The difference between a passionate fan and a geek of a certain sport is starting to feel a little thin. Gone are the days when statistics were something that only numbers-savvy folk were able to grasp. Gone are the days when gut instinct was the only thing that could tilt one’s perception toward a result. When it comes to insider knowledge, let’s say that corruption is, unfortunately, inevitable regardless of the era of a sport. It’s just a matter of visibility, scale, and courage.
Stepping back into the light. The era that we live in is one that uses gargantuan datasets to generate impressions, create leads, and try to draw conclusions that would indicate some valuable information to use in prediction-like endeavors.
Some are specifically for the idea of gaining notoriety as a tipster. Others are for the notion of working in an analytics program for a sports club. In instances proven by the betbrain.com model, it can work as a space for a community to provide and receive these impressions about what can happen in the sport.
Having an interest in stats as a sports fan is less about crude numbers and more about finding explanations in the margins. It’s more about drawing a red thread between the numbers that make up the stats and the impact that it has on the on-pitch. When numbers tell a story that you can either confirm or deny with your own eye test, it certainly feels like you have the role of a critic.
We will explain this situation in the context of association football. It’s the world’s most popular sport by viewership and fandom metrics, not to mention the fact that it provides fertile ground for statistical analysis. Each metric is a different book that tries to add a chapter to an overarching narrative. Let’s see how it works.
Why interacting with sports advanced metrics is a source of valuable lessons
Advanced sports metrics represent a way of explaining what happened on the football pitch. Did a team dominate the entire field, have the most opportunities, have quality looks, and have the overwhelming amount of possession? If they win, you have your answers, and the fact that they were the better team that day showed in every advanced category. If they lose, it means that they had trouble converting their advantages.
When the match is tight, there may be a balance in certain metrics, with a team having a grasp on some elements, while the other counteracts this with other parts of their attitude. This type of back-and-forth can allow you to understand the depths of how a football match is played, and how the results may be legit, or just lie.
This is important if you have any interest in predicting outcomes of future matches. If a team that generally dominates certain statistical categories shows a penchant for winning and overall success, you may find it a contender or dark horse for winning a certain competition. Moreover, you can predict a team’s success based on how they play against certain types of competitors, such as those that are good at countering their strengths and tendencies.
Statistical analysis of games and teams allows you to cross-reference the eye test with the numbers. Since the result is all that matters, you get to see if, and when, certain levels of domination on certain statistical fronts are conducive to winning. You can also see when there are aberrations, and if other factors, such as the environment in which the game went on, may have had anything to do with an outlier in a statistical model.
Bridging the gap between cold-hard numbers and the narrative feeling of these metrics
Numbers, especially those with huge variance and in these lush datasets, are always quite hard to grasp for an untrained eye, especially if they are in a field that one hardly understands. In the context of understanding them as books on a shelf, each of them can feel like an advanced look into how football can be even more fascinating.
Assessing advanced stats with the purpose of better understanding the game can show you that certain advantages are worth something when on paper. Moreover, they are very valuable lessons to understand when you’re trying to assess the impressions that you have via the eye test. Cross-checking them with stats can tell you if there is a fit between what you saw on the pitch and what the numbers tell you.
When you are able to create a balance between your statistical understanding of the game and the idea that you can perceive what’s going on by looking at that game, you are becoming an even more insightful fan of the sport. This gives you the ability to see more depth in the sport, which raises you to a higher level of understanding.
Organized and efficiently disseminated information will always be readable
Each primary advanced metric has its own role within the wider context of football. Some are showcasing efficiency, others are showing domination, while others are simply painting the picture of how an individual performance impacted e certain game.
With each of these stats, you see that certain thresholds indicate positive or negative impact. You may even see stats that denote strengths and weaknesses, which are excellent opportunities to set up a portrait of a footballer, especially when their baseline stats (depending on their playing position) don’t say too much. Not having an immense number of assists and key passes as a midfielder does not mean that the player isn’t performing well.
When showcasing these advanced metrics, either as a specialized service or someone who understands them, it is all about explaining them and presenting why they matter.
The average fan that has an interest in any field, football included, will always understand these matters, however complicated they may seem, if there is enough contextualization around them. Not every informative book is positive if it can’t get its points across, but the good ones will always have a positive impact.
Main metrics to guide your knowledge
Let’s get into a bit of a more practical side of this discussion. We are here to provide a few examples without going too much into detail since this is an introduction to what these metrics can represent. We are talking about how they can impact your experience if addressed correctly.
Showcasing them and explaining why they’re particularly readable at first glance can bring some wind in your sails if you’re a football fan who wants to get the gist of football’s advanced statistics. If you find them compelling and interesting, going next-level and doing further reading can be a very important part of your process.
Expected goals and assists—a matter of quality moves
If we are to look at the value provided by xG and xA, the markers of expected goals and expected assists, you would understand that efficiency and quality are particularly essential in a competitive sport that implies very fine margins. It’s one of the primary advanced stats in the sport, as shown in its introductory position within the SkySports advanced metrics glossary.
As you know, association football implies very little scoring when compared to other sports, especially those in which scoring can come in different ways, rather than scoring a goal. This means that converted chances are more impactful due to scarcity, which makes efficiency metrics even more important.
With these two, you are looking at the probability that certain shots (for the xG) and passes (for the xA) require an alignment of all the possible standards and circumstances. For example, distance, angle, and power can play a role in what you can expect from a certain shot, based on these circumstances.
Field tilt and Passes per defensive action—dominance through pressure
Field tilt represents the amount of action, mostly passes, performed in the final third of a team’s part of the pitch. If a team is the one exerting such pressure, it tilts the field in its favor, which means that it places its opponents on the backfoot, exerting a level of attrition that can lead to lapses in focus and game-changing mistakes.
This is a statistic that has the type of value that on a live basis, inspiring viewers to look at the game’s momentum based on this very tilt. Naturally, playing defense very compactly close to one’s goal can give the idea of a team being dominated, even if reality just means empty possession, as advanced as it may be.
When we’re looking at PPDA (passes per defensive action), it means that the team that plays defense while having possesion of the ball may perform a certain number of passes due to the level of pressure of the attacking team.
This metric suggests that when there is high, intense pressure, the defending team has no time or space to perform too many passes because of the pressure they endure. Naturally, we can see that a team with direct, dynamic, and vertical play is likelier to advance the ball with fewer passes, which is why there is a direct need for further context.
This can come from numerous ways, but assessing a team’s typical possession tendencies and number of passes per game can tell you if they are performing fewer passes than usual, and whether the pressure from the off-the-ball team is a factor that counts.
Conclusion
To conclude this presentation, the storytelling that advanced metrics in football suggest is a positive addition to how you interpret the sport. Each of these stats is a new perspective in which to understand the sport, giving you volumes to interpret the overarching tome: where performance comes from.
At the same time, we are well aware that many are trying to gain the foresight necessary to gamble on this sport. If you are trying to assess these metrics for the sake of betting, we encourage you to stay safe and gamble responsibly!