2024-08-26, 10:32 AM - Word count:
Goals:
Season 15 in one chart:
![[Image: image.png]](https://i.ibb.co/H2xt447/image.png)
The above chart takes the point total earned by each time as of that matchday and divides by the number of matchdays for their average points per match throughout the course of the season. This has the benefit of being indexed to a constantly useful axis but does mean early season differences will be more dramatic. Let’s follow some clubs path through the season:
CA Buenos Aires, in purple, started the season with a loss at AC Romana, but quickly steered their way toward the top of the table, finding themselves tied for first with AC Romana in Week 5.
AC Romana was our last undefeated team, an away match against eventual champion Schwarzwalder FV saw their first loss, but they recovered again gaining sole possession of the lead in week 6 until a disastrous stretch from Week 7 to 12 with only a single win against Hollywood FC took them out of championship competition.
The race all season was really between two teams Schwarzwalder FV and Reykjavik United. In lockstep the first 4 weeks (WWDW) lets zoom in on two matchdays which created the separation:
Matchday 5: Moving Day (Yellow Arrow)
AC Romana 2 - 1 Reykjavik United
![[Image: image.png]](https://i.ibb.co/9Y230W6/image.png)
AC Romana plays such beautiful attacking football at home, an 11th minute goal gives them the lead. Reykjavik were up to the task though and by carefully maintaining possession create a number of chances off of corners, but in the 27th minute it is Romana who again finds the net. The attack from the home side never relents, but Reykjavik in their away all white kit manage to keep things at 2-0 heading into half. Reykjavik creates the first good chance in the second half – an interception leading to a shot which yields a well worked corner kick, but it amounts to nothing. Romana does not sit back to defend their two goal lead, they continue to put on the pressure, but Reykjavik is able to withstand it, giving them an opportunity to halve the lead off of a corner kick header in the 71st minute. As the game winds down Reykjavik has the better chances including a great shot that bounces off the goal post in the 86th minute. Romana was brilliant at home this season with 6 wins, their only loss coming to division winning Schwarzwalder. Reykjavik won the xG battle in this game, but were unable to get the win opening up the first gap between them and Schwarzwalder, a gap they fought admirably, but ultimately unsuccessfully to erase by season end.
Matchday 10: Face-off (Red X)
Schwarzwalder FV 1 - 0 Reykjavik United
![[Image: image.png]](https://i.ibb.co/CWczhVj/image.png)
The top table teams come head to head, this time in Pforzheim. When the clubs met in Reykjavik in week 3 Schwarzwalder managed the draw. Achieving that result today would breathe new life into the hopes of United, and if they are able to manage a win they would overtake the lead. The first 20 minutes of the match see Schwarzwalder dominate possession, but Reykjavik create the better chances. Until in the 27th minute Schwarzwalder score on what seemed like a lapse in attention from the United back four. And that was all the action from a rather tame first half in the clash of titans. The second half resumes with much of the same (lack of) energy. Teams appearing to build up slowly with an emphasis on possession, each team gets one dangerous chance off a set piece, but leave with nothing to show for it. And when the final whistle blows that’s how Reykjavik must feel 0 points off of a closely matched game. Schwarzwalder were able to better capitalize on the few opportunities each team had and walk away with the three points that cements the lead they hold on to until season end.
Taking a step back had each of these two games finished in draws instead of being the two losses for Reykjavik this year, there would have been a tie at the top of the table. Given the close xG in each game that seems totally reasonable and a sign of how closely matched these top two teams were. And another footnote for history they did match off against one another in the cup semi-final with Reykjavik drawing away 3-3 and winning at home 2-0, before losing in the final to of all teams their minor league affiliate, North Shore United.
Home/Away Splits by Team
In my brief time with the Academy I’ve already become acquainted with the dramatic impact of playing away from home. To help quantify and decompose the effect of home field advantage I took a look at the performance of clubs in season 15, points per match, goals for, and goals against when playing at home and when playing away.
