There’s not much you can say other than that word. It’s almost unfathomable what occurred. Nine players left and six players arrived (the 7th, Henrique, has yet to arrive, so to speak), the season began in qualifiers, found its first heart attack — an omen of things to come? — moved to defeat in Soria, and then, like some sort of an RPG of godlike beauty, raced upwards to the highest of heights and never really looked like faltering, despite the occasional blip.

Copa, Lliga, i Champions.

Those words haven’t gotten old yet and I don’t think they will. A real treble made of three real competitions that could blood, guts, and plenty of tactical acumen. FC Barcelona is the first team in Spanish history to achieve such a result, even eclipsing the Real Madrid super team of the 1950s, at least in one sense. This is a feeling you don’t often have in sports, winning the treble and doing it in absolute style, so treasure it, remember it, and play Viva La Vida over and over again, just to remind yourself.

Copa, Lliga, i Champions.

Wow.

And so, we move on to the statistics, because there’s no reason not to delay the inevitable. I’m going to discuss them and it might as well be now, rather than later. The final table looks like this:

Barça, Real Madrid, Sevilla, and Atleti all go to the Champions League; Villarreal and Valencia go to the Europa Cup/NIT; and Betis, Numancia, and Recreativo Huelva fall to La Segunda. Everyone else: midtable.

Now, for Pythagorean Expectation, which is (of course) adapted for soccer using points rather than wins:

Thanks to losing the last 3 games of the season, Barça ended up as the most underachievingest side of the year! Sporting Gijon, which didn’t go down and now I owe John a beer, was the most overachievingest, going from what should have (according to goals scored vs allowed) been the lowest earner, pointswise. But that’s not how it went down in Asturias because they don’t give a crap about your goal difference nonsense, anyway. They’re all “feel free to score like 80 goals against in a 3 game span or whatever, we’re going to avoid relegation with a second half comeback on the last day of the season. And you’re going to like it.” And what’s crazy is that I did!

Surprise of the season: besides the treble, I’d say it’s that Atleti made the Champions League. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to that. After that, maybe that Espanyol were able to dig themselves out of that insane hole they were in back in February. They went 8-1-1 to finish the year, earning 25 points to garner a top half finish from what, really, should have been a relegation year.

Not surprise of the season: Numancia relegated, Valencia struggles when not paying their players. Seriously, if you had known that Valencia was going to go months without paying their players, would you have doubted that they wouldn’t be in the Champions League spots? And Numancia has the smallest budget since, uh, Recre Huelva.

Back to the beautiful boys in blaugrana and their brilliant statistics (if only it were babistics! The alliteration would have been bombastic!):

Goals scored:
Total: 154. Top scorer: Messi, 38
La Liga: 105. Top scorer: Eto’o, 30
Copa: 17. Top scorer: Messi, 6
Champions League: 32. Top scorer: Messi, 9
Minutes played per goal scored: Messi, 107 minutes ~37 seconds

Most appearances overall (Copa, La Liga, CL): Alves, Xavi, 52
Most minutes played overall (Copa, La Liga, CL): Alves, 4767
Most minutes played per appearance (outfield player with more than 5 appearances): Pique, 93.44

Most appearances in La Liga: Eto’o, 36
Most minutes played in La Liga (outfield): Xavi, 3106
Most minutes played per appearance in La Liga: Pique, 92.48

Most appearances in the Copa: Bojan, Busquets, Pinto, 9
Most minutes played in the Copa (outfield): Busquets, 782
Most minutes played per appearance in the Copa (outfield): Keita, 94.0000000

Most appearances in the Champions League: Pique, Xavi, Valdes, Messi, 12
Most minutes played in the Champions League (outfield): Pique 1144
Most minutes played per appearance in the Champions League (outfield): Alves, 95.70

