A Graphical Analysis of attacking and defensive effectiveness among Europe's top divisions

Attacking:


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• Juventus take the most shots per match – while Real Madrid aren’t far behind, both they and Bayern are more efficient at converting chances.
  
• What’s interesting is that Hannover just edge Man Utd as the second most clinical side here, although the Premier League leaders fashion an average of 3 additional chances per match to give them a greater overall goal threat.
  
• Barcelona are the most clinical team in front of goal, requiring an average of just over 4 shots to score each goal while La Liga stablemates Osasuna are the most wasteful, needing almost 4 times as many.
  
• At least Osasuna are having a respectable amount of shots on goal, which is more than can be said for Greuther Fürth. Aston Villa and Reims join them in being an unwanted outlier for both chance creation and conversion

Defending:



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• Bayern and PSG are significantly tougher to break down than any other side here, with both able to soak up an average of around 20 shots before conceding. The former are also the best here at restricting their opponents’ chances, although Atlético Madrid and Marseille aren’t far behind.
  
• Nobody has to face more shots than Pescara, who have to endure almost 18 per match while the easiest defence to breach is that of Hoffenheim, which requires just over 5 shots.

Interesting article.Just thought i'd post it here.

http://experimental361.com/2013/01/21/attacking-effectiveness-europe/

Bayern's defensive stats.

Their defending must be impressive.

Well, the Bayern defense is always highly underrated. They had similar stats last season, too. People really should give Badstuber, Boateng and now Dante more credit. (And Manuel Neuer of course )

Barcelona are the most clynical because one player (their most precise) takes most of their shots. While the less clinical avoid shooting.

Btw, the images are too low quality and I can't read the names under the circles.

Nirgall wrote:Btw, the images are too low quality and I can't read the names under the circles.

Klick twice at the pic, first click makes it fit into the window, second click gives the real large size.

rwo power wrote:Well, the Bayern defense is always highly underrated. They had similar stats last season, too. People really should give Badstuber, Boateng and now Dante more credit. (And Manuel Neuer of course )

IMO it's rather overrated. Conceded 7 goals in 6 CL games in a group with BATE and Lille. 2 more than Valencia who aren't anything special this season. As many as in 18 Bundesliga games! I mean their defense is good obviously but not "7 goals in 18 games" good whereas other top teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona both conceded 3 times as many in the same time frame. Doesn't shed a good light on the Bundesliga tbh.

This kind of arguing makes no Sense.

Especially if you look at Dortmund and Schalke who conceded less goals than Bayern in tougher CL groups.

And the only reason Bayern has this bad cl statistic at this point is the one horrible game against bate.

futbol wrote:IMO it's rather overrated. Conceded 7 goals in 6 CL games in a group with BATE and Lille. 2 more than Valencia who aren't anything special this season. As many as in 18 Bundesliga games! I mean their defense is good obviously but not "7 goals in 18 games" good whereas other top teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona both conceded 3 times as many in the same time frame. Doesn't shed a good light on the Bundesliga tbh.

On the other hands, if you look at the CL goals...The goal by BATE in Munich was scored in the 89th minute when the team obviously was in the dressing room already, same with the goal that Valencia scored in the 90+1 minute in Munich and the one goal that Lille scored in Munich was when Bayern already lead 5:0. So you sort of can count out three of the goals as they were more allowed by sheer laziness when the matches were already safely won.

The only worrying goals they got in were the first two by BATE in Belarus (where the whole Bayern team had a collective blackout; the 3rd was in the 90+4 minute when Bayern had everyone in BATE's half trying to get the equalizer) and the one they got in Valencia.

It isn't just this season though. Last season Bayern conceded 11 goals in 13 games = 0.85 goals per game. While in Bundesliga they conceded 22 goals in 34 games = 0.65 goals per game. That's 30 % more goals they conceded in the CL, despite Real Madrid being the only serious attacking threat they have faced in their whole CL campaign (Basel, a very defensive Marseille, a relegated Villarreal, City in their first ever CL campaign which they ultimately bottled ...). The difference isn't that huge with other teams. Barcelona conceded 0.76 goals per game in La Liga. While in the Champions League 0.83 goals per game. That's only a 9 % difference. Despite Barcelona facing Milan 4 times. If we ignore Leverkusen's goal in the return leg after they were down 0-7 () and Torres' goal in the last minute when Barcelona was throwing everything forward, the difference is actually non-existend. Bayern's Bundesliga defensive record doesn't match their European defensive record at all. If we just look at the domestic defensive records, Bayern's defense only conceded 0.39 goals per game so far while Barcelona conceded 1.15 goals per game, Real Madrid conceded 1.0 goals per game, Juventus conceded 0.67 goals per game, Manchester United conceded 1.3 goals per game. Something doesn't match, don't you agree?

I think with Bayern they dominate games possession wise more in Bundisliga than the CL. I dont know if thats statistically true but my guess would be thats the case.

Its not that thier defenders or defending is any better or worse, its just the other team has more of the ball than in the league and therefore more chances to score.

...again, the thing is, you just look at selective data to prove the point that Bundesliga has week defending, when Dortmund and Schalke have conceded way more goals in BuLi than in CL.


Bayern:
CL 1,16
Buli 0.38

Schalke:
CL 1,0
Buli 1,6

BVB:
CL 0,83
Buli 1,1

So if you look at this data how does it oprove your point

ELO wrote:...again, the thing is, you just look at selective data to prove the point that Bundesliga has week defending, when Dortmund and Schalke have conceded way more goals in BuLi than in CL.

