? The only conclusion I can draw is that Brighton are under-represented (I’m surprised Kazenga Lua-Lua doesn’t make the list, given the judging took place in January) and Southampton over-represented – possibly by a player each. Pilkington has been Town’s most consistent player, and I don’t think anyone else can argue that they’re worth of selection – not in terms of effect on the most games. Congratulations to Anthony, and may it be the first of many.

49.45 – The Focus On Youth – Post 26

There has been an obvious drive since Dean Hoyle took over at Huddersfield Town to bring in younger players. It makes economic sense; they cost less, earn less, and can be sold on for more. Rickie Lambert may have wound up a Huddersfield player were the policy not so hardline at the time he left Bristol Rovers. Stan Ternent’s era was resounding for very much the opposite reason – his players like Lucketti and Unsworth would have earned a pretty penny, and contributed precious little. Dean Hoyle’s reign, then, has been like a breath of fresh air. Andy Booth retired, which took the average age down, and the new signings, Pilkington, Roberts, Clarke, have all been the youthful side of 30.

Going back to the article I was ‘discussing’ with Paolo Bandini, the Gazzetta had split the teams into minutes played by players born in 1989 or before (so not quite those that would be Under 21 Eligible) and found Udinese were representing the youth the best (in the whole of Europe), having had 6,751 minutes played by ‘young’ players at that time, and to good effect, too. This led me to wonder how Town would rank in this; obviously, using a total of minutes isn’t ideal – Town play 4140 minutes a season, Udinese only 3420 – so I went for a percentage approach, as evidenced in the post about loan players and products of the youth academy yesterday.

How, then, has Lee Clark operated his selection (and purchasing) in terms of this age differential? I decided to use 23 years old as my boundary; it is the age that would be the cut-off for Under-21 football, although I’ll run it year-on-year, rather than every other year, as Under-21s work. At the other end of the scale, I’ll take my ‘older player’ limit as being Over-30. I’d probably give this a little more thought if it wasn’t that the only goalkeepers Town have used under Lee Clark have been either well under 25 or well over 30; outfield players over 30 are certainly into the ‘experienced’ bracket. So, what do the numbers say?

They say some pretty amazing things. Not one player over the age of 30 represented Town last season – the oldest was Dean Heffernan at 29. The team that got to the playoffs was – by a massive majority – 23 or under, and it was an inexperience that showed. This season, some older heads have been brought in, and the experience column has shot up – around the same level as the 2003/04 team which was, as it looks as this year’s may have to be, successful in the playoffs. Ian Bennett has contributed a lot to this figure, as well as Kevin Kilbane and Damien Johnson; the loaning of the experience (or the relatively cheap wages that Bennett will be on) mean the transfer policy of buying youth holds up, though noises have been made both by Johnson and Kilbane of staying on after the end of the season – both of them have been steadying influences and, though Kilbane will be 34 next year, neither shows signs of being over-the-hill just yet.

What we can ask questions about is the purchase of Alan Lee. For the sake of one goal (at Arsenal, so it doesn’t even feature in my figures) the transfer policy was waived, and a fee was paid out for someone whose value would only diminish; and, all due respect to the Emile Heskey-like role Big Al has played for 1,324 minutes, it hasn’t been the most successful of moves and to date, Lee has failed to feature in the last three games, and played only 51 minutes in the last 11. That doesn’t mean that his experience wouldn’t come in handy in the play-offs, but it hasn’t yet.

Another feature of these numbers is that nobody is transcending the boundaries (Lee Peltier will probably be the first) – the ‘young’ players that were brought in remain young (particularly bearing in mind that outfield players don’t peak until 26-29-ish), and those that were brought in within the middle category are not yet into the experienced bracket – Peter Clarke is on the way there – so their value will also be maintained for a little while longer.

Lee Clark, then, has been pretty faithful to the policies he set out except in the case of Alan Lee; the increase in ‘experience’ this year (particularly relevant in the over-30 bracket) is manageable within that policy so long as they players remain loanees. I suspect that we’ll see the 2010/11 model (which is, let’s be fair, only a slightly more youth focused version of 2003/04) as the one that is carried forward – I think that’s probably the best level of balance for Town to progress on the pitch and financially.

18 – Why Does Steve Claridge Hate Us? – Post 23

Steve Claridge, it seems, doesn’t like Huddersfield Town. Every time he gets the chance to talk about us on the Football League Show, he shies away, mumbling something about budgets and how he prefers Southampton – despite being a legend at their hated rivals, which is where I remember him best.

