Between balancing my Masters, two jobs in football and an attempt at a social life I haven't had much time to update this in recent months. And yet, here we are again. Back stronger?
I recently made a thread on twitter where I looked at the number of fouls players and teams conceded and the number of cards that they received. Firstly I must state that the data is inherently flawed for using it like this as it includes cautions for all reasons, as well as fouls, such as dissent. This will no doubt affect the data and its conclusions we can draw from it. However, I thought it would be great to write a small piece here and show the visualisations that I have made as I continue to further my data visualisation skills in R.
I wanted to start this mini project after watching Fabinho commit yet another professional foul to break up an attack on the halfway line without punishment. For me, he simply appears to be 'good' at fouling. He breaks up play, prevents a counter attack and allows Liverpool to get back into shape rather than risking conceding a high quality chance. I expected that he would likely give away a lot more fouls per yellow he receives compared to other players who fans and pundits alike commonly associate as being rash, such as Xhaka.
Firstly, I looked at all midfielders who played a minimum of 900 minutes and plotted their yellows per 90 minutes played, compared to fouls per 90. A secondary question was to see if there was a 'Big Six' bias, as we do seem to associate these smart, professional fouls with Man City and Liverpool. It is no surprise to see Xhaka creeping into the high number of fouls and yellows section shown in the top right quadrant. I have to say I haven't seen much of Jorginho so cannot comment but given his role as a deep lying midfielder for Chelsea, is it possible that he is also 'good' at fouling given his high number of fouls but low number of yellows received? Again, a lot of assumptions can be made from this plot, but as mentioned previously there are several caveats to consider within the data.
So, next I wanted to make the same association on a team level. I expected to see a much clearer Big Six bias here given that they are more likely to have greater amounts of possession and so in general should give away less fouls and receive less bookings. This may be said to pass the eye test given that Man City and Liverpool are in the bottom left quadrant showing that they give away a low number of fouls and receive a low number of yellows compared to other teams.
When we then assess this as booking per foul is when it begins to get interesting. Liverpool are by far the lowest in the league at 0.1 bookings per foul. Maybe it isn't just Fabinho, maybe it is something that Klopp knows and works on? Can players be good at fouling? Can a team be good at fouling? It certainly feels that way when watching them.
This plot also gives a stark contrast to Arsenal's positioning in the previous plot. They have gone from a low number of fouls and yellows, to actually being 6th, and the first of the Big Six when it comes to Bookings Per Foul. Again, even with the limitations of the data we are starting to see some interesting trends. Even though Arsenal do give away a low number of fouls it has been highly documented, especially this season, about how indiscipline and essentially being 'bad' at fouling has cost them players and points in several matches this season.
Perhaps adding other elements like heat maps of where fouls are conceded and which challenges lead to yellows might reveal more. This would definitely need to work in unison with video to further understand which fouls are 'professional fouls' to see which ones go punished or unpunished. I am not sure if any data providers currently look at such metrics but I do think it could be interesting and could lead to many other questions to answer regarding the decision making process of officials and the risk-reward ratio of certain challenges that players must evaluate. Perhaps Xhaka could learn a thing or two from Fabinho.
The data used throughout is from FBref for the 2020/21 Premier League Season.
Comments