So there you have it, the statistics from 2008/09. Who was our best player? I think that’s impossible to say because in every game there seemed to be someone else willing to step up, to become The Man for the minutes we needed them to do so. Take the second Clasico, where we were down 1-0 fairly early in the first half, even Phil Schoen saying we were down and out. And then Henry steps up. Then Puyol. Then Xavi robs Diarra and slots it to Messi. Then we let in another goal and it’s Henry again. Then Messi again. Then, of all people, El Piquenbauer, putting in the sixth, the hammer to the nail in the coffin of RM’s season, the hand that officially lifted the league trophy for us. Then there’s the Copa del Rey final, with The Yaya stepping through 4,894 defenders in order to fire in a lasercannonblast to win the Copa del Rey. Then there’s Iniesta’s Foot of God smacking the life out of Chelsea. Then there’s Eto’o cutting Vidic. There’s Messi powering the ball beyond Osasuna’s keeper. Then there’s Gudjohnsen scoring and Eto’o pushing Pep. Go back to the Gamper, to Puyol’s goal there, then Eto’o’s winner. Wherever you look: gorgeous play and with gorgeous goals.

This season will live on in superlatives uttered by Ray Hudson and in our memories as snapshots of brilliance and joy. And for that, I am grateful. To the whole team, to every member, even the ones who didn’t perform ‘well enough”. We, as fans, are indebted to them, to what they have given us, to 9 months unadulterated greatness. Statistics don’t come close to describing what was accomplished, what occurred, what every moment of every game was like. Talk of beautiful football and you now must speak of this year’s Barça.

Copa, Lliga, i Champions.

Wow.

As incredible as the first part is, the second part is even more stunning. And I have the oddest feeling that, after tomorrow’s game, Numancia will still be the only team to beat FCB once. Sorry, rojillos, but this is the end of the line for your winning streak against Barcelona.

Naturally I’m biased, since this is a Barcelona blog, after all, but just on the surface, without details, how Numancia got one game off of us is beyond me. If they somehow manage to win two games against us this year, I’ll post about how great they are, about how cool Soria, Spain is. Why am I so cocky today? Hmm…

Ooh boy, time for statistics! My favorites!

Overall:
Barça: 16W-2D-1L, 59GF 13GA; 2.63pts per game
Numancia: 6W-2D-11L 23GF 37GA; 1.05pts per game

Barça home: 8W-2D-0L, 36GF 6GA; 2.60pts per home game
Numancia away: 1W-0D-9L, 8GF 25GA; 0.30pts per away game

So, if you look at that, without any background information, without squad lists, and without very much knowledge about the game that is soccer (guilty on all but the first account, am I), you’d be hard pressed to find a reason, even if you’re a die hard perico or a madridista, to have the slightest optimism that Numancia can come away with a point. Especially if you consider that Barcelona’s A-Team (there you go, Hector, that’s all you get) was rested in midweek, for the most part. Bringing Yaya, Henry, Eto’o, and Pique all off a week’s rest can’t sound good to Numancia.

But do you despair that I don’t give you enough statistics to mull over? Have no fear, the official site is here! Yay statistics! I still say the thing about assists is stupid, though, so ignore that part.

You know what’s also really cool? Stats about Bojan Krkic. Why? Because they debunk your silly notions, that’s why. Last year Bojan was the startlet of startlets, scoring 10 goals in the league and even notching one in the Champions League, of all places. This year, his goal return is paltry. It is despicably small and he should be loaned out to learn how to score.

Last year: 47 appearances overall; 14 league starts, 17 league sub appearances; 3 Champions League starts, 6 CL sub appearances; 2 Copa starts, 5 sub appearances. Goals: 12, 10 league, 1 CL, 1 Copa.

This year: 23 appearances overall; 1 league start, 11 league sub appearances; 3 Champions league starts, 3 CL sub appearances; 5 Copa starts. Goals: 5, 0 league, 3 CL, 2 Copa.

