Just how different is the SPL from the A league? To the naked eye, the eye league values playing the ball on the deck and working through the lines with lots of rhythm changes and patient build ups, as well as the occasional lightning quick transition. The SPL may not be hoofball, but outside of the Rangers/Celtic firm it does seem to be a much more physical league aided by very permissive refereeing. Quite frankly, as someone that has watched most of the matches involving our dozen aussies in the last season, it almost looks like a different sport
So how far is perception from reality? I looked at the total number of passes completed from the last 8 A league matches and compared it to the last 8 spl matches not involving the glasgow rivalry

A league: 758 
SPL: 465

The A league has nearly twice as many completed passes in a match compared to the SPL outside the old firm. This is despite the fact that the A league is played in summer which leads to a drop of 10% in total passes per game compared to winter football [1]. Note that this is NOT a comparison of quality, but just a mere comparison of style. It is hard enough to go half way across the world away from your support networks, play at a completely different temperature to play a style you haven’t developed the skill set for. It is a positive reflection of the players, and perhaps a negative reflection on the league, that most of them have played regularly.
So how does this compare to the Holy Trinity (™) of leagues that our players have found great success in over the last 10 years? Unsurprisingly, they are pretty similar to the A league. To be fair I excluded Ajax, Feyenoord, Club Brugge and Anderlecht from the Eredivise and Juliper league in my stats for the last 8 games

Eredivisie: 697
Buli 2: 670
Belgium: 629

In fact, even the championship is significantly less physical than the a league averaging 622 passes in the last 8 games. Again, I am NOT equating passes with game with quality, just saying how hard it is to adjust to a style that is an outlier in world footballer. Second, it seems the highest level has much harsher refereeing than the SPL with much more passes per matches, signifying that the A league and the Holy Trinity (™) and even the championship are much better preparation for the highest level. Here are the stats of the last 8 matches

EPL (excluding Man city and Arsenal): 725
UEFA CL (R16 1st leg:) 848
World cup R16: 917
Socceroos: 789 

Note the socceroos average is brought down slightly by the fact that the ref allowed a rugby match in the 2nd ecuador game. The first match had 813 passes and the 2nd had 693.
All this begs the question of whether it is wise for our best and brightest over the past year go to the SPL to develop? I'm not going to be dogmatic, maybe the familiar culture, the fact that most of our roos are getting time and the incentive to bulk up as a player are positives that outweigh the negatives. But count me skeptical

Notes:
[1] https://www.theroar.com.au/2021/06/02/why-football-needs-to-be-a-winter-sport/
All data from FOTMOB

I think conditions and pitches also are a factor. Hampden Park, the home of Scottish football, has been heavily criticised for at least this season as being unssfe for players. There are a couple of plastic pitches in the SPL, I think Kilmarnock and Livingstone, also much criticised playing surfaces. And I've seen another pitch (St Johnstone?) described as a cow paddock. 3 pitches this season is 25 percent of SPL. And conditions often not favourable with sleet and wind athough certainly not unique in Europe (and A-League has summer heat to contend with). I just wonder how much milder conditions in places like Spain and Portugal have contributed to superior style.

Great thread, Grazor. 

could you not say the heat discourages more running in A-league? so they prefer the longer pass etc.?

I would say that heat allows for more time on the ball in the A-league.

And coaching that encourages ball possession in all thirds of the pitch.

Do the accountants and gambling stats guys STILL count side to side passes between the full/half backs for 15 mins as "completed passes" and "%Possession"? 

Great stuff Grazorblade, good to see someone break it down in terms of numbers.

I feel the only benefit of playing in that part of the world is because if getting into the European market and the benefit of playing more games a lot more than here.

I feel our players should try and play in the continent which might suit the players style of play but the guess it’s not that straight forward to do that.

Are trying to be  facetious, MOE? 

It simply demonstrates  ignorance  about football performance, if you are?

In coaching Football Aus courses, workshops and national conferences, we have been constantly addressed by  former  Socceroos and ex pros, who've stated how much better it is to have the ball, than the other team possessing the ball.

We have also been addressed by key European coaches from powerhouses how to maintain the ball for longer periods. It has been broken down into partial sequences in different  parts of the pitch how to do it - then practised on the training ground in scaffolded sequences.

This is why a NC has been formulated in Australia.

Because previous generations of top Aussie players were desperate to have more ball against high quality teams. Alistair Edwards,  former Socceroo striker, stated that when past Socceroo teams lost the ball to some South American teams, it could be 5 minutes before winning the ball back. Ditto Craig  Foster and Ante Jukic. Add former Brisbane Roar coach Damian Davies, plus Ange P himself. 

The aforementioned stats display how much the better leagues treasure possession of the ball in most cases. Of course it is also desirable to dominate territory too, as well as possession. 

I'm sure Italy would be the anomaly, but not many other football powerhouses are willing to let  the opposition dominate possession  and even territory. The axiom within the KNVB, Clarefontaine and Barca Academy, is that if one's team has the ball, the other team can't score. 

