Becoming a Better Fan Series: Regains and what happens next
Statistically breaking down a key part of the game, with video examples
I’ve been thinking about insights that can help coaches, players and fans understand what is going on on the pitch. One of my favorite parts of poring through the data is finding metrics that help me understand the game more: knowing that Real Sociedad force long balls up the wings defensively and are incredibly hard to move the ball efficiently against enriched my viewing pleasure of their match against PSG, knowing Grealish rarely gets forward to receive and is almost purely an in-possession efficiency monster helps prepare my mental map for City games, etc, etc. I’ve long been fascinated by this, two of my first StatsBomb pieces were some kind of family tree trying to use a suite of metrics to determine which teams played like each other so when I flipped on a random rojadirecta illegal stream at 7 AM on a Saturday I would have some way of processing the chaos of 20 moving parts and a ball in front of me.
Basketball is hard enough. They stood out in the Pulitzer considerations due to this impeccable imagery created by none other than yours truly.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot of how to make the viewing experience better for myself and you loyal readers again. Too often I come into a game without a real understanding of teams strengths and weaknesses. This has gotten better over the years, but we have miles and miles to go before we sleep. The more I’ve understood, the more fun it is to watch the game and I hope it is for you as well. This “better fan” series is referring to the fan writing this piece.
After a match I have minimal problems analyzing what happened usually in a broad sense, seeing which areas teams succeeded in, who got out in transition, who won set pieces, which players fared well, etc. But I think this aspect of the game we will talk about today is undercovered, statistically speaking.
So we will have a bit of a foray through a couple new investigations to see if we can make a metric that makes sense from the data that helps us all become better fans.
Regains and what you do after
A regain in this article is defined as as winning a tackle or interception or ball recovery in open play. The situation is the ball was loose or the opponent had it and you control the ball again.
Watching games it does feel like there are significant tactical or possibly player differences in how teams think about and execute this moment, it feels like an important bit of information in how they play the game and the moment itself is important.
My numbers shake out at about 84 of these situations per game.
The first pass after a regain is completed 78.9% of the time and leads to a shot 6.6% of the time within 15 seconds. A pass right after a regain is roughly 25% more likely to lead to a shot than a pass in settled possession and about 5% less likely to be completed. Action certainly happens at these moments.
The Numbers and Charts
Let’s look at what teams do next with the ball after a regain. How do they keep it and how do they generate shots first.
Here we see some interesting splits in the data that make sense to ball-knowers. Brighton win the ball back and do not press for a shot at all, they want to create their own transitions through ball movement. When they win the ball back, they want to keep it, and keep it they do. Their 86.5% pass completion rate is higher than every other team in the league. Their shot generation rate (shot within the next 15 seconds) is lower than all but Luton.
City also are conservative with the ball, while the teams in the top right get the double whammy of being both pretty good at keeping the ball and good to very good at generating shots. Those are the teams you would expect, Villa set their entire team up to generate shots from takeaways basically, Liverpool as well while Man United and Tottenham tend to play wildly entertaining and open games with space and space being attacked everywhere.
Bournemouth are an interesting one here, no one generates shots as often as they do after a regain. I haven’t watched them much, but this is the kind of metric that will make me following them much more entertaining and create a clearer picture of their game in my mind. The game is so chaotic, we need all the help we can get. Or maybe it’s just me.
Everton and Forest both lose the ball a lot on that first pass but generate shots at a good rate.
Fulham, West Ham, Burnley, Brentford, Luton and Sheffield United are not generating much at all with their attack off regains.
Let’s look a bit more in depth about where teams get the ball back for their attacks and what their first pass looks like:
The clear standout here is Liverpool, no one plays their first pass more vertically than the Reds. A Klopp signature.
A Kompany signature might be extremely short or backwards passes after regaining the ball, Burnley look like Brighton, Arsenal or Man City in where they pass the ball after they win it back. That might be ok if you can generate shots and control like those teams, it’s certainly interesting to see a team in the relegation fight pass like that.
Bournemouth and Everton surprisingly win the ball back pretty high up the pitch while the bunkering teams like West Ham, Luton, Forest and Sheffield United are way over on the right.
I kind of thought Villa might be even higher in terms of verticality here.
Let’s look defensively:
Burnley again standing out really surprisingly with how fierce their defense is when they lose the ball. I had sort of written off Kompany as a bit of a lightweight manager this season when early on they kept conceding so many soft goals and for his awful handling of the GK situation*, but these charts seem to indicate he at least has the hang of a bit of the moment of the turnover game.
Newcastle have been pretty pathetically soft this season, for a team whose defense was almost Europe-best last year to be up there next to known patsies like Sheffield and Manchester United is pretty shocking. Their injury list certainly contributes, it’s been a bit overlooked how they basically had to rely on a 17 year old to play almost every midfield minute alongside Sean Longstaff. This weakness immediately after losing the ball is a big part of the so-called undoing of Newcastle this year.
