The JPL has 16 teams. After 15 league matches the league is roughly at its "half-way" point. After 30 matches (ie after each team has played all other 15 teams home and away) the league then breaks into to playoff mini-leagues (Wikipedia has a good explanation). So, I thought looking at the JPL at its halfway point would be a good point to start my analysis of Belgians top-tier football division...
Skill or Luck?
I used data from soccerway.com to construct PDO, a measure of luck, and shots on target ratio (SoTR), a measure of skill, for the first 15 matches. PDO is calculated as: [goals scored/shots on target] + [goals conceded/shots on target against]. SoTR is calculated as: [shots on target for/(shots on target for + shots on target against)]. The higher the PDO the luckier a team is, the higher the SoTR the more skilful the team is. (For more detailed explanations refer back here).
As the key to the chart explains the top-6 teams after 15 games are in Green and so on.
As the key to the chart explains the top-6 teams after 15 games are in Green and so on.
- Generally the teams have clustered quite closely in the chart according to their league position with the exception of...
- Mechelen, a real outlier: not only did it register the highest SoTR out of all teams in the Belgian JPL but it also experience a way low PDO over the first 15 matches. Now, this could be due to crap data or it could actually be the case that they have been really, really unlucky to be behind Sporting Charleroi and Kortrijk who were ahead of them in the table.
- Not only were Lierse and Cercle Brugge unlucky - according to PDO figures - but they also exhibited low skill, although Westerlo had the worst SoTR in the league.
Kortrijk and Sporting Charleroi are now in the top-6 of the league, Genk and Lokeren have fallen out of the top-6. However, to test this PDO vs. SoTR "model" as something with predictive power is probably not wise, instead it is a nice catch-all for what has happened.
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