His 07/08 goals per appearance is 0.255 and his 08/09 goals per appearance is 0.217.* I know that’s a couple of hundredths off, but, to put this in the right perspective, if he had scored 1 more goal in any of his appearances, he’d have a higher goals per appearance rate this year than last year. Yet the kid is getting stick from everywhere for not grabbing goals. Sorry, but that’s not fair. He’s started 1/14th as many games in the league and his subs into the games have generally come in the last few minutes rather than early in the second half. He’s score 3 goals in the Champions League, where he’s made – gasp – 3 starts. So lay off the kid, he’s doing well, especially for someone who gets few starts (he has played 57 minutes as a starter in the league and he averages 20minutes 5 seconds per sub appearance).

Sorry to get sidetracked like that, I meant to post that yesterday as a stand-alone, but I got sidetracked so now you can think about that while you consider potential lineups.

Here is Numancia’s squad list: Juan Pablo, Diego, Juanra, Felipe, Pavón, Sergio Ortega, Boris, Palacios, Bellvis, Juan Carlos Moreno, Nagore, Dimas, Del Pino, Quero, Barkero, Brit, Goiria, Aranda.

Naturally, Guardiola hasn’t given us his squad list, which I’m beginning to really dislike. There should be a league-wide rule about when you release squad lineups and it should be 24-48 hours before the match kicks off. That way, jerks like me can get their lineups set and not look like bigger jerks than they really are. Grr.

So no starting lineup guess form me today, just the official prediction: 3-0. Goals by Eto’o (who screams ridiculously and ends up hugging Guardiola), Messi, and Xavi. I’m going to stop betting on Hleb to score until he starts shooting. Which will be never.

And here is your list of places to watch the game: Where to Watch FC Barcelona. I should be able to update it later today with some San Diego information, so look for that if you’re in the area (thanks, Jason).

—–
*I know I should do this as a function of minutes played rather than appearances, but I don’t have last year’s minutes figures to work with. His current rate is a goal every 209minutes 36 seconds. That is, by my rough calculation, a better goals-per-minute average than everyone except for Henry, Messi, and Eto’o. If you can find someone who has a better one that isn’t one of those three, let me know. I’ll give you a sticker.

If you missed it, Kevin had a great review of the 5-0 Deportivo thrashing dished out by the boys in blaugrana on Saturday — a game I had the distinct pleasure of watching, once again, with Andrew M and inNYC at Nevada Smiths. I will not repeat too many of his points, merely add to them in as many decimal-laden ways as I can think of. And that’s quite a few ways. 14.35 ways, at least.

So, it’s halfway through and the first point — one that Kevin did already mention and one that has been mentioned often in the comments section — is that Barcelona is now the record holder for most points earned in the first half a season with 50. That’s 3 more than previous record holder. At the stunning pace of 2.63 points per game (87.7% of available points), Barça is on pace to earn 100 points for the entire year. That is, of course, a rather ridiculous notion that we will henceforth call CrazyTalk. CrazyTalk is anything that suggests that Barça — or any other club — can possibly achieve 100 points in a 38-game season — when Arsenal went undefeated they earned 90 points. They drew 12 times, did the 03/04 Arsenal team, but still, imagine: 100 points? Impossible, says I. Funny that we can’t remember the lessons of only a week ago, when lowly Osasuna nearly beat us; we’re visiting the Bernabeu, Mestalla, Vicente Calderon, and Riazor throughout the coming months — those are 4 likely draws or losses. But let’s say we win one of them and draw two and lose one. That’s 7 points gone, meaning no points can be dropped in the other 15 matches in order to achieve 100 points. Sorry, folks, 100 isn’t happening. [You should feel free to point out that as of today, Barça has actually dropped more points at home than away -- 4 to 3 -- but I would also point out that we have had more games at home in which to drop points -- 10 to 9 -- and that those stats will be reversed in the second half of the season. Anyway, continue reading for more discussion of this whole home-and-away thing]