The SPL only having 495 passes, which is so much lower than the other leagues, unequivocally demonstrates that the ball is in the Contested Ball Phase ( Defensive and Attacking Transitions) where both teams are battling for possession of  the ball much more.

This equates to a second ball,  battle for the ball contest, league.

There would probably be many successful players at this last World Cup in Qatar, who could struggle in Scotland - because they don't have to spend so much of a portion of any game, battling for the ball when they play high quality international football.

There is no way the A League averages anywhere near 758 passes per game. Celtic has the most attempted passes  of a club in Europe at 735 per game.

football-observatory.com

Issue number 358 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post analyses the InStat data on the number of passes attempted per match and their average length for teams from 40 leagues worldwide. The multiplication of these two variables shows the ball circulation distance for teams during possession. This distance varies between 12.8 kilometres per match for the Scots of Celtic FC and 6.9 km for the Mexicans of Atlético San Luis.

Km/Match.   Club.             Passes. Metres/Pass

12.8.      Celtic.                   735.0      17.5
11.8.      Dinamo Zagreb.   666.4      17.7
11.8.      AFC Ajax              681.9      17.2
11.7.      Bayern Munchen  572.3      17.4
11.6.      Manchester City.  692.0      16.8

Celtic is atypical for the Scottish league.

They have a good pitch and an Aussie coach, Ange, committed to possession  football,  also  previously known as passing  football.

Grazor deliberately, sagely and correctly, took out Celtic and Rangers, who play on good pitches and are Scottish league powerhouses.   He also did the same with Anderlecht and  Club Brugge in the Belgian Juniper League - and - Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoorde in the Netherlands. Grazor wanted to evaluate the teams outside their powerhouses, as most Aussies don't play in those leagues' powerhouse clubs.

He was posing the question -  how good are different leagues to develop Aussies to play international football - with supporting data over their passing/possession stats?

The Socceroos are now a possession based team. If you go back in time and look at Socceroo teams prior to 2005, in Grazor's excellent video thread of old Socceroo games, note how often they turn the ball over compared to now. 

The AL is now  a possession, or passing league. There has been an incredible onus in Football Aus coach education to train coaches to coach teams to play a possession  brand of football over the last 11- 13 years or so.

 I used to compile stats a decade or more ago. Two Aussie teams in the AL were lucky to accrue 300 passes between 2 teams in an entire game. Then Melb heart, under John Van't Schip, emerged, and started accruing 400 passes per game.

 Currently, ALM teams play a lot of passes per game.  I'm sure Grazor's stats are accurate. He is a uni academic in his day job, constantly looking for  accurate data.  

Interesting points, from what I have seen though the pitches aren't radically different from the rest of europe and Australia has had some bad pitches of late

Having a quick look at the passing stats in the Norwegian league and it is must more similar to the a league and other euro leagues than it is to the SPL

Agreed. It must be a big adjustment playing to a radical different style.

Yazbek's last game in Norway had 691 passes which is much more similar to the a league. Less of an adjustment and probably the same level as the spl

I think sideways passes are probably a similar fraction of passes in the a league as the continental leagues. 

I doubt 300 extra passes a game can be explained by the cbs passing to each other 300 times a match, but even if that's the case that would only be relevant if I was claiming passing aggregates indicate quality. I'm merely saying there is a larger difference in style moving from the a league to the spl than other other division

I agree celtic and rangers are very different to the rest of the spl

I was transparent about my methodology taking the last 8 games from various leagues and excluding the top two teams in euro leagues in case other leagues were like the spl.

Specifically the data fro the a league has

1) ADL 506 passes and WUN 246
2) SFC 464 vs Perth 450
3) Nix 418 vs BR 273
4) WSW 420 vs MV 380
5)CCM 341 vs MC 338
6)Jets 438 vs Mac 260
7)  MC 483 vs Nix 376
8) MV 433 vs PG 244

In the spl the top two teams play like the rest of europe, it is the rest of the league which is an outlier in world football with even the ultra physical championship is more similar to the a league than it is to the spl

I am jetlagged so I don't mind people checking my work :D. Anyone is free to reproduce my data as I gave my method and used publically available date. However, I doubt any mistake on my part would be big enough to explain why the SPL is sooooo different to every other league

That is astonishing that we were even more direct once upon a time with 300 passes per game! No wonder it was hard to watch

even worse 465!