I never implied "Bundesliga has weak defending", although Schalke's and Dortmund's records this season don't prove the opposite either based on 6 games alone and considering how badly Dortmund did last year in the CL and the fact that they were very lucky to play against Madrid in their worst shape in the whole Mourinho era and against a City team which didn't even win a single home game in Europe, not even against Ajax (nevermind that they tried to avoid getting into the Europa League in their last game and pretty much didn't even bother to play). The names were bigger than the performances those teams put in. The sample size of Bayern games is much bigger over the last 2 seasons however. 18 games is very accurate. In which Bayern conceded 18 goals = 1.0 goal per game. Whereas in the Bundesliga over the past 2 seasons they are averaging 0.56 goals per game. There is a clear mismatch for everyone to see.

BUT. I wasn't implying that Bundesliga has weak defending anyway. I was rather implying that Bundesliga teams are somehow shit at exploiting Bayern's defense in particular. Don't know why. Maybe they are shitscared of the name "Bayern" and park the bus instead of going for it.

@Franchise:

Interestingly, in the BATE matches where Bayern got 4 goals against (that is more than half the goals they got in all the CL this season), Bayern had 66% possession in both their 3:1 loss and the 4:1 win, so the possession argument isn't so clear either.

Numbers according to kicker.de:

Spoiler:

The main difference is that in the first match, BATE got 3 goals out of 12 attempts (only 75% save rate with clinical BATE strikers) while Bayern only got 1 goal out of 20 attempts (5% = extremely wasteful ), while in the other, BATE got 1 goal out of 10 attempts (90% save rate) while Bayern got 4 goals out of 16 attempts (25% = pretty clinical).

Really no surprise Bayern's defensive stats are so impressive, they average the most possession in the league (at about 63% this season). If you have the ball then it's hard for the other team to break you down without it.

@futbol:
i dont't even think it's surprising, since the competition in the CL should be harder than in the BL. I mean, they had to play against the best teams from England, Italy, Spain, etc and not against BuLi relegation sides.

And you can downplay Dortmunds opponents all you want, they still had one of the hardest groups and had to play against the current 3rd of La Liga and 2nd of the EPL.

dem outliers

ligue 1 bundesliga

you'd probably get a better conclusion if you just ignore psg and bayern.

rwo power wrote:@Franchise:

Interestingly, in the BATE matches where Bayern got 4 goals against (that is more than half the goals they got in all the CL this season), Bayern had 66% possession in both their 3:1 loss and the 4:1 win, so the possession argument isn't so clear either.

Numbers according to kicker.de:

Spoiler:

The main difference is that in the first match, BATE got 3 goals out of 12 attempts (only 75% save rate with clinical BATE strikers) while Bayern only got 1 goal out of 20 attempts (5% = extremely wasteful ), while in the other, BATE got 1 goal out of 10 attempts (90% save rate) while Bayern got 4 goals out of 16 attempts (25% = pretty clinical).

Well sure, but thats just one game. Like like Barca let in 4 vs Deportivo in La Liga despite having 70%

I was talking more about the entire competition and I guess that spreads to last season too.

The Franchise wrote:I was talking more about the entire competition and I guess that spreads to last season too.

Let's see...

According to whoscored.com, Bayern have an average possession of 63.7% (87.7% pass success) in the BL. In the CL they have 61% possession (88.2% pass success). In comparison, Barcelona have an average possession of ( pass success) in La Liga and 75.5% possession (91.6% pass success) in the CL.

Putting this in relation:

Barca: 69.0% (89.8%) La Liga // 75.5% (91.6%) CL
Bayern: 63.7% (87.7%) BL // 61.0% (88.2%) CL
ManCity: 58.8% (86.0%) EPL // 54.6% (85.2%) CL
Juventus: 58.7% (85.8%) Serie A // 48.7% (83.2%) CL
Man Utd: 57.4% (86.4%) EPL // 60.3% (88.9%) CL
PSG: 56.1 (86.1%) Ligue 1 // 52.1% (86.2%) CL
Real: 56.1% (80.2%) La Liga // 51.0% (82.8%) CL
Chelsea: 55.4% (84.0%) EPL // 52.7% (86.4%) CL
Dortmund: 55.3% (80.5%) BL // 39.8% (78.7%) CL

It's interesting that Barca is the only team that actually has more possession in the CL (okay, ManUtd, too, but comparatively less) o_O

Contrarily, Dortmund and a bit less Juve have no problems ceding possession in the CL and still staying successful so far.

Something I stumbled upon on twitter, also to view the whole image right click and open it in a new tab.

Spurs and Freiburg

Dortmund

Great graph there.

No surprise that Barca create many chances and are the best at converting them. Roma and Inter made it into that category too. Good to see the other big Serie A teams in that lighter green zone too, just to further quash the boring defensive Serie A stereotype.

Barca one doesn't surprise me, Dortmund are ridiculously clinical though, didn't know that. Not at all surprised by Tottenham, that's exactly how they play. Chance after chance and...where are the goals?

I saw it on reddit like 4 hrs ago

really great stat

data

Do Braunschwig really take 30 shots per goal?

Surprised at Inter's position.

So anyone can post a graph and that makes it true? lol @ this forum...