Barça has scored 59 goals in 19 games, meaning they score, on average, 3.11 goals per match. The median is actually 3, so fairly close, but do you honestly believe that Barcelona will score 6 goals three times in the coming 19 games? 5 perhaps a couple of times, but even that is somewhat ridiculous, which is evidenced by the utter shock and awe (TM, US government) with which the 5-0 Depor match and the 6-1 Atleti games have been received by even the most ardent of cules. Our only 6-goal haul away from home came against Sporting Gijon, who were just dreadful for a couple of weeks there. We have averaged 2.56 goals away from home — meaning that at home we average an absurd 3.60 goals — in fact, here are the number of goals we’ve scored away from home, in chronological order: 0, 6, 2, 1, 4, 2, 3, 2, 3. Of those teams, only Sevilla and Villarreal are in the top 6, though Málaga is in 7th now.

It’s not strange that we’re not as good away from home in terms of goals scored (23 compared to home’s 36), but it’s still the fact of the matter. I fully realize that we earn more points per game away than at home, but our only loss was away — and yes, I realize that it’s our only loss and it was the first match of the season, but it was to Numancia — and no way does scoring fewer goals and allowing more translate to sustained points-earnings when you’re visiting some of the toughest grounds there are. And I’ll only briefly mention right now that if we have the championship wrapped up by the time we swing through Mallorca and Depor, there’s not a chance in hell we come out without defeats since they (Depor) will be fighting for a European spot, especially if Atleti continues to stumble, bumble, and sometimes rumble its way towards yet another stuttering finish (Málaga and Atleti are tied on points right now). And that’s your Chris Berman reference for the year.

Now that’s not to say that I’m not ecstatic about our team or the way were playing, but overconfidence has never really been my game, or at least I like to think it hasn’t. I’ll probably guess from here until the end of the season that we’ll win every game, but you never know since everyone stack up differently each week when you consider injuries, suspensions, and squad rotations. If it were all the same from week-to-week, I’m not sure we’d have very many visitors to this here blogosphere cranny. [As it is, we hit 25,000 visitors last month -- cause you guys are awesome]

Now to the statistics that you all crave desperately.

Most goals scored in the league: Samuel Eto’o (18)
Most goals scored in the Copa del Rey: Lionel Messi (4)
Most goals scored in the Champions League: Lionel Messi (5)
Most goals scored in all competitions: Lionel Messi (21); Samuel Eto’o (21)

Most minutes played in the league: Victor Valdes (1790min); outfield player: Xavi (1663min)
Most minutes played in the Copa del Rey: Pinto (374), Caceres (374), Bojan (374), Sylvinho (374)
Most minutes played in the Champions League: Gerard Pique (475)

Most games started in the league: Victor Valdes (19); outfield player: Xavi (18)
Most games started in the Copa del Rey: Pinto (4); outfield players: Alves (4), Bojan (4), Caceres (4), Pique (4), Sylvinho (4)
Most games started in the Champions League: Valdes (7); outfield player: Pique (6), Marquez (6), Puyl (6), Xavi (6), Alves (6), Henry (6)
Most games started in all competitions: Alves (27)

Best result: 6-0 vs Valladolid
Best away result: 1-6 at Sporting Gijon
Best home result: 2-0 vs Real Madrid. Damn straight.

Best player of the season: Messi because Yaya is too large to fit in this category. [Feel free to argue that it's Xavi, I can deal with that because it's very possibly true. I'm just saying that Messi is balling out and while, sure, you might argue that Xavi is balling out so intensely I don't even know how baller he is right now, I would counter with Messi vs. Osasuna. And then you'd be all, "Blah blah look who passes him he ball," and I'll be all, "Messi vs. Depor," and then you'll be all, "Recentism is lame," and I'll be all, "Messi vs. Getafe," and you'll be like "He didn't even score in that game," to which I shall conveniently respond that, "Messi is so good his goals from previous years count for this one, too." And to that you have no defense, good sir/madame.]

