When you’re sitting in the pub with your mates, picking your favourites of the Premier League, the one position that has to be the hardest to choose a winner for is the right-back. It is not in any way as easy as left-back, with Ashley Cole usually taking that spot, and Leighton Baines coming through [...]
England’s squad for their summer friendlies with the Republic of Ireland and Brazil were revealed yesterday and the one position that is up for debate more than any is the 2nd striker role. Although there is the possibility of Roy Hodgson only choosing one striker, having watched Hodgson in charge of West Brom last season [...]
Ok, so Landry was talking about the ‘other’ type of football, however the sentiment remains true for ‘real’ football. One of the most beautiful things about the beautiful game is the potential for a freak, unexpected result. An incredible, unbelievable result. There’s nothing that neutral football fans enjoy more than seeing an underdog grabbing a [...]
As we enter the closing weeks of this Premier League season, fuel your pub knowledge with this week’s Stat Heaven, packed with so many decimal points we make Opta jealous.
Teams that can hit you on the counter attack at any moment are incredibly hard to defend against, especially when speed merchants such as Gareth Bale and Theo Walcott are running at your defence. So which teams have impressed in the counter attack and …
Welcome to our monthly edition of the Premier League’s top players. With Manchester United wrapping up the title against Aston Villa on Monday night the attention now turns to the battle for the Champions League places, the race for survival and which player will be crowned as the player of the year and young player [...]
Welcome to our monthly edition of the Premier League’s top players. With Manchester United wrapping up the title against Aston Villa on Monday night the attention now turns to the battle for the Champions League places, the race for survival and which player will be crowned as the player of the year and young player [...]
Manchester United are well-known for making a comeback and Arsenal have scored more goals in the last 10 minutes of matches than any other team this season, but which teams out of the top 7 have actually been the best at coming from behind this season?…
We’ve all been there. Your team is a goal down, with 20 minutes to go and you know the only way to get a result is to make substitutions. But how many? And who? Once the changes have been made you can sit back and wait for the sub to score the goal that may salvage a [...]
As I get older I am finding that I am becoming less interested in the players at clubs and much more interested in the managers. What do they do? Are they worth the money? Are they actually needed at all? Once the team is picked and the tactics discussed, is there anything that a manager [...]
Hawk-Eye has been selected ahead of GoalControl as the provider of Goal-Line Technology for the Premier League next season, with clubs voting 20-0 in favour of Hawk-Eye. We all remember this moment: And there are plenty more to pick from, this incident coming in last year’s FA Cup semi-final: As clubs from the top division [...]
There has been a lot of debate with regards to the Player of the Year for the 2012/13 season and with the debate in mind we thought we’d put together a brief statistical analysis of the players being mentioned and their form this season. We’ve predominantly used goals scored and clear-cut chances as the two [...]
Before the game against Chelsea, Southampton’s midfielder Jack Cork started psywar by stating that The Saints’ ace striker, Rickie Lambert is better than Fernando Torres. What Cork was saying could be perceived as nothing but a usual pre-battle war dance, but not only did Lambert play superbly in that game, the talisman scored the winning goal [...]
Both West Brom and Southampton possess teams that are full of underrated or unheralded players. I have identified both as teams with criminally underrated players in the central midfield areas: Yacob and Mulumbu for West Brom; Cork and defensive stalwart Morgan Schneiderlin for Southampton. Within football circles all four players have impressed and we could well [...]
With England’s recent struggle against Montenegro we thought it would be interesting to take a look just how well the English players have fared in the Premier League this season. In this first article we have looked at which English players have been the most creative this season. We have also taken a look at [...]
Yesterday we analysed which positions (defence, midfield or forwards) Premier League teams get their goals from so far this season (Premier League Goal Distribution by position article) and following on with the distribution theme we’ll today be looking at first half and second half goals so far this season. To start with here are some [...]
Last week we launched our brand new FREE tool called the EPL Index Tactics Board – full details here: EPL Index Tactics Board Launched. It allows you to predicted teams or to showcase your tactics for the teams you support in the Premier League. The squads available are from 2008/09 and it’s very simple and [...]
There’s an old saying that the team that wins the League depends not only on goals from their strikers but also from their midfield and defenders. This article briefly analyses the number and proportion of goals by defenders, midfielders and forwards have scored in the Premier League for their teams. The column chart below shows [...]