But, I hear you cry, why doesn’t he like us? He has good memories, surely, of avoiding the drop with Pompey, winning Division 2 with Birmingham; although that is counter-balanced by Town relegating his Walsall team in 2006.

I decided to pull out all the Steve Claridge stats I could and see if there was anything that stood out. I was surprised.

In all, Steve played (or was at teams who played in the early days for when I can’t get line-ups) 18 times against Town – 9 home, 9 away. He scored 4 goals – 2 home, 2 away (again, possibly – probably – a couple more). The outcome of those games is as follows.

Home – P9 W3 D3 L3

Away – P9 W3 D3 L3

Its all very even, and strangely so. A team against whom your results have been exactly mediocre don’t shriek out as someone to take against – not to me anyway.

The only thing I can possibly think is that Aldershot played Town on 22nd October 1988 – which may well have been Claridge’s debut for them after 3 years in the wilderness. They lost 1-2. Does he bear a 23 year old grudge? I wouldn’t put it past him.

If anyone can provide opposition line-ups/scorers for Town games before 1995; I’ll update more accurately.

53 – He Scores Goals, M’Lord – Post 19

Yesterday afternoon, Jordan Rhodes scored his 52^nd and 53^rd goals as a professional footballer. Good work for one so young, and important. He’s done it at a decent clip, too, within 128 appearances, all told, spread across four seasons and five teams (Oxford, Ipswich, Rochdale, Brentford and Huddersfield). Full credit to the lad, and he’s earned that Scotland U21 call-up.

This season he’s scored 20 goals for Huddersfield Town. Last season, he scored 23, so he stands a good chance of getting more than last year, despite missing – exactly – a month with injury. Goals and games don’t tell the whole story, though. When he was first breaking into the Ipswich team, he was playing minutes at a time – 31 in his first five appearances for Ipswich, so that’s 5 appearances gone in the time of barely a third of a match.

So I’ve broken his career down into a goals per minute ratio – it seems a more fair way of balancing it, particularly in someone who has played off the bench for a number of their starts, and even now at Town is generally substituted before 75 minutes; indeed, the longest run of 90 minute games he has had is 6, achieved twice last season, the first spell of which brought 2 goals, and the second only 1. Over the course of his career, Jordan averages a goal every 164.25 minutes he plays. That’s pretty impressive – the golden figure we have for strikers is a goal every other game, and that works out as slightly better than that. So, overall, one can only be impressed.

If we disregard his first season, 2007/08, on the basis that although Jordan scored once, he barely featured – his 12 appearances (Oxford 4, Ipswich eight) were spread over 383 minutes, which works out as a goal every, wait for it…. 383 minutes that first season. Not ideal, but understandable. After that, though, we’ve got three seasons’ worth of pretty usable data. 2008/09, when he played a short while for Rochdale before joining Brentford, both on loan, and 2009/10 and 2010/11, when he was, of course, at Huddersfield.

In pure goals terms, last season was the best – 23, with this year’s 20 and the year before’s 9 trailing a way behind. But digging a little deeper we see a bit more. Last season’s 23 goals came at a ratio of one every 188.13 minutes – just over that one every two game rate I mentioned above. This season’s 20, though, have come at a far quicker one every 120.60 minutes; roughly speaking, that’s just over 2 goals every 3 games; 2008/9’s 10 goals came every 158.30 minutes. This year, then, is the most productive season of Jordan’s life by ¼ – that’s a big margin – its brought his career minutes per goal average down from 190.70 to 164.25 – a gain of 26 minutes. Its looking good. But why?

Well, look back to that third paragraph; the clue is there – he’s not playing 90 minutes any more. From a purely statistical point of view, playing 75 minutes per game means there’s a number 15 smaller that we’re dividing by the number of goals, but that does have a knock-on. He’s fresher. Goals are coming more regularly than last season – in the 41 games he’s played in so far, Jordan’s scored in 16 of them (39%) – and that includes 2 appearances of 9 and 4 minutes – last seasons 55 games produced a score in only 18 (33%) – there is seven games left, and you wouldn’t put it past him to equal last year’s tally from a maximum of 7 games fewer than last year. Its also worth bearing in mind that Jordan isn’t a regular scorer of penalties; Gary Roberts has scored Town’s only 2 penalty strikes this season, and neither of those since very early season.

Last season, he averaged a shade over 80 minute per appearance (80.12 mins); this year, funnily enough, given the jokes about a standard 60 minute substitution, he averages just under that – 59 minutes (58.83 mins); there is a better balance, then, between games and goals – he’s not been forced to slog his guts out for 90 minutes, and we’re seeing the reward in goals, particularly those as good as yesterday’s second. He, as we found with Anthony Pilkington, is improving with every season. Long may it continue.

