expectinggoals.com - Michael Caley
In the midst of working on last week’s set piece study, I pulled some data together on player shot and goal production from set pieces, and on teams’ primary set piece takers and set piece targets. I found that player set piece goals and assists are best predicted not by open play statistics, but by a combination of that player’s set piece production and by their role on the team’s set plays. These results suggest that set piece production should be understood as a separate aspect of player statistical production, and players should be evaluated and projected in distinct ways on set piece and open play skills. That is an interesting result even if it ended up being extraneous to the argument of last week’s newsletter.
