Have been debating a couple Paul Gardner columns lately, and it brought up a question about fouls that I want to research at some point, probably in the off-season. I want to look at whether fouling has a correlation with winning, and whether the relationship is positive or negative. (I seem to remember reading a study claiming there was a positive correlation between fouling and winning, which I would find a tad disturbing). At any rate, I ran a few preliminary statistics for myself, but ran into a problem. On MLS's team stats page, they list fouls committed and fouls suffered for the team as well as the opponents. However, the team FC doesn't equal the opponent FS, nor is the team FS equal to the opponent FC (as in example below). Anyone know why that would be? And what would be the best way to resolve it? Code: Player Stats UNF POS PLAYER GP GS MIN G A PTS SHT SOG BLK FC FS CK C E 99 F Jaime Moreno 27 27 2279 7 14 28 39 25 0 26 51 0 2 0 11 F A. Eskandarian 24 19 1627 10 2 22 58 32 0 34 36 19 8 0 21 M D. Kovalenko 25 25 2163 2 10 14 37 20 1 46 33 5 6 2 9 F Freddy Adu 30 14 1440 5 3 13 33 16 0 31 50 36 4 0 14 M Ben Olsen 25 25 2046 3 4 10 41 26 0 58 58 16 7 0 8 M Earnie Stewart 26 23 2093 3 4 10 33 16 0 28 13 59 5 0 13 M Christian Gomez 9 8 582 4 0 8 12 7 0 15 8 15 1 0 17 M Joshua Gros 29 21 2087 1 4 6 30 17 0 46 29 1 6 0 20 F Ronald Cerritos * 10 6 545 2 1 5 20 9 0 8 7 0 1 0 7 D Ryan Nelsen 17 17 1417 2 0 4 7 4 1 24 4 0 2 1 15 M Bobby Convey * 10 10 823 0 3 3 16 4 0 15 18 23 2 0 26 D Bryan Namoff 27 27 2384 0 2 2 4 1 2 62 28 0 5 0 12 D Mike Petke 26 23 2027 1 0 2 7 3 0 40 15 0 6 0 16 M Brian Carroll 30 26 2438 0 1 1 12 3 0 42 11 6 4 0 6 M Kevin Ara 6 1 114 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 0 1 0 5 D E. Hendrickson 12 8 787 0 0 0 6 3 2 12 7 0 2 0 24 M Nana Kuffour 5 1 90 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 3 0 0 0 4 D B. Prideaux 23 16 1458 0 0 0 1 0 1 32 17 0 1 0 25 F S. Quaranta 1 0 23 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 2 D David Stokes 11 3 410 0 0 0 7 1 0 10 7 0 1 0 11 F Jason Thompson 1 0 60 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 3 D G.R. Cannon * 1 0 35 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 Totals 30 30 2700 43 48 134 365 187 7 [b]542 410[/b] 180 66 3 Opposition Totals 30 30 2700 42 43 127 327 131 1 [b]423 532[/b] 133 45 4 * Player no longer with team
There are a few fouls, Stan, e.g. handballs, delay of game, which people commit, but nobody suffers. I'm pretty sure this explains the divide. It doesn't really seem like a problem that needs resolution to me.
For me, it just poses some counting questions as I take a look at fouls. But thanks, I didn't think of that explanation (though it makes perfect sense).