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procrastinating at work :-"
I decided to look at a few statistics from the a league so far and compare teams passing game. The statistics I compare with points per game (rather than points since wp and ccm have played 1 less) are
Pass attempts, pass completions, pass success rate, attempted passing speed (number of attempted passes divided by time in possession), successful passing speed (number of successful passes divided by time in possession), attempted passes in the attacking third, succesful passes in the attacking third, passing accuracy in the attacking third, attempted passing speed in the attacking third and successful passing speed in the attacking third.
There is a lot of noise which you would expect since we are only looking at one aspect of the game however, here are a few surprises.
1. Passing speed (attempted or successful) is by far the biggest predictor of success. The strongest correlation is for attempted passing speed in the attacking third. The correlation is incredibly clean, only a couple of teams deviate from the norm
2. there is no correlation between possession and points but perhaps that is because it is early in the season
In order the best predictor to weakest predictor is
1. Passing speed in attacking 3rd (attempted)
2. Successful passing speed
3. Passing speed in attacking 3rd (successful)
4. Attempted passing speed
5. pass attempts in the attacking 3rd
6. pass accuracy in the attacking third
7. pass completions in the attacking 3rd
8. pass completions
9. pass attempts
10. passing accuracy
11. possession
I suspect that teams with the best attacking 3rd succesful passing speed will the best when we have more rounds however what is significant is that all 4 measures of passing speed appear in the top four!
Here is the ladder for passing speed in the attacking third
1. Brisbane
2. Wellington
3. victory
4. Sfc
5. WSW
6. MH
7. Newcastle
8. CCM
9. Perth glory
10. adelaide
The two outliers are melbourne heart and wellington pheonix. Perhaps this indicates they might come good, perhaps it means other parts of their game are particularly week. WSW and SFC look like outliers but they are actually very close to the trend line which is a very tight trendline
It seems that passing speed (succesful or attempted), particularly in the attacking 3rd may be an under appreciated predictor of success
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