Back to the statistics:

Overall Record: 16W-2D-1L, 50pts (59GF, 13GA)
Goals per game average: 3.105263
Goals allowed per game average: 0.68

Home Record: 8W-2D-0L, 26pts (36GF, 6GA)
Goals per home game average: 3.6
Goals allowed per home gave average: 0.6000000000 (how you like me now, huh?)

Away Record: 8W-0D-1L, 24pts (23GF, 7GA)
Goals per away game average: 2.56
Goals allowed per away game average: 0.78

Percent of points earned overall: 87.7%
Percent of points earned at home: 86.7%
Percent of points earn away: 88.9%

[I'd like to point out that all of this would be in fun, easy-to-read, full-color table form except my computer is giving me crap, so I am forced to do all of these calculations off the top of my head rather than with a spreadsheet. If any of them are wrong, my bad.]

And the final, bestest of the best statistic:
Lead over Real Madrid: 12 points, 18 goals scored, 14 goals allowed. Nice.

With that, I’m signing off, especially with a preview of the Copa derbi to do tomorrow.

But it’s still instructive to look at how things are going. And, for the record, I’m comparing the EPL, La Liga, and Serie A because those are 3 leagues out there that provide CL champions. If you’re big on any other league, I’m sure you’ve got your arguments as to why its better, but that’s not the point here. I’m also not including Liverpool in this because they’re technically in second thanks to goal differential. Next week this could change, but for now, it’s Chelsea, so I’m going with them.

Here is where each team stands, right now:

Barcelona: 12GP, 29pts (9W-2D-1L), 37GF, 9GA
Chelsea: 14GP, 33pts (10W-3D-1L), 32GF, 4GA
Inter: 13GP, 30pts (9W-3D-1L), 20GF, 7GA

Barcelona and Inter are currently both 3 points clear of the second-placed teams (Real Madrid and AC Milan, respectively) while Chelsea is, as previously mentioned, tied on points with Liverpool but ahead on goal differential. As a share of points earned to points possible, here is how these three break down:

Barça: 29 of 36 (80.5%)
Chelsea: 33 of 42 (78.6%)
Inter: 30 of 39 (76.9%)

Barça, then, has earned more points per game than the others (2.42 as opposed to Chelsea’s 2.36 and Inter’s 2.31). All 3 have 1 loss, Barcelona’s coming at the very beginning of their season against currently 16th-placed Numancia (1-0). Chelsea lost to 2nd-placed Liverpool (1-0). Inter lost to city rivals and currently 2nd-placed AC Milan (1-0).

The draws (score; current rank):
Barça: Racing Santander (1-1, 10th); Getafe (1-1, 14th)
Chelsea: Tottenham (1-1, 15th); ManU (1-1, 3rd); Newcastle (0-0, 17th)
Inter: Sampdoria (1-1, 13th); Genoa (0-0, 8th); Fiorentina (0-0, 6th)

Make of that what you will, especially considering that Barcelona has not played anyone in the top 5, while Chelsea has played Liverpool (2), ManU (3), Aston Villa (4), and Hull (6). They play Arsenal next week. Inter has played Milan (2), Juventus (3), and Fiorentina (6) and they play Napoli (4) and Lazio (5) over the next two weeks. From this perspective, Barcelona has the most to prove over the next month: Sevilla (5), Valencia (4), Real Madrid (2), and Villarreal (3) all in a row. But, Barcelona also has the most to gain by performing well in what could well be the decisive 4 weeks of the year.

I don’t have the time (or the specific resource) to find out what the average rank of each team each has played is, but suffice it say that Chelsea and Inter have played “tougher” opponents until now. So think of the following statistics in that light:

Goals scored and goals allowed per game can be a good way to view a team’s overall offensive and defensive capabilities. We here at the Barça Offside know that the blaugrana have put on several offensive fireworks shows, but what of Chelsea and Inter?

