Shots, goals… the untold statistics machine keeps on rolling – part 1 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
By Walter Broeckx
In my ever going on search of new numbers and new angles I will have another look on comparing shots and goals.
At first I will give you a table in which you can see how many shots where taken by each team in the EPL in the last season. And they are divided in shots taken from in the 6 yard box, from the area between the 6 yard and the 18 yard box and then finally from outside the penalty area.
| Shots 2010-2011 | % 6 yard | % 18 yard | % Outside |
| Chelsea | 9 | 50 | 41 |
| Manchester United | 9 | 52 | 39 |
| Arsenal | 9 | 59 | 32 |
| Manchester City | 6 | 51 | 42 |
| Tottenham | 7 | 46 | 48 |
| Liverpool | 9 | 52 | 39 |
| Fulham | 6 | 50 | 44 |
| Bolton | 9 | 49 | 41 |
| Aston Villa | 10 | 53 | 37 |
| Everton | 8 | 52 | 39 |
| Newcastle | 12 | 56 | 32 |
| Wigan | 6 | 47 | 47 |
| West Ham | 6 | 50 | 44 |
| Sunderland | 5 | 48 | 47 |
| Blackpool | 12 | 43 | 44 |
| West Bromwich | 8 | 48 | 43 |
| Stoke | 15 | 53 | 32 |
| Blackburn | 11 | 57 | 32 |
| Wolverhampton | 11 | 49 | 40 |
| Birmingham | 11 | 45 | 44 |
| Total | |||
| Average | 8,95 | 50,5 | 40,35 |
So these numbers are given in % of the total shots taken by each team during the season. And at the bottom you can find the total average of the EPL when it comes to shots taken by all the teams. In fact half of the shots are taken from somewhere between the 6 yard box and inside the penalty area.
If you look at shots taken from in the 6 yard box it looks as if the better team you the fewer shots you take from within the 6 yard box. As most of the teams that finished in the bottom half of the league table take a lot of more shots from within the 6 yard box compared to the teams of the top 4. Maybe this has something to do with the throw it in the box tactics used by some of those teams? Stoke had the most shots from within the 6 yard box and I really wonder how much of that number has anything to do with a towel and a pair of strong arms?
Arsenal is the team that takes the most shots from within the penalty area. We almost get some 9% more shots than the average EPL team does. But on the other hand we are the team that takes the lowest number of shots from outside the penalty area. Together with teams like Newcastle, Stoke and Blackburn we don’t take that many shots. All this in percentages of course.
But let us go a bit further and bring in the real numbers because if you take 3 shots per game on goal and each from the different types you get a nice 33 % but you hardly are doing anything exciting. Before I give you this table I must warn you that for some strange reasons the numbers of Blackpool and West Bromwich couldn’t be found online. So I just left them out and when I had to make an average I calculated this on 18 teams.
| Goals 2010-2011 | Goals for | 6 yard | % goals | 18 yard | % goals | outside | % goals |
| Chelsea | 69 | 18 | 26,09% | 43 | 62,32% | 8 | 11,59% |
| Manchester United | 78 | 23 | 29,49% | 48 | 61,54% | 7 | 8,97% |
| Arsenal | 72 | 18 | 25,00% | 49 | 68,06% | 5 | 6,94% |
| Manchester City | 60 | 11 | 18,33% | 39 | 65,00% | 10 | 16,67% |
| Tottenham | 55 | 10 | 18,18% | 30 | 54,55% | 15 | 27,27% |
| Liverpool | 59 | 14 | 23,73% | 40 | 67,80% | 5 | 8,47% |
| Fulham | 49 | 10 | 20,41% | 31 | 63,27% | 8 | 16,33% |
| Bolton | 52 | 14 | 26,92% | 29 | 55,77% | 9 | 17,31% |
| Aston Villa | 48 | 15 | 31,25% | 27 | 56,25% | 6 | 12,50% |
| Everton | 51 | 12 | 23,53% | 31 | 60,78% | 8 | 15,69% |
| Newcastle | 56 | 21 | 37,50% | 31 | 55,36% | 4 | 7,14% |
| Wigan | 40 | 8 | 20,00% | 23 | 57,50% | 9 | 22,50% |
| West Ham | 43 | 9 | 20,93% | 29 | 67,44% | 5 | 11,63% |
| Sunderland | 45 | 10 | 22,22% | 30 | 66,67% | 5 | 11,11% |
| Blackpool | 55 | 0 | 0,00% | 0 | 0,00% | 0 | 0,00% |
| West Bromwich | 56 | 0 | 0,00% | 0 | 0,00% | 0 | 0,00% |
| Stoke | 46 | 20 | 43,48% | 22 | 47,83% | 4 | 8,70% |
| Blackburn | 46 | 13 | 28,26% | 26 | 56,52% | 7 | 15,22% |
| Wolverhampton | 46 | 15 | 32,61% | 26 | 56,52% | 5 | 10,87% |
| Birmingham | 37 | 15 | 40,54% | 19 | 51,35% | 3 | 8,11% |
| Total | 1063 | 256 | 573 | 123 | |||
| Average | 59,06 | 14,22 | 27,14% | 31,83 | 59,70% | 6,83 | 13,17% |
If we would give names to the different types of goals I would suggest that we can call the goals from within the 6 yard box as the poachers goals, the ones from within the 18 yard box as the passing goals and the ones from outside as the shooting goals.
And then we see that the masters of the poacher goals are Manchester United. They have scored 23 of their goals from close range. I must say that I found this a bit surprising. Less surprising was the fact that Newcastle and Stoke are next in this table. If you look at the percentages it is Stoke that scores most of their goals from a very close range, followed by Birmingham and Newcastle. Well they are better at other things than passing the ball around.
If we look at the goals from within the penalty area it is both in numbers and in percentages that Arsenal is leading the pack. We scored 49 goals like that. Our tactic of choice one could say. And we are closely followed in numbers by Manchester United and Chelsea. Is this the mark of the best football playing sides? But if you look at the percentages you can see that it is Sunderland and West Ham who are in second and third place.
But let us turn our attention to shooting from a distance. And then we must admit that the top team in this range of goals are our neighbours – the club that formally played in Middlesex. Because they scored a staggering 15 goals. And that is 5 goals more than the team in second place Manchester City. And in percentages it is clear to see that almost 1 goal in 4 is made from a distance. In percentages only Wigan comes close to them. And the rest are far away. Both in numbers and percentages.
And if we look at Arsenal in numbers we are on the low side when it comes to making goals from a distance. Not the lowest in fact but still apart from Liverpool not the types of teams you want to see next to you in any table. Next I will have a further look on these numbers and try to bring some more perspective.
Note: As you know we accept articles from people who want to write for Untold. For the moment Tony Attwood is enjoying a holiday and will not be able to come online. So if you have written an article and there is no hurry to see it published you can send it to the usual mail address. If you want to see it published in the next days you can send it to my mail address walterbroeckx(at)hotmail.com and then we can see that it gets published as soon as possible. Walter