Oliver Giroud has got his Premiership career up and running with a very impressive 4 SoT from 8 shots total, 7 in the box indicating his role in the Arsenal team is to be in the penalty box. His accuracy of 4/8 (50%) is well up on the stats from his first games where he only hit the target once from 10 efforts. More like it and definitely needs to enter our transfer plans.
Hazard rewarded his million or so owners with a goal from 2 efforts in the box, 4 in total, and an impressive 6 key passes. Zoltan Gera also needs a mention seeing plenty of action up-front, although the fixture was a favourable one (as was Hazards of course) and I'm not sure of his place in the Baggies XI yet.
Giroud and Steven Fletcher are my winners from today, impressive attacking performance in tricky away fixtures, and Pienaar probably deserves a mention.
Interesting number. I thought it noteworthy also how powerful Micah Richards was in the box in City's set pieces.
ReplyDeleteI think his five shots are all from corners and on another day he would have notched a goal.
Richards is a handful at set pieces, aye.
ReplyDeleteThis has struck a chord for me which I'll have to share now. Do you think when the best team's play against unambitious but defensively very strong teams like Sunderland that the strikers will be less likely to score? They won't have much space, but defenders & set piece takers will be more likley to et points as the goal will be under bombardement, the defence won't need to defend so much so can get forward, and there'll be a lot of corners/free kicks around the box? Worth an investigation I reckon.
That's actually a very interesting perspective and one that only the numbers will give any real conclusion too. I just found your blog, by the way, and I love how you focus on the statistics.
DeleteA piece on defenders and set piece takers would be a novel one and helpful.
Cheers Gummi. I guess I'll do the analysis then.
ReplyDeleteI just clicked on your name and saw it linked to your blog - which looks awesome and I will be sure to follow from mow.
I recognise your name from somewhere too. Do you cooment on FFS, or do articles for TOTAL?
Sorry about the delay. I was swamped at work.
DeleteI comment all over the place really, wherever I find interesting articles. On FFS from time to time and a lot over a Chris Glover's blog.