When race charts don't tell the whole story

Today I wanted to discuss race charts and the context that we use them in football analysis. You’ll see us use a variety of charts here at TTF, from radars and shot maps, to race charts and passing networks, and the point of them is to help create a visual picture of the data from a match, in order to tell a story above and beyond what we see with our eyes.

Race charts are most commonly used to deliver information about expected goals. My understanding is that they originally came from hockey, and were used as far back as 15-20 years ago, tracking shots for each team. These days even hockey has upgraded the metrics they use (finally, the stubborn bastards) and use expected goals similar to soccer/football.

Anyway, the point of these charts is to look at the volume and quality of chances teams created throughout the course of a match. You can also add things like goals and red cards to the charts, or you can change what’s displayed from expected goals (a shot-based metric) to something more like On-Ball Value or Expected Threat, which are possession/territory based metrics.

One of our readers sent this through after last weekend’s matches, describing it as a “betting nightmare.”

That’s obviously a non-StatsBomb chart, and contains a variety of information to help summarise things in one visual. These work fairly well on social media, even if they take some getting used to.

This is the StatsBomb chart for the same match.

The same trouncing, but very different expected goals information.

Why did I develop my own data and expected goals models? Exactly this. Better data yields better information about what actually happened in matches, and helps it to be more predictive of future outcomes. This has an impact in gambling, but also in recruitment.

It doesn’t change the fact that 5-0 was probably fairly unjust purely based on shots, but it definitely downgrades Almere in most aggregate models and upgrades Twente’s performance to “okay-ish.”

When you see a game like this, you need to ask a variety of questions and dig a bit deeper. Was it a bad day at the office for the defenders? Maybe there was a mismatch that they just couldn’t handle. Did they have young defenders/midfielders that made mistakes? Was the GK just bad?

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Some days shit happens. But other days shit happens, and in similar circumstances, it could easily happen again. That’s the kind of stuff that you go watch the match for to try and tease out. Are there recurring patterns you need to be aware of in future matches, or that your team can exploit?

The StatsBomb Twitter account posted this one from the weekend. You don’t learn much from it other than Werder Bremen probably gave up to start the match. It always baffles me when teams set out to grind out a 0-0 in a league match. Weird things happen in football all the time, but in order for them to break your way, the ball has to be outside your own penalty area!

Leverkusen are good again this season, but Bayern are stupidly dominant so far, mostly on the defensive side of the ball. The schedule hasn’t been hard, but they are giving up fewer than 6 shots a game right now, which suggests Kompany has their press dialled in early. A +13 goal difference after 4 matches is impressive.

For a loooong time I found myself wondering why there weren’t more coaches coming from elite coaching trees like Pep and Klopp, as you might see in American Football. Maybe with Arteta and now Kompany seemingly in ascendancy, we’re finally seeing the most successful tactical style in football propagate further than just one Catalan genius, and on to his apprentices. (Although if the weekend is any indicator, Pep still needs to incorporate/accept help from the set piece nerds. I wonder if Bayern have adopted that yet, or if Kompany is being stubborn too?)

If you are a team that wants to explore what can be done to improve your set pieces, reply to this email and let’s set up a call. A lot of the things you are seeing succeed in the Premier League are straight out of the playbook I taught everyone starting back in 2019.

—TK