Lowzer's Low Country Revue: A quick tour of some #fancystats of the Belgian Jupiler Pro League after Gameweek 15

I've previously discussed the shortage of good quality stats for the Belgian Jupiler Pro League (JPL) here, but I persevered and found some basic statistics over on soccerway.com and used these stats to construct a PDO vs. Shot on Target Ratio chart here. What I aim to do with this post is add some other ways of analysing and thinking about the performances of the Belgian JPL teams after 15 games...

Attacking Effectiveness

To begin, I look at 'attacking effectiveness', owing a debt of gratitude to Ben Mayhew of the fantastic experimental361.com for showing me the way. Attacking effectiveness looks at how frequently a team shoots per game and how many shots, on average, it took them to score. The chart below shows that, generally speaking, after the first 15 games the teams that shot more in a game were placed higher in the table. The exception is Lokeren - they did not shoot as much as the rest of the top 6, but when they did, they were pretty good at turning their shots into goals. As for the three in the top-left quadrant: they did not shoot enough and took too many shots to score a goal, hence their relegation struggles.

Defensive Effectiveness

After looking at attacking effectiveness, we turn to the 'defensive effectiveness' of teams. Defensive effectiveness aims to portray how well a team can withstand shots against its goal and how it limits shots being taken against it. The chart below suggest that teams with the most effective defences were in the top 6 - with the exception of the leaky Standard Liège defence, which perhaps provides insight as to why they were not further up the table and challenging bitter rivals Anderlecht more, after 15 games. Cercle Brugge had a slightly more effective defence than did Lierse (it took fewer shots to score against Lierse) and there were certainly poorer defences than Cercle Brugge's over the first 15 games. 

Shots Taken and Points Taken

Lastly, I come to the relationship between the subjective concept of 'dominance' of a game and the points teams take. This tests the hypothesis whether teams that take more shots than their opponents generally place higher in the league.

I base this chart of work done by James Grayson (link). What I have done is constructed a Total Shots Ratio (TSR), which is given by:

Total Shots For / (Total Shots For + Total Shots Against) [per game]

This variable displays some sort of match dominance: if you outshoot your opponent it can be argued that you generally dominate the game: in order to take a shot you first need the ball. It takes time to create chances, and so the logic goes that the more you outshoot your opponent the more 'dominant' you are. 

I took the TSR and compared it to the points teams won after 15 games and despite the fairly limited data, there is a pretty strong 'goodness of fit' between TSR and points:

With only few exceptions the pattern here basically says: teams that control more of the ball/outshoot their opponents generally place higher in the table. Mouscron-Péruwelz and Mechelen interestingly appear to be outliers: Mouscron is now in the relegation zone and Mechelen are sitting in 10th. This data suggests they were pretty strong in the first 15 games but must have fallen by the wayside in subsequent weeks.

There is more on its way, I am just limited by the data. Hope you enjoy!