I usually try to follow stats pretty closely but really havent this season so I sat down tonight and looked at the team stats and did some calculations of my own. We still have a couple of games left but since all but two teams are at 32 games, we can finally get an accurate picture of where teams stand stat wise. I figure we can use this thread to take a look at our team stats compared to the other teams and see where we can improve and use it to determine what changes personnel wise we need next season. I was satisfied that we are Top 5 in the league in almost every category on the MLS website except for offsides and since we are up there in other offensive categories you can take that as a positive. I believe we lead the league last year in Shots on Goal. Goals – We currently stand at 4th in the league with 47 goals scored. Seattle leads with 51 goals and Toronto sits last with 33. The median is 40.5. Shots Taken – We sit at 3rd in shots taken with 437. Dallas leads the league with 458 and Colorado is last with 341. The median is 400. Shots on Goal – We also sit at 3rd in SOG with 147. The leader is Chicago with 162 and the lowest total is Vancouver with 125. The median is 136.5. Percentage of shots on Goal – this is a manual calculation that I did on my own. It is simply the percentage of shots taken that were on goal. We are currently 11th with 33.6%. The leader is Colorado with 37.2% and the lowest is Dallas with 29.6%. The median is 34.45. Percentage of Goals Scored from SOG – this is another manual calculation done by dividing goals scored by shots on goal. We currently sit at 7th at 32.9%. The leader is DC with 34.5% and the lowest is Toronto with 24.8%. The median is 29.2%. Another stat category probably worth looking at is the percentage of shots taken that were goals. Fouls Committed – We currently are 4th in the league with 403 fouls committed. The leader is Chicago with 440 and the lowest is Portland with 312. The median is 381. Fouls Suffered – We sit at 5th in the league with 395. The league leader is Dallas with 427 and the lowest is San Jose with 335. The median is 384.5. Corner Kicks – We are currently 9th in the league with 148. The league leader is NY with 191 and the lowest is Toronto with 116. The median is 148.5 It would be interesting to see where we have stood in these categories throughout the season. I think I may track this stuff in future season from game-to-game so maybe we can track trends. I think one of the most telling stats is percentage of shots on goal. We are at the top of the league in Shots on Goal and Shots but at the bottom half when comparing the two. If we just improved our percentage of shots on goal by 2% or 3% we would probably be sitting at the top of the East with room to play with.
I never got the fixation on shot stats given that MLS considers some complete shit to be shots. Anything that hits the frame is considered a SOG, or a save if a goalkeeper picks it up -- 2 mph pea rollers and all, a bad cross that happens to drift onto goal etc etc. They also ignore the styleistic differences between players, some players rarely shoot but are more clinical, others like Kamara shoot a lot to get their goals - from any and all angles in his case. It is how he gets the job done. You should probably also subtract penalties from any stats you produce. These skew the numbers wildly. Not picking at you, just hate the underlying stats your working from and think they are practically useless.
While I understand your point, anything on frame should be counted as a shot on goal because anything on frame could technically be goal. Anything that would be a goal had a goalkeeper not stopped it is a valid SOG. Sometimes that crap ends up being a goal and any time a team gets an SOG whether it be a complete crap effort or not requires an offensive attack so I think that makes the stats more valid than you are giving them credit for. I think these stats are only revealing when looking at the entire season. Over the course of the season, a team that has racked up more shots than others have more offensive prowess than teams on the lower end so it can be very telling at who has a more potent offense and then when looking at the percentages it shows who has the most effective offenses. We have some teams have have tons of shots but their percentages are low so while they have a potent attack, their effectiveness is low and that is where we fall. I also think the percentage of shots that end up being on goal is a good way to look at the effectiveness of the forwards and then further taking it down to percentage of SOG that end up being goals is an even better way to look at the effectiveness of attacking players. Adjusting the stats for penalties is probably a good idea but more teams have 3 or 4 and only 4 teams have more than 4.