Goals Scored in the A League after 9 Rounds 2015-16
Last season I wrote several blogs about the number of goals scored from Set Plays and in Open Play and based on the percentages and number in each category I predicted after 18 Rounds that either Melbourne Victory or Wellington would win the league. I know a lot of people would have predicted that without looking at the data I had created.
I have included some figures for the first 9 Rounds of this season to start the ball rolling. So far there have been 88 goals in Open Play, which represents 72% and 34 goals from Set Plays for all clubs. The outliers are Newcastle (67%), Central Coast Mariners (60%) and Perth (43%) with higher than average percentages from Set Plays. The under achievers from Set Plays are Sydney (11%) and Wellington (14%). Five of the teams have reached double figures in Open Play, Brisbane (11), Melbourne City (18), Melbourne Victory (11), Wellington (12) and West Sydney Wanderers (11). Victory and Perth have played one game less than the other teams.
In terms of goals scored and the number of passes, there were 4 goals without a pass, 64 goals from 1-5 passes and 20 from 6+ passes. Interestingly there were only 2 goals out of 88 from 9 or more passes in the sequence (2%).
The number of goals scored inside the penalty area was 77 (88%) and 82 inside 23 yards; only 6 goals were scored outside 23 yards in Open Play.
There were 22 goals (25%) from regained possessions in the Back Third and 15 of them were scored with 5 passes or less; the remaining 7 were scored with 6 or more passes. This goes to prove that quick play from the Back Third is far more effective than a slow build up. Regained possessions in the Middle Third accounted for 52%, while the Final Third accounted for 23%. Of the ten teams in the league only MCT and MVT have scored more than 2 goals with 6 or more passes, which is quite surprising.
Open Play 0-5 Passes 6+ Passes
Adelaide 6 4 2
Brisbane 11 10 1
CCM 4 2 2
MCT 18 11 7
MVT 11 7 4
Newcastle 3 3 0
Perth Glory 4 3 1
Sydney 8 8 0
Wellington 12 11 1
WSW 11 9 2
I have provided more detail in a presentation for members of my website, with commentary should you want more detailed information.