ESPN Analytics: "Dempsey not as lethal as advertised"

If I understand the conclusion right it is that Dempsey flubs chances more often than say, Wayne Rooney or other players who score lots of goals in the Premier league. That is to say in order to score so many goals, as he is currently one of the leaders in that inarguable stat, he needs to have x number more chances that a supposedly more lethal finisher. Which might beg the question, if Dempsey is getting so many more chances than anybody else in the league, in order to score so much, does Fulham have the most creative midfield in the league (to provide so many chances) or does this analytic not take into account certain things like movement and reading the play to put oneself in to position to create chances to take?

Begs the question .

 

Pretty much. Dempsey is anything but a clinical finisher.

His 2010 WC performance is another indicator - dude had chance after chance after chance and could only contrive to score when Green fumbled it into the net.

What he's excellent at, though, is movement off the ball in the final third. That's why he gets so many chances regardless of who he's suiting up for. He is "goal hungry," for lack of a better term. Just not clinical, despite having wonderful technique.

McBride was similar.

 

Weird analysis. This isnt basketball, where you can assume a team will get some shot on most possessions as a baseline. But the way the metric is done has a problem in basketball. It would look at a player who takes a lot of mid range jumpers at a decent percentage, and might conclude that player is better then another who shoots primarily from 10' and in, sort of missing the point that its bad shot selection and bad offense to take a lot of mid range jumpers.

What the stat really tells you is that Clint Dempsey should work on his finishing. But the stat also indicates Clint has to be better then you might think at generating more and better chances then the other guy.

 

Or, perhaps he should not take so many shots. Regardless of the distance factor used in the calculations, some shots are just better to take than others. Perhaps his judgment on that issue alone is off. The only really important issue, to me at least, is whether Dempsey, by taking a shot that does not go in actually reduces the probability of someone else from Fulham scoring. That is probably impossible to calculate. But, if his shooting too often does not significantly reduce Fulham's scoring, then the only thing that counts is the number of goals Clint actually scores.

 

What fresh nonsense. Just for starters, if you absolutely must put this ridiculous give/take dynamic on shots, then one must at least factor in that shots are not only useful for scoring goals and erm, duh, that the action of opponents such as the keeper, defender or official scorer also have impact on the shot's outcome.

Silly on every conceivable level.

 

This is a little too much sabermetric-ish for me...I've never heard of this being done. And 7.5% of shots outside the 18 go in? Really, from outside the 18? From what I see in EPL and the MLS, these almost always are flubbed. When they do go in, amazing. But mostly off target.

And what does that stat say for defense? Is this an open shot from 20 yds or are defenders in the way?

Also, where's the comparison to other players (great / not great). I bet there are some outliers that aren't mentioned...

Analysis of Dempsey or not, I don't think this holds merit. Soccer doesn't really allow teams to "give the ball to who's the best shooter" by designing a play for them...can put them in the game, but that's about it.

 

Exactly.

In baseball or basketball it's all about what might be called chance conversion. That is to say field goal shooting percentage or batting average. A .300 hitter is better than a .250 hitter. A 50% shooter is better than a 30% shooter. But that is because both sides general have the same amount of at bats and shots. However that isn't the case in soccer. Chance conversion is a great skill, but if you can create more chances than other players and you still score more, the skill isn't nearly as important. It'd be like a basketball player who could get 20 more shots than anybody else per game, adding 6 extra points to his total, or a baseball player who could get four more at bats than anybody else and thus an extra hit per game.

This stat only tells us so much about Dempsey. Still a loooooooooooooooong way to go for statistics to truly tell us something about soccer.

 

In my mind, this is a great example of the problem with statistics. It's difficult, if not impossible to make firm conclusions from statistics. Too many other factors are involved. It does make for fun discussion though.

 

And yet another soccer newbie who has no clue about how soccer works.

 

I'm not sure what to think about this article.. I know one thing, and that is Clint scores goals, case closed.

 

There might be a bit of a sample size problem here. Way I'm reading it, Dempsey has 0.7 fewer goals than 'expected' given the distances of his shots. That means, if I'm reading it right, if he had scored one more from the same selection of shots, he'd be +.3.