Incredibly, the championship is closer in style to the a league than it is to the spl despite having a physical reputation

in your previous post you mentioned how dour it is to watch a team lose possesion and then not get it back for 5 minutes. Gee that is tough to watch! Even against denmark where we conceded the bulk of possession, our passes per minute posession was fine for troubling teams that were superior in holding possesion. So even though we conceded possession, we circulated the ball well with the limited possession we had and were ultimately good enough to get two wins and score goals against both winners

The heat probably makes our pressing more languid. This and the season length are also huge adjustments when going to europe

I would suspect that if we moved to a winter league and a 30 game season our players achieve at a much higher level since you don't have to completely change your weight to succeed and then adjust to your new playing weight. The optimal playing weight in oz is probably 10kg different to eruope which would require at least 2 seasons to adjust. It is also hard to gain weight and fitness at the same time. So it will be always difficult exporting players until we change these factors. At the moment, since we are a short summer sport the league is better at producing roos that can succeed against strong opposition than it is at producing players that can play at a good level overseas

However, in the SPL (and only the SPL) you have to radically adjust your style to a much more hoofy type game. Even the championship is more similar to oz than it is to the spl. Making this adjustment makes the transition even harder and then they have to transition back when playing for the roos

A sample size of 8 is statistically insignificant. What were the playing conditions during those matches? The weather and state of the pitch on the day would have affected the amount of passing.

Your comment that “most Aussie don’t play in those leagues’ powerhouse clubs.”
Try telling Tom Rogic, Scott Mcdonald, Jackson Irvine, Mark Viduka Aaron Mooy, Daniel Arzani, Stefan Nikolic, Jacynta Galabagaarachchi, or Leo Mazis they were unlikely to be at Parkhead..
Or Craig Moore, Matt McKay, Kevin Muscat,Tony Vidmar David Mitchel , Francesco Stella, and Murray Miller, that they were unlikely to be at Ibrox.

From Fotmob;
A League Accurate passes per Match 2022/2023

Melbourne City 475.2
Sydney FC 444.8
Wellington Phoenix 419.1
Western Sydney Wanderers408.8
Newcastle Jets 392.9
Central Coast Mariners 375.6
Melbourne Victory 368.3
Adelaide United 362.4
Western United 352.8
Perth Glory 347.8
Brisbane Roar 320.4
Macarthur FC 287.5

All of these are far short of 758, a figure that is totally unbelievable.

Total passes per match is the passes completed by both teams added together, as indicated by my 8 examples. That means the average was 379 per team in the middle of the above list

on statistical significance:

The standard deviation is 83.7 and 81.1 for the a league and spl respectively. This means the difference is over 3.5 sigma which is well above the 2 sigma for statistical significance

 Selecting one round of games is too few to come to any overall conclusion I also have an issue with the omission of Celtic and Rangers. They are part of the SPL. Leaving them out skews the result

Ok, I was looking at it on a per team basis. You clearly stated per match/ My bad.

But I now completely disbelieve the S{PL figure.

That is not the definition of stat significance though. In this context it means the means are two standard deviations apart. A good sample size is the size needed to separate the distributions by 2 or more sigma. A sample size of two is significant if you are trying to figure out whether grasshoppers are shorter than humans but you need tens of thousands to compare the height of dutch and germans

but for peace of mind, in case there is a seasonal effect, I looked at the first four games in January not involving the glasgow giants. In the A league it is 826.3 passes per game and the spl is 509.8. Both are pretty close to the average given before

the raw data is publicly available and you are welcome to cross check. The last 8 games not involving the glasgow giants are 

Motherwell (261) vs Dundee (321)
Livingstone (213) vs St J (223)
Hibs (149) vs Hearts (306)
Ross (170) vs Sheep/Ab (208)
DU (157) vs Hibs (363)
Hearts (377) vs St M (146)
St J (181) vs Ross (137)
Motherwell (224) vs Livingstone (290)

Perhaps i should have used the term statistically relevant.

You need to include Celtic and Rangers games otherwise your study is not representative of he whole. You left them out to get the result you were looking for. Is it ok to leave out Melbourne City from the A League?  Of course it isn't.

Look,I like the fact that you undertook an analysis. I  just believe, although you declared the omissions, it skewed the result..

It's not dishonest since I was transparent about the method
My hypothesis was that the a-league, the top two teams in the spl, most euro leagues, the socceroos and the top level (uefa knockouts, epl and the world cup) are all playing a style with lots of passes per minute. By contrast, the spl, outside the top two, has a style with much less passing per minute. This makes it a big style adjustment for roos going to scotland (unless its celtic/rangers). This is not true if you go to a lower level team in the top division in england, belgium, holland, norway or anywhere else I can find. It is also not true in the championship

Removing melbourne city makes no difference since they are not an outlier. The past 8 matches excluding MC has 764 passes per game, slightly higher

Yes, you were totally transparent about the method. I changed it to say skewed the result before you posted your reply.

ah fair enough

another metric would be passes per team per match without the top two teams taken over the whole season

A league: 370.8
Eredivisie: 333.5
Championship:322
SPL 231

For completeness the top two for each have
SPL 547.4
Eredivisie: 495.6
A league 419.3
Championship: 388.3

SPL remains a remarkable outlier in europe and remains dramatically different from the a league. So unless a player is good enough to go to celtic/rangers they have to adjust not just to different weather and being away from support networks, but a radically different style