The Premier League Owl
A decent start to life in England for Manuel Pochettino, and an acceptable point for David Moyes. No goals, but plenty of vibrant football – here are the statistics from draw at St Mary’s.
– Rickie Lambert had 6 attempts on goal, 2 of which were on-target.
– Of all the players to start the game, Jack Cork had the highest pass-success rate (84%).
– Cork also had more touches of the ball than anybody else (84).
– Gaston Ramirez and Philip Neville both made 4 interceptions.
– Jos Hooiveld and Maya Yoshida managed 13 and 12 defensive clearances respectively, Everton’s Phil Jagielka and Sylvain Distin made 7 and 4.
– Marouane Fellaini made a game-high 5 tackles.
– Only 2 of Leighton Baines’ 11 attempted crosses were accurate. Jason Puncheon managed an accurate 4 from 7 attempts.
– Marouane Fellaini and Leon Osman were both dispossessed 4 times.
– Luke Shaw, Kevin Mirallas, and Leighton Baines all completed 2 successful dribbles.
– Nikica Jelavic touched the ball 20 times in 67 minutes, the lowest participation of any starting player.
– Southampton out-shot their opponents 16 to 9.
– Half of the hosts’ attempts on goal came from set-pieces.
– Everton attempted 55 long balls in comparison to Southampton’s 37.
– Both sides had an average successful pass streak of 4.
To be fair, of the nine – and soon to be ten – articles published today, two have been stats-based. There’s always a high-volume of them around the weekend, because they’re written in response to the fixtures themselves.
Then please do both! Telling me how many crosses someone made or successful interceptions they made is veering horribly in to Moneyball blandness, so maybe you can cater for both tastes and give people like me more of your opinions which is what got us reading your blog in the first place.
Sad state of affairs though it is Carl, the site analytics show the stats-based articles to be very popular. Have to react to that – and statistics are a valuable part of the game now.
And please remember that I say this as someone who’s praised your blog, defended you against plagiarism accusations and generally been a supporter.
PLEASE can you rediscover your mojo and go back to writing interesting commentary, rather than trot out dull statistics. You must note that your statistic-based posts get hardly any responses and it’s because they’re not engaging.
Please resume your hitherto interesting opinion-based writing. Please.