There were some exceptional performances on Match Day 31 in the Premier League. There were many supporters on our Twitter account surprised that Ashley Young created so many chances on the weekend. The stats don’t lie and Ashley Young created eight chances against Sunderland, two more than his closest rival Samir Nasri created against Newcastle [...]
Research has been conducted looking into whether referee’s are biased towards certain teams or individuals. Manchester United tend to have a reputation from rival supporters for ‘Fergie time’, gaining more penalties than other teams at home, especially with Howard Webb. Marouane Fellaini even stated that referee’s were biased towards English players following his head butt [...]
Welcome to our monthly edition of the Premier League’s Top Players. With only 8 games left for the majority of the sides it’s a good time to look at where players are and see what players could achieve. As always you can use the buttons at the bottom of the page to navigate or use [...]
The team at EPLIndex.com are proud to bring a brand new feature on the website: The Tactics Board. A totally FREE feature for all bloggers or tacticians that wish to share their tactics with an easy to use tactics board. The tactics board uses drag and drop functionality making it very easy to place players [...]
I’m a fan of Mark Noble and I don’t mind admitting, he’s proved me wrong this season and for me, he’s been excellent for West Ham. At the time of writing , and with Noble missing for 5 of West Ham’s 29 games through injury, no West Ham player has made more tackles than him [...]
For the purposes of this article, a footballing philosophy is defined as: a set of beliefs about how football should be played on the field tactically. Football tactics are assumed to be that of the strategy(-ies) employed by a team to defend, attack and everything in between (the two transitions of losing the ball and winning the ball). The definition of [...]
Last weeks article showed how inefficient crossing is, especially from open play due to the low accuracy levels across the league. The focus of this article is the relationship between possession and goals scored, conceded and both combined. I will look to compare all three, as well as focusing on the correlations depending on league position. Firstly, [...]
With the Premier League now entering the last 10 games of the season it is the perfect time to use statistics to draw conclusions about why your team produced success/failure. Last week my focus was on chance conversion rate. This week the focus is on crossing accuracy. The table directly below portrays the total crosses performed [...]
Following yesterday afternoon’s 3-2 victory over arguably the Premier League’s in form team Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard believes Uruguayan forward Luis Suarez should beat Tottenham Hotspur’s Gareth Bale to the award of Premier League player of the year. Suarez opened the scoring in Liverpool’s victory yesterday taking his Premier League tally for the season to [...]
I’ve been working on a pet project recently, trying to simulate the results of football matches, using player performance data from EPLIndex.com. It’s starting to yield reasonable results and the background analysis to get there has thrown up some interesting statistics on the consistency of different players’ performances, that I’d like to share today. Specifically, I’m [...]
A weekly article on EPLIndex.com examining some of the statistical talking points from the Premier League fixture week. This week Karston looks at Arsenal’s high line, Carrick’s passing, the promise of Schneiderlin and Vaz Te’s craft. Arsenal Pay High Price for a High Line Examining the location of Tottenham and Arsenal’s interceptions from Sunday’s game [...]
Of course, I don’t need to tell you that the more chances a team creates the more likely they are of scoring. But do the teams creating the most chances score the most goals? The stats below show the chance conversion rate for each individual team. Not surprisingly, top of the league Manchester United also [...]
I haven’t written anything for far too long ( a four letter word called work ) so thought I’d have a look at something that has been a pretty big topic of conversation in the Premier League as we get to the business end of the season, just which team are actually a one man [...]
A quick analysis for you today – we’ve recently been analysing players using a statistic that indicates which players are creating chances with the least number of passes. Each chance has to be created via a pass and this is an interesting way to see which players are creating chances the most often in terms [...]
My analysis today is to analyse which player is the best centre back in Premier League so far this season by comparing their statistics this season. To compare the best centre-backs in the Premier League I have taken the two most prominent centre backs of each of the top 10 clubs in the Premier League. By [...]
After a weekend of spectacular Premier League goals, it is now your chance to vote for your favourite from the shortlist below (GIF Images from @FeintZebra). There were so many quality goals in Game Week 27 that is was difficult just to make the shortlist this week, but the top 5 have finally been chosen. Gareth Bale [...]
Gareth Bale continues to impress for Spurs this season as he scored his fifteenth goal overall in the Premier League and his 12th in his last 13 starts. To put into perspective how well Gareth Bale is doing we’ve created a little info-graphic below that compares him to the Premier League’s top scorers Robin van [...]
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