 

Gosh... if only there was some way he could belatedly be credited with one more goal!!

 

Give DEMPSEY HIS GOAL!!!

 

The article is complete garbage.

 

That's about as well as it can be said, I think.

The assumption the original writer makes that this makes him less valuable than a typical "clinical finisher" I think is faulty, however. Few players sniff out so many chances as Dempsey, even if he's going to flub a good number of them. The inarguable stat is the number of goals he's scored the last couple of years, which is quite a lot by anybody's standards. I don't think you'll have many people argue that Fulham's attack generates as many chances from the run of play as Man U/City/Tottenham, etc. So why is he scoring so damn many? Because he finds the opportunities to try. That's his ability, and it's a relatively rare, valuable ability.

 

This article is inane, I don't see how someone can't find it obvious that shot creation itself is very important skill. Dempsey takes a lot speculative, difficult shots, most don't go in, but the few that do would have never been taken.

To use a basketball analogy its like Kobe Bryant taking a terrible shot as the shot clock expires, its going hurt his shooting percentage, but it is better for the team than getting a shot clock violation just so he can maintain a better shooting percentage. In soccer you don't have to worry about a clock, but it much easier to lose possession without a shot.

 

Maybe all this statistic indicates is that Dempsey bears and feels the burden of being the primary scoring threat on a team that doesn't score much. He takes shots that a lot of players would pass up. How many times have you heard announcers describe a Dempsey shot as "ill-advised" or "optimistic"? And, usually that is in the midst of a stretch where Fulham's attack is stultifyingly ineffective. Dude is not content to sit back and let the attack be blunted at every turn. As someone on this board once said "He tries sh*t." Moreso than most other players. That's what that stat says.

I'm not saying Dempsey is clinical. I'm just saying that stat is pretty stupid.

I'm not comparing Dempsey to MJ. But, MJ did not lead the league in shooting percentage. Far from it. If Luc Longley had a better shooting percentage than MJ, would that have meant that Longley was a better "finisher"?

 

Because he's nearly 30 and top dollar to Fulham might be around 10 million pounds. Xherden Shaqiri is around 20 years old, one of Basel's best players in the knockout rounds of the champions league and he went for that price to Bayern Munich.

when you consider that, it's easy to see why those kind of clubs aren't going to pay that for a low ceiling player like Dempsey. The transfer market isn't what it was several years ago. A lot of hte crazy money is gone.

 

interesting. It is always difficult to quantify results in soccer, so I respect any attempt to do so.

Having said that, I think there are two important control variables missing.

1) position, clint in most games plays on the wingish. So therefore when they write that you are .075 percent likely to score a goal from the 20 yard line, the postion of the shot may directly influence that likely hood of scoring. I.e. shooting from the 20 directly in the middle of the field or shooting 20 yards from a very tight angle on the wing will significantly influence your success percentage.

2) quality of team, one reason why rooney scores more goals is because of peer affects. If he is double teamed, he can pass it to Nani and co and therefore Man U score more goals.
In the case of Clint, he cant really pass it to another player of high caliber which means he ends up taking more difficult shots under doubleish coverage.

So in this case there is an unobserved team affect on likelyhood of scoring.

 

That study is a joke. It doesn't take into account the angle the closest defender was facing the player at, the amount of time they had before taking the shot, the quality of the delivery, etc...

A classic example of someone trying to look smart by using "math," but utterly failing in the process.

 

There are plenty of strikers/attacking players of a higher calibre than Clint who typically need several strikes per game (and sometimes take wild chances) to convert. Diego Forlan comes to mind.

Likewise, there are strikers who only touch the ball two times in a game but still come away with a goal, like an Inzaghi type.

In other words, there are different kinds of scorers in soccer (I know, I know, you guys knew that already).

Add my "duh" to the pile.

HOWEVER, I applaud the effort here as in other places for at least an attempt to use statistics / analytics to take off the fan-boy goggles RE: certain players or, more usefully, player combinations.

 

Some of it is he's a 'late bloomer' by international standards. Wasn't pro until going on 21, didn't leave MLS until over 23, was 26 or so by the time it was really clear how good he was at Fulham.