Some Jordan Rhodes facts you may not know.

• He scored the fastest ever headed hat-trick in League football, for Huddersfield Town, against Exeter City.
• His first goal in professional football came for Ipswich, after he came on as a half-time substitute for Gary Roberts.
• His dad coaches at Sheffield Wednesday.

Season	Games	Goals	Minutes	Minutes Per Goal (Season)	Minutes Per Goal (Career)
2007/08	12	1	383	383.00	383.00
2008/09	21	10	1583	158.30	196.60
2009/10	54	23	4327	188.13	190.70
2010/11	41	20	2412	120.60	164.25

Figures correct up to 27.03.2011

198 – The Rise and Rise of Anthony Pilkington – Post 17

On my 29^th birthday, Huddersfield Town played Rochdale and won 2-1. Hurrah. However, during that game Anthony Pilkington was injured badly enough to rule him out for the rest of the season, and probably a bit of the next season as well which is a damned shame. His goals, most obviously, but all-round performance, have been key to Town’s success this season and last, and he has looked every bit a player who would thrive in the division above, where hopefully he will be playing with Huddersfield Town next season. Let me use this space to extend my best wishes to Anthony on a speedy recovery – his early Twitter reaction to the operation seems positive – and to Huddersfield on their performances without him in the squad; the 0-1 victory at Bristol Rovers was a good start.

This post is not about Pilkington’s injury, though, so much as Pilkington the player, and how valuable he’s been since he started out in the game – now approaching 200 games (198) at first team level. Being an unsolicited viewer of statistics, there is only so much I have access to – it would be nice to be able to see full Opta stats to back up my ideas about Pilks, but I can only work with what I have, so I’ll draw my conclusions from that. My assumption, and gut feeling, is that Pilks was performing well at Stockport, and has gradually found his feet since his move across the Pennines, though obviously I’ve not really seen enough actual games to count too much on that.

1.      Note on Appearances.

The main reason Huddersfield Town signed Anthony was to play football matches, obviously, and he’s been pretty good at that so far; 40 this season before the injury, 51 last season… that’s a lot of games. In fact, he’s been first choice since he broke into the Stockport first team – only missing one game (a cup defeat at Watford) that first season, and playing 37 games the next. His stats for each season, then, aren’t based on small amounts of games – even the season he transferred saw Anthony play 46 games between the two clubs.

So one of the things I was going to think about, relative win records when Pilks plays/fails to play, is rendered relatively useless by the small number of games that he failed to play in.

2.      Note on Methodology.

The method I’ve decided to use to rank Anthony’s efficiency is to see how well different seasons rate in terms of certain positive aspects, and tally them up against each other; five seasons of play so far makes a five-point system, so in each case, if a season is the best in a category, it scores 5, and if it’s the worst, it scores 1. Its not perfect, I know, but it can give a better overview than just tallying things up. I have, of course, averaged these things out, too. As a very rough example – Pilks played 24 times in 2006/07 and 51 times in 2009/10 – that’s more than twice the amount of opportunities to score goals, or notch assists, so these figures are averaged out to a ‘per game’ ratio.

3.      Categories used

Games Per Goal – how many games it is, on average, between goals. The lower the figure the better, obviously. Best; 2010/11 – 2.86 games per goal             – best by almost two games. Worst; 2008/09 – 5.75 games.

Games Per Assist – how many games it is, on average, between assists. Again, the lower the better. Best; 2009/10 – 4.25 games per assist. Worst; 2006/07 – 12 games per assist.

Shots Per Game – how many shots Pilks has per game. Higher the better. Best; 2008/09 – 2.22. Worst; 2007/08 – 1.3.

Shots Per Goal – how many shots it takes Pilks to score. The lower the better. Best; 2010/11 – 5.86. Worst; 2008/09 – 12.75

So, what do we find. Well, Pilkington’s performances in each category have been very different across the seasons; 12 assists last year compared to only 7 this, for example (albeit in fewer games) and 14 goals this season to 9 last. There is a general trend, though. And an important trend. Every season he’s played, Pilks has finished in a higher league position than the previous one, that is assuming nothing catastrophic happens in the last two months of this season. Every season, too, he has scored more goals than in the previous season. Those facts alone outline the story. Pilkington, and the by virtue of this, the teams he plays for, is improving all the time.

The balancing I did working this out shows that his overall performance across the four categories has improved, every season, too. Anthony Pilkington has been a better player, in a better team, every season of his career so far. This is why losing him is such a blow, and its so important that he comes back next season, because we’ve every reason to believe he’ll come back better than ever, and if he does, and is, we’ve can assume Huddersfield Town will be a better team because of it.