![[Image: image.png]](https://i.ibb.co/583cbdp/image.png)
Some trends to note:
It’s beyond the scope of this article to really dive deep into what may have caused these differences. It is possibly an area for future investigation to determine if certain changes to tactics, allocation of TPE toward certain attributes or traits, or something as simple as good old-fashioned variance is the primary cause of these observed differences. In any case I do think these trends can be expected to hold in the future in general, and may be helpful in making your predictions this season.
Table View
![[Image: image.png]](https://i.ibb.co/9r0XY7C/image.png)
If you want to drill down on your team to see what caused their away goals against to spike this lets you quickly match up the home team (row) and away team (column) for the matchup, we also have averages. For example the red highlighted cell is the head to head match zoomed in on above. Schwarzwalder was at home against the away side Reykjavik and scored 1 while allowing zero, a differential of 1 goal. Throughout the course of the season, Reykjavik allowed on average 0.7 goals while the away team. The trickiest table to use is the Goal differential, since it takes the perspective of the home team at all times in the cell contents to read down the results by column you need to flip the sign, I’ve already done that for the average metric.
I found this a useful way to visualize how clubs performed over the course of the year including that oh so important game for each of the top two teams against home field titan AC Romana. The yellow highlighted cell is the week 5 moving day tie, where AC Romana beat Reykjavik 2-1, while Schwarzwalder managed to give AC Romana their only home loss of the season 0-1. These table might be a good starting point for predictions if you want to layer on top any changes from year to year.
In the end what can we say we learned by taking a look at Season 15? Home versus Away matters, quite a bit. And some teams may be better able to manage that difference, though we can't put our finger on exactly why. We've also seen how small the margins can be in each game, creating a beautifully and delicately poised drama. Share with us all in the comments your thoughts on what I took a look at, or if I missed any other interesting subplots from Season 15.
- Map out the ups and downs of season 15, zooming in on some key games
- Compare club performance home and away, speculate on causes and overall impact
- Share some data that may be helpful in making predictions
Season 15 in one chart:
The above chart takes the point total earned by each time as of that matchday and divides by the number of matchdays for their average points per match throughout the course of the season. This has the benefit of being indexed to a constantly useful axis but does mean early season differences will be more dramatic. Let’s follow some clubs path through the season:
CA Buenos Aires, in purple, started the season with a loss at AC Romana, but quickly steered their way toward the top of the table, finding themselves tied for first with AC Romana in Week 5.
AC Romana was our last undefeated team, an away match against eventual champion Schwarzwalder FV saw their first loss, but they recovered again gaining sole possession of the lead in week 6 until a disastrous stretch from Week 7 to 12 with only a single win against Hollywood FC took them out of championship competition.
The race all season was really between two teams Schwarzwalder FV and Reykjavik United. In lockstep the first 4 weeks (WWDW) lets zoom in on two matchdays which created the separation:
Matchday 5: Moving Day (Yellow Arrow)
AC Romana 2 - 1 Reykjavik United
AC Romana plays such beautiful attacking football at home, an 11th minute goal gives them the lead. Reykjavik were up to the task though and by carefully maintaining possession create a number of chances off of corners, but in the 27th minute it is Romana who again finds the net. The attack from the home side never relents, but Reykjavik in their away all white kit manage to keep things at 2-0 heading into half. Reykjavik creates the first good chance in the second half – an interception leading to a shot which yields a well worked corner kick, but it amounts to nothing. Romana does not sit back to defend their two goal lead, they continue to put on the pressure, but Reykjavik is able to withstand it, giving them an opportunity to halve the lead off of a corner kick header in the 71st minute. As the game winds down Reykjavik has the better chances including a great shot that bounces off the goal post in the 86th minute. Romana was brilliant at home this season with 6 wins, their only loss coming to division winning Schwarzwalder. Reykjavik won the xG battle in this game, but were unable to get the win opening up the first gap between them and Schwarzwalder, a gap they fought admirably, but ultimately unsuccessfully to erase by season end.
