I decided to write a follow up on the whole Chance Creation Quality bit, but looking at the Premier League clubs as a whole. As I pointed out last time, the Chelsea players individually do not create great chances beyond a few names, and other sides seem to benefit from their good chances. But how do things all add up?
It wasn’t too difficult to put together, although this is going to include ALL chances created, not just Open Play, or other specific types. Understat.com, which is fantastic with their data availability, doesn’t show KP summed up at the club level, so I had to add up all of the Key Pass numbers for each team member for the respective teams. Still quite trivial, but a bit of labor to get there.
I put together a Tableau viz showing how this played out. I put xA per Key Pass on the vertical, and Key Passes per Game on the horizontal, and then am showing total goals scored with ring size and current league rank with color (hot meaning closer to the top).
Here’s a snapshot of the viz, and the link to the actual viz, if you want to see the details:
https://public.tableau.com/profile/simongabriel#!/vizhome/ChanceQualityFrequency-PL201819/Sheet1
As you can see, and it’s not unexpected, Manchester City is far and away creating not only the best chances, but the most chances, too. There’s a bit of a cluster with Spurs, Arsenal, and Liverpool all creating similar chance quality and volume, just like West Ham, Man United, Everton, Wolves too. Burnley is getting quality, but the worst volume in the league. Huddersfield are absolutely miserable. Just awful.
And there’s Chelsea, the odd little ugly duckling over on the right. Creating nearly as many chances as Manchester City, but on a quality level on par with say Everton, or Manchester United. Hopefully we can sort things out and fully realize the swan we need to become for a CL spot, or we might hit the EL for two years in a row…
