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Liverpool Player Analysis v2.0 - Home/Away Split Edition

In Player Analysis v1.0, I analysed the players based on their Goals For, Goals Against, and Net over 90 minutes.

One particular flaw I thought needed addressing was the weighting of goals - a goal against Chelsea should be worth more than a goal against Fulham. v2.0 addresses that issue. Having been reduced to tears trying to get a twenty-some-odd sheet spreadsheet to do what I wanted, I finally gave up and put everything into a database. Now we can slice and dice the data in all sorts of obscene ways.

Anyway, here's how goals are weighted... First we need the home away splits for all of the BPL teams. statto.com takes care of that. We put those into the database along with all of Liverpool's match results. We then take the averages provided by statto.com and adjust them, taking out the Liverpool games. Now we have what every other team in the BPL averages in terms of goals for and against, home and away.

Next we take how Liverpool did against those teams like so:

Goals For - Opponent Goals Against Average = Adjusted Goals For.

For example, Chelsea gives up 0.56 goals at home. Take Liverpool's one goal out and that average drops to 0.54. Here then is Liverpool's "Adjusted Goals For" vs Chelsea:

1 - 0.54 = 0.46.

Simple! As you'll see, positive "Adjusted Goals For" is good, and on the flip side, negative "Adjusted Goals Against" is good.

If anyone is interested I can go into much more detail about the entire process to come up with these stats, but I'm already boring myself typing about it.

So here are the home/away splits (which I think is particularly interesting):

All-Around (HOME)
name Position ADJ_GFP90 ADJ_GAP90 minutes appearances ADJ_NET
Aly Cissokho FB 2.51 -0.48 510 6 2.99
Jon Flanagan FB 2.69 -0.11 654 8 2.8
Luis Suarez ST 2.2 -0.05 1161 13 2.25
Philippe Coutinho MID 1.99 -0.24 1071 13 2.23
Daniel Sturridge ST 1.83 -0.33 992 12 2.16
Raheem Sterling MID 1.97 -0.13 892 14 2.1
Martin Skrtel CB 1.84 -0.18 1331 15 2.02
Steven Gerrard MID 1.74 -0.26 1189 15 2
Simon Mignolet GK 1.71 -0.25 1440 16 1.96
Jordan Henderson MID 1.64 -0.31 1418 16 1.95
Kolo Toure CB 1.5 -0.32 694 9 1.82
Lucas Leiva MID 1.15 -0.6 706 10 1.75
Glen Johnson FB 1.66 -0.05 1084 13 1.71
Daniel Agger CB 1.15 -0.26 780 11 1.41
Joe Allen MID 1.37 0.01 499 10 1.36

All-Around (AWAY)
name Position ADJ_GFP90 ADJ_GAP90 minutes appearances ADJ_NET
Joe Allen MID 2 -0.62 600 9 2.62
Daniel Agger CB 1.61 -0.33 540 6 1.94
Glen Johnson FB 1.79 -0.05 892 10 1.84
Raheem Sterling MID 1.45 -0.15 720 12 1.6
Luis Suarez ST 1.45 0.17 1260 14 1.28
Jon Flanagan FB 1.45 0.18 752 9 1.27
Martin Skrtel CB 1.39 0.17 1350 15 1.22
Philippe Coutinho MID 1.27 0.07 822 13 1.2
Mamadou Sakho CB 0.95 -0.24 510 6 1.19
Simon Mignolet GK 1.27 0.08 1440 16 1.19
Jordan Henderson MID 1.27 0.08 1440 16 1.19
Daniel Sturridge ST 1.17 0.25 906 11 0.92
Steven Gerrard MID 1.22 0.33 1166 13 0.89
Lucas Leiva MID 0.91 0.19 870 11 0.72
Aly Cissokho FB 1.09 0.4 535 8 0.69
Victor Moses MID 0.87 0.65 386 8 0.22
Kolo Toure CB 0.61 0.46 744 10 0.15

Simon Mignolet is highlighted because he represents Liverpool - he's played every minute of every game. This is useful for doing comparisons within the team.

Looking at Mignolet aka Liverpool, we can see that Liverpool abuses other teams with our offence while giving up slightly fewer goals when compared to the average BPL team. This seems to jive with reality - so far so good.

But now look within the team, and particularly Joe Allen. He goes from the worst home player to the very best away player. His very best is better than his "worst", so overall he's at the top of the unsplit chart . Put another way (comparing him to Migs/Liverpool), at home Allen is an offensive and defensive liability. On the road he is spectacular, unbelievable, utterly stupendous stud-boss.

Obviously that stuck out and I couldn't wait to share it - I'd be interested in your thoughts on why this may be.

Next edition: The Mysterious Jon Flanagan

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