The Long And Short Of Games States In The EPL During 2011/12.

In this previous post I used a numerical description of a side's games state, incorporating current score, time remaining and opponent strength to try to identify any strong, team specific tendencies that occurred throughout the ebbs and flows of individual games within the 2011/12 season. An overview of each side's on field actions may broadly outline their preferred approach and highlight strengths and weaknesses, but the way in which teams adapt to protect a lead or reverse a deficit is often obscured. In overlaying the changing game states onto individual matches we may be able to identify these switches in emphasis without the need to march through the ever changing game state for each match on a minute by minute basis.

The coarsest of tactical divisions involves the use of the long ball, as exemplified by such teams as Stoke and Bolton and the use of shorter, more intricate passing movements employed by the like of Arsenal. It is very rare to see the Gunners attempt to send more than ten percent of their passes long, whilst Stoke's proportion of long balls rarely dipped below 20% of their overall total passes in 2011/12.

The contrasting styles of Stoke and Arsenal are well known, but a more interesting question is to what degree to Arsenal adopt a more traditionally English style when their widely admired passing game comes up short and where do Stoke go to if their direct Plan A stalls ?

If we plot the extent to which each side was content or otherwise with their overall game state in each of their  38 matches in 2011/12 against long ball tendencies, the league splits into roughly three equal groups. There was a group of teams which showed a steady increase in the use of long balls in games where they faced less favourable game states. Arsenal fell into this category, along with all of their fellow title and European contenders.

A second group of teams, most notably including Liverpool saw the reverse occur. Elevated proportions of long balls coincided with matches where they had enjoyed the best of the game states and when they struggled they had enjoyed, or been allowed to enjoyed the freedom to pass shorter proportionally more often.

Passing Style In Contrasting Game States, 2011/12.

Team's Playing Proportionally More Long Balls In Poor Game States.	Team's Playing Proportionally More Long Balls In Good Game States.
Arsenal.	Everton.
Manchester United.	Liverpool.
Manchester City.	Fulham.
Tottenham.	Aston Villa.
Chelsea.	QPR.
	Bolton.

Correlation does not imply causation, and a more intimate examination would be the obvious next step. But for the first group, it is easy to imagine that the preferred style of more skilled sides would revolve around ball possession and short passes. However, there comes a time in anyone's depleted game state where the ticking of the clock leads to the temptation to attempt a more direct approach. Arsenal breached their 10% long ball barrier in half of their ten least impressive matches as measured by overall game state dominance. Their ten best game state performances didn't see long ball % once better 9% of total.

US Import, Reo-Coker hoofs it long for Bolton in 2011/12.

The second group definitely need granular evidence before solid conclusions are reached. Did Liverpool get into good games states and also maintain that advantage with long balls, (Suarez's hat trick goal at Norwich, 40 yard pass followed by a 50 yard shot, suggested they made good use of the long ball in 2011/12). Or did they accumulate lots of short passes when trailing and faced with packed defences ?

Stoke appear in neither group. Their output of long balls were indifferent to game state as measured on this game by game basis. That might imply the non existence of a Plan B, a thought long held by some Stoke fans over their present time in the Premiership. That would be a poor legacy to Tony Pulis' rapidly ending tenure at the club. I prefer to think that I haven't quite found it among Opta's copious amounts of data.

Game States And Attacking Tendency.

One of the biggest challenges in football analysis is to add context to the ever increasing raft of available figures. A team's objective at the beginning of a game will range from securing all three points, if they are the superior side in the match up, to avoiding defeat, if they are the inferior team on the day. How they achieve these various aims will greatly depend on the match situations they face, defined primarily by the current score and time remaining. In short Game States are hugely influential, along with opponent quality in determining the kind of match statistics that a side may record.

The largest, readily available source of match by match data was released by MCFC and Opta last year and contains over 200 categories of in games statistics for each side for every game played during the 2011/12 season. It is therefore, in the absence of more detailed play by play data, an ideal source to test the observation that teams will prioritize different actions during different game states.

The most obvious place to begin is how teams attempt to score their goals, but first we need to quantify a teams current desire to increase or open their account. Current score is a good starting point, but time elapsed is also a major factor. A side's approach to rescuing a single goal deficit will be different if just ten minutes has elapsed compared to a match entering it's final ten minutes. Similarly, a team's inbuilt strengths and weaknesses, as well as their preferred style will also impact on their approach. Finally, relative team strengths add to the game's dynamic. It has been well documented that a mid table team drawing away to a title contender is likely to be a satisfactory game state for the former, but not the latter.

Each of these contributing factors can be broadly described numerically and whilst they are less reliable than using methods such as these, which attempt to track the ever changing game states, they are adequate.

Identifying how content the top sides in the Premiership are with the current score is relatively easy. As with all sides, losing isn't a satisfactory state, (although this is also time dependent) and neither in general is a stalemate for the very best sides. It appears that such sides increasingly shoot from greater distance as these unsatisfactory conditions persist. I therefore compared how the ratio of long range shots to total shots varied by game state on a match by match basis for all EPL teams from 2011/12 to see which sides shared this preferred approach. The teams where the correlation was strongest are listed in the table below.

Swansea demonstrate a tendency to shoot from distance when behind.

Swansea attempted 35% of all their shots from distance in matches where their game state was consistently poor compared to below 25% when they were at their most dominant. Teams which aren't listed showed no game state dependent preference in these particular categories.

Attacking Intentions In Unfavourable Game States For EPL Sides 2011/12.

Sides Which Shoot Proportionally More From Distance In Poor Game States.	Sides Which Cause Opponents To Make Proportionally More Headed Clearances In Poor Game States.
Swansea.	Spurs.
Fulham.	Chelsea.
Liverpool.	Aston Villa.
Wigan.	Newcastle.
Sunderland.	Liverpool.
Spurs.	Everton.
Manchester City.	Blackburn.
Arsenal	Bolton.

In contrast, the second listed sides forced their opponents to make proportionally more headed clearances when they themselves struggled by their own realistic expectations. Possibly indicating a different attempted method to turn around a match centred around more frequent aerial attacks, or at least an approach which  results in more opportunities to loft the ball into dangerous areas of the pitch.

Opponents finding themselves successfully defending an acceptable match position against Spurs had to deal with over 60% of clearances with their head. Those figures dropped to below 20% when Spurs were the team in control of the game.

There may be slight issues of correlation verses causation in these figures which a more granular approach would address, but the trends for sides to alter their approach depending upon games state appears strong, especially as game by game figures have been used. A lack of homogeneity of approach by teams seeking to turnaround a poor situation is indicated, reinforcing an expected lack of correlation overall between individual match events and game results.