Matchday 10: Face-off (Red X)
Schwarzwalder FV 1 - 0 Reykjavik United
The top table teams come head to head, this time in Pforzheim. When the clubs met in Reykjavik in week 3 Schwarzwalder managed the draw. Achieving that result today would breathe new life into the hopes of United, and if they are able to manage a win they would overtake the lead. The first 20 minutes of the match see Schwarzwalder dominate possession, but Reykjavik create the better chances. Until in the 27th minute Schwarzwalder score on what seemed like a lapse in attention from the United back four. And that was all the action from a rather tame first half in the clash of titans. The second half resumes with much of the same (lack of) energy. Teams appearing to build up slowly with an emphasis on possession, each team gets one dangerous chance off a set piece, but leave with nothing to show for it. And when the final whistle blows that’s how Reykjavik must feel 0 points off of a closely matched game. Schwarzwalder were able to better capitalize on the few opportunities each team had and walk away with the three points that cements the lead they hold on to until season end.
Taking a step back had each of these two games finished in draws instead of being the two losses for Reykjavik this year, there would have been a tie at the top of the table. Given the close xG in each game that seems totally reasonable and a sign of how closely matched these top two teams were. And another footnote for history they did match off against one another in the cup semi-final with Reykjavik drawing away 3-3 and winning at home 2-0, before losing in the final to of all teams their minor league affiliate, North Shore United.
Home/Away Splits by Team
In my brief time with the Academy I’ve already become acquainted with the dramatic impact of playing away from home. To help quantify and decompose the effect of home field advantage I took a look at the performance of clubs in season 15, points per match, goals for, and goals against when playing at home and when playing away.
Some trends to note:
- Home teams expected points per match (1.9) is roughly double expected points per away match (1.0). This trend holds up across clubs (with the special note for Uniao Sao Paulo who performed identically i.e. perfectly inept at both locations) though the degree differs.
- The top two teams differentiated themselves from third place in particular by finding a way to perform better away from home, finding a way to maintain a stingier defense. AC Romana had the most dramatic Home/Away split seeing a steep decline in offense as well as giving away more than 3x goals away from home (2.1) compared to on their own field (0.6)
- Hollywood FC and CF Catalunya are interesting cases where they performed relatively similarly in terms of goals for home versus away, though they still conceded more when visiting another team. In general this should highlight the goal isn’t necessarily equalizing performance home versus away, but finding ways to accentuate your advantage at home and limit your disadvantage when away.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to really dive deep into what may have caused these differences. It is possibly an area for future investigation to determine if certain changes to tactics, allocation of TPE toward certain attributes or traits, or something as simple as good old-fashioned variance is the primary cause of these observed differences. In any case I do think these trends can be expected to hold in the future in general, and may be helpful in making your predictions this season.
Table View
If you want to drill down on your team to see what caused their away goals against to spike this lets you quickly match up the home team (row) and away team (column) for the matchup, we also have averages. For example the red highlighted cell is the head to head match zoomed in on above. Schwarzwalder was at home against the away side Reykjavik and scored 1 while allowing zero, a differential of 1 goal. Throughout the course of the season, Reykjavik allowed on average 0.7 goals while the away team. The trickiest table to use is the Goal differential, since it takes the perspective of the home team at all times in the cell contents to read down the results by column you need to flip the sign, I’ve already done that for the average metric.
I found this a useful way to visualize how clubs performed over the course of the year including that oh so important game for each of the top two teams against home field titan AC Romana. The yellow highlighted cell is the week 5 moving day tie, where AC Romana beat Reykjavik 2-1, while Schwarzwalder managed to give AC Romana their only home loss of the season 0-1. These table might be a good starting point for predictions if you want to layer on top any changes from year to year.
In the end what can we say we learned by taking a look at Season 15? Home versus Away matters, quite a bit. And some teams may be better able to manage that difference, though we can't put our finger on exactly why. We've also seen how small the margins can be in each game, creating a beautifully and delicately poised drama. Share with us all in the comments your thoughts on what I took a look at, or if I missed any other interesting subplots from Season 15.
![[Image: slothfacedkillashl.gif]](https://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/slothfacedkillashl.gif)