Brighton don’t allow a high completion% but are wide open to shots.
Palace, under the old warhorse Hodgson, were solid and never really at risk of a sudden shot against. Partially due to playing fullbacks who never foraged upfield and a reminder that being good at this one metric is not “good” or “bad” necessarily, it just is.
*I think basically all GK metrics are sort of untrustworthy and don’t believe basically anyone who can tell you who is a good or bad goalie for a lot of years and think it’s broadly exaggeration of coaches and analysts abilities…howevah…I think teams in relegation battles should essentially never hand their goalie duties over to unproven youngsters because the floor is that they are totally incompetent or not close to ready. Southampton last year started a 20 year old who was -16 goals behind post shot xG and saved just 54% of chances after never playing a minute above League One. This year Burnley tried the same thing with a 20 year old goalie who has never played a minute above League One and while the numbers aren’t as bad, I bet most Burnley fans are sure they would have a lot more points with the veteran Muric in goal all season. It’s such a massive risk with very minimal upside (usually around how you pass it inside your own box) to roll with a goalie who has never seen game speed at this level.
Villa’s high line shines through here really, opponents look to fire behind into open space immediately with verticality when they get the ball back against the Villans.
Palace have presumably had so many players back there is no real upside firing into the mass.
Bournemouth and Everton have played a solid field position game really this year, opponents start their possessions quite far from goal while they start a good bit closer to goal. Those 5 yards each possession add up over halves, matches, and years.
Location on pitch
If you regain the ball around your own goal, the odds of turning that regain into a shot in the next 15 seconds is very low, 1.5%.
Moving in 15 yard chunks we see the change
Own Goal: 1.5%
90-75 yards from goal: 2.7%
75-60 yards: 4.4%
60-45 yards: 7.1%
45-30: 15.2%
30-15: 31%
Team standouts here are Spurs winning the ball back a lot more than anyone else within 30 yards of their opponents goal
Players
Let’s look at player numbers here to pick out a few standouts and maybe explore their differences.
Two players who have won the ball back a good bit high up the pitch are Bruno Fernandes and Billy Gilmour. Gilmour completes 88% of his passes, Bruno 80%. Bruno’s passes after regains are +5 yards closer to goal while Gilmour plays away from goal on average.
Gilmour Example 3: this is my favorite one showing player/team characteristics. We know Brighton are a very conservative team looking to keep the ball when they regain it, this shows it very well. Gilmour wins the ball back with 6 players ahead of him and winds up playing a pass away from goal to hold the ball.
Bruno (and Manchester United) were on the opposite side from Brighton in that they look to create right after regains and get shots, Bruno’s head immediately looks forward and that’s where the ball goes.
In the midfield area two very different types of players post-regain are Trent Alexander-Arnold and Leandro Trossard. Trossard passes essentially directly backwards (5 yards away from goal) while Trent fires wildly forward (9 yards toward goal). The differences in these two can help update our mental map for how their two teams have played and different approaches to the regains in general.
Notes and Errata
Wolves seem relatively* more dangerous the further from goal they regain the ball. 75 yards and more away from goal they generate shots at a rate almost 75% above league average. They are below average closer to opponents goal
Bournemouth have a higher share of their regains way up the pitch (43%) than any other team in the league.
When Man City has regained the ball between 45 and 60 yards from the opposition goal, they have created a shot quickly just 0.9% of the time. League average is above 7%, this almost has to be a tactical Pep thing that if you sort of press and win it back, just recycle to increase the control. United are at 9% from that range.
Opponents so rarely regain the ball high vs Arsenal (31%), Aston Villa is at 47% for example.
When Spurs lose the ball in midfield, they are at huge risk, once they get up high or even around their own goal they are sort of ok but right in the middle of the pitch opponents are almost 60% more likely to quickly create a shot off a regain.
*of course overall they still generate shots at a higher rate from closer to goal (13%-7%-4.4%-4%-3.5% is their breakdown by zone of odds of generating a shot within 15 seconds).
So, what
Well, the conclusion is I will watch a Klopp team, Brighton, Man United, Bournemouth and Aston Villa very differently now. I know to watch their tendencies at the moment of regain in a different way and that this moment is key in the game.
For teams profiling their opponents and seeing their player tendencies is important for scouting, preparation and recruitment.
Hope it was revealing and any criticisms, complaints, ideas, support is always welcomed in the comment section. I no longer have a twitter so contact me here if you want ideas explored in this series or just to talk ball.
Further ideas in this series are exploring settled possession in the final third, duels all over the pitch, and set piece generation/production.
Nice article, was an interesting read and I'd enjoy seeing more sinilar articles.
Amazing post !