Get well soon, Pilks.

Season			App	Gls	GPG	Ass	APG	Sho	SPGl	SPGm
2006/07	Stockport C		24	5	4.80	2	12.00	40	8.00	1.67
2007/08	Stockport C		37	8	4.63	5	7.40	48	6.00	1.30
2008/09	Stockport C		30	6		6		64
	Huddersfield T		16	2	5.75	3	5.11	38	12.75	2.22
2009/10	Huddersfield T		51	9	5.67	12	4.25	70	7.78	1.37
2010/11	Huddersfield T		40	14	2.86	7	5.71	82	5.86	2.05
			198	44	4.50	35	5.66	342	7.77	1.73

1570 seconds – Arsene Wenger’s Red-Tinted Version Of The Truth – Post 11

“I hope [Cesc Fabregas] will not exchange shirts with players who try to kick him for 90 minutes and then say ‘Please can I get your shirt?”

After Sunday’s defeat at the Emirates, Anthony Pilkington reacted angrily about Cesc’s refusal to swap shirts with him, and a little media-furore has kicked up around it. For me, I couldn’t care less whether he swapped shirts; I think Djourou’s a better player, and his is the shirt I’d try and get (though he didn’t play on Sunday, of course). It’s the dismissive and disrespectful tone of Arsene Wenger that grates, and his wholly inaccurate summation of what happened.

 

Firstly, and most importantly, Fabregas was not kicked for 90 minutes. He didn’t feature in the game until (according to the official Arsenal site’s commentary, its 69 minutes)

67 minutes 43 seconds into the game, which was ended after 93 minutes 53 seconds – 26 minutes and 10 seconds¹.

During this 26 minutes, 12 free kicks were awarded – that’s an average of 1 every 130.8 seconds; just over two minutes. That’s quite a high figure, but it was towards the end of quite a tight cup tie, and both teams were pressing forward. Arsenal committed 5 of these, and Huddersfield 7 (including the penalty from which Arsenal scored their winner). So, Arsenal, during this 26 minute period, were fouled once every 224.3 seconds – almost once every four minutes.

This 26 minute period alone contained half of the fouls Huddersfield committed during the game; that must support Mr Wenger, surely? Cesc played for around a quarter of the game, but 50% of the Arsenal free-kicks were in that quarter-game. Arsenal committed 12 fouls during the game, which balances favourably with Huddersfield’s 14, but there isn’t a vast difference. It wasn’t a dirty game, by any means.

Of the seven fouls committed on Arsenal players during the 26 minutes of Cesc’s involvement, the player who was fouled is as follows.

Fabregas (68:54, 83:48, 93:53)

Rosicky (69:49, 89:27)

Koscielny (90:12)

Bendner (85:53)

Fabregas, then, the player who was dictating the play, ‘pulling the strings’ as the Arsenal website would have it, was fouled 3 times in 26 minutes. Once every 523.3 seconds – once every 8.72 (every 8¾ minutes). Now, if I was pushing on to a tired team, trying to pull strings and guide my team through to the fifth round of the FA Cup, I’d expect to bumped, bashed and kicked every time I touched the ball, as my opposition tried to stop me by fair means and foul.

By contrast, Alan Lee was involved in lots of free-kickery during the whole 90 minute period (he also scored). Here’s a summary of his involvement.

FKs conceded    (00:19 – Koscielny, 57:24 – Koscielny,

FKs awarded      (39:26 – Squillaci, 73:39 – Koscielny, 76:41 – Gibbs, 82:30 – Koscielny).

So, Arsenal conceded four free-kicks for fouls on Alan Lee. That’s one ever 23.5 minutes give-or-take. Note the 50/50 split of fouls by and for Koscielny and Alan Lee. ‘True centre-forward duel’ is probably how that would be reported.

I’ve established, then, that Fabregas was fouled more often in his 26 minutes than any other player, but one foul every 8¾ minutes isn’t ‘kicking someone off the park’ in anyone’s book.

The other factor that Arsene Wenger mentions is to specify that one particular player has been kicking Fabregas off the park – the one who asked him for his shirt, one Anthony Pilkington. Pilkington’s contribution to the disciplinary record of the game is as follows.

FKs conceded    (30:09 – Gibbs)

FKs awarded      (90:12 – Koscielny)

I think we can tell from those figures that Anthony Pilkington wasn’t kicking Cesc Fabregas off the park. Pilkington’s booking was unsporting behaviour, not a foul, and any contact he had with Fabregas, and any Fabregas had with him, was judged to be legal.

Arsene Wenger, then, probably needs to modify his statement.

“I hope [Cesc Fabregas] will not exchange shirts with players who don’t foul him once during 26 minutes 10 seconds and then say ‘Please can I get your shirt?’ after being booked for the same reason as he has”.

¹I will round this figure down to 26 minutes for reference’s sake, but anything worked out statistically will use 26’10, or 1570 seconds.

570 – Never Go Back: Post 5.

Following on from yesterday’s post about the January Transfer Window and all the lovely stories about Didier Drogba going back to Marseille, there’s something else I’ve been wondering. Each time the transfer window is open, there’s a big clamour to bring Jon Stead back to the club. With Town’s strikers being ‘not so’ effective in terms of goals this season, Jordan Rhodes apart, I expect nothing different this time around.

 

But does it work?

 

Town have, especially over recent years, brought quite a few players back to the club, most notably Andy Booth; I assume the suggestions are more frequent now because there’s a lot more movement of players, so players play for a lot more different clubs. Town’s recent down and up history means there’s a few players who moved on in tougher times to ‘better’ clubs, clubs who are now closer to Town’s level (Jon Stead is a particular example of this, but David Mirfin could be said to be in the same boat). Does it work, though?

 

There’s so many different positions on the field, and so little data available to analyse so many of them, so I’m going to have to work with the opinions of the manager; if they were good enough to play, then they’re ‘effective’ so the most accurate figure I’ll get is how ‘effective’ they were in each season before they left and after they returned – a games per season ratio, really. For strikers, I’ll include a goals per game because that’s a very real measure of how useful they were, even if it isn’t the be all and end all.

 

There’s a few different types of return, I’ve realised as I’m looking back. There’s the full return – someone who left the club, having been sold or released, and returned, either bought or signed (Andy Booth). There’s the loan return – a player who was on loan at Town, then returned to their parent club before signing permanently (Tom Cowan). I have differentiated between these – mainly because often the latter is over a lot shorter space of time than the former. Here are my findings, anyway.

Starting with the loan players who signed permanently (or returned on loan after leaving) of whom there are 13 – the best known to me being Tom Cowan and Ben Thornley who are, looking at the list, the most successful in terms of games for Town after signing permanently – Cowan with 154 and Thornley with 114. There is a great myth that players perform better on loan than they do when signed permanently, and I was wondering whether any of the figures would back that up – there’s nothing really to swing it one way or the other for sure, but Luke Becketts 6 goals in 7 games compared to 27 in 89 benefits a lot from a small initial sample size, and Keith Edwards 4 goals in either 10 or 22 appearances has a similar, though less pronounced, attribute. One thing I would say is that all the players who signed after being on loan made something of their careers at Town  – Keith Edwards’ 22 games being the fewest played after signing permanently, and he was getting towards the end of his career by then anyway. What, then, of those who had permanent contracts with Town with time between.

10 players have signed for Huddersfield Town twice, and there’s some big names amongst them; Malcolm Brown, Andy Booth, Roy Ellam… the list goes on, to include another 7 names, including at least one who has gone on to manage the Ethiopian National Team. I have to say that my initial thinking (Never go back) isn’t has pronounced a difference as I thought it might be, but there is a definite tendency for the returns to be far less successful spells than the first. There is an obvious reason for this, of course, in that these 2^nd spells at Town tend to come at the end of a career – Rob Edwards, Chris Lucketti, Roy Ellam, Iffy Onuora, Steve Smith – and last for not very long at all – Steve Smith’s 1 FA Cup game being the shortest spell, but there is a fact to be gleaned from it. These permanent signings, who average 158 appearances in their first spell for Town, average 57 on their return, which is a respectable figure over 2 seasons of football; not bad for old timings. There is, of course, an anomaly in their midst. Step forward Andy Booth, the only person with more than 50 appearances in total who played more in his second spell than his first. Take his statistics from the second spell figures, and the total drops to 26.8 – propped up largely by Malcolm Brown’s 107 games. Taking Boothy’s goals out of the goals per game column (bottom right) also has a massive negative effect on that – reducing it to only around half of the figure of the first spell. The number on the right of each column is the second spell appearances as a percentage of the first spell; note only 3 players making 100%, and Rod Belfitt over 41 games and Alan Brown in the early 30s aren’t really a fair reflection.

 

What can we take from this, then? We can assume that bringing a player back to Town generally isn’t a good idea unless you would bring them in anyway or else they’ll end up getting paid for very little work – although, in the cases of Rob Edwards and Iffy Onuora, that work was worth far more to the team than their wages would have been.