Barcelona’s biggest win was 6-0 over Valladolid.
Chelsea’s biggest wins were twin 5-0 wins over Middlesbrough and Sunderland.
Inter’s biggest win was 4-0 over Roma.

Barcelona scores an average of 3.08 goals per game. Chelsea scores 2.29 and Inter 1.54. Barcelona has failed to score on only one occasion: the loss to Numancia. Barcelona allows 0.75 goals per game, Chelsea allows 0.29, and Inter allows 0.54. Those statistics are pretty damned good, of course, but let’s bring that better into perspective by looking at the percentage of the total goals scored in the respective leagues that amounts to:

As of today, there were 336 total goals scored in La Liga. Barcelona accounted for 11.01% of those. In the EPL there were 366 goals scored, of which Chelsea had 8.74%. In Serie A, there were 307 goals scored, of which Inter scored 6.51%.

Interestingly, when you break down the percentage of goals scored by the top 5 in each league you come up with this: in La Liga, the top 5 sides have scored 38.69% (130/336); in the EPL it was 34.15% (125/366); in Serie A it was 31.6% (97/307). That’s fairly statistically close, I would say, though Serie A starts to creep down and La Liga starts to creep up when you compare the two directly. [An interesting side note is that the two highest scorers in Serie A are Lazio (22, 5th) and Udinese (21, 7th). Inter is T-3rd with Genoa (8th).

Barcelona and Chelsea are both leading scorers in their leagues, though interestingly enough 11th placed ManCity is 2nd with 29 and 2nd-placed Liverpool is T6th with Hull on 21. La Liga is fairly calm at the top, with only an appearance by 13th-placed Sporting Gijon in 6th with 20. Who knew Gijon scored more often than Liverpool and Inter?

In terms of goals allowed, Inter and Chelsea top their leagues while Barça is second, one back of Sevilla. Here’s how they stack up against the total goals scored (that is, what percentage of all the goals have been theirs?): Barcelona have allowed 2.68%, Chelsea 1.09%, and Inter 2.28%. The top five in each league account for 17% (Spain, 60/336), 15.30% (England, 56/366), and 17.26% (Italy, 53/307). These are roughly similar numbers and, to be perfectly honest, Real Madrid has shipped 17 goals, tying them for 10th with Valladolid (6 of whose goals came from Barcelona). Arsenal has allowed 18 in 14 matches, so they’re roughly similar to Real Madrid (as is Aston Villa with 16 in 14).

So I’ll leave you to decide what is the best league and all of that. I’m just here to provide the numbers and bring back the decimals to their rightful place: my posts.

Because of who I am and the nature of my two-sport obsession, looking at statistical puzzles and inferences in college basketball has led me down the path of “sabermetrics” and all that that entails for soccer. That is, I’ve becoming increasingly obsessed with figuring out how to apply the lessons being learned in other sports to The Beautiful Game. Now, I don’t want to turn soccer into baseball, which I find vexingly boring, but I do believe that baseball’s statisticians such as Bill James, among others, are leading the way into understanding the actual value of a player, beyond the hype and beyond flashiness displayed.

There are currently some companies working on developing such statistical analyses, such as England’s ACTIM, and individuals, such as Billy Beane, who are working on or have created formulas for determining player quality/efficiency, but none of that seems to be available to the general public (ACTIM, as I’ve commented before, suggests what it uses, but not necessarily how – its wiki page breaks it down a little, but not much). Before returning to how ACTIM goes about their business, though, I’d like to discuss the ways in which we currently read soccer statistics and ways in which we could grow that reading to encompass more ideas.

From here on out, please realize that I tried to organize this post, but some of it got out of control and rambled all on its own as I tried to work through particular stats that I think are important to explain before continuing with something else.

(the Legend of) Per Game Averages
Let’s start with the general idea of per game averages. Per game averages in soccer are misleading in the same way that RBIs are misleading in judging a baseball player’s abilities. RBIs require your teammates to put themselves on base before you are at bat or your double or single will amount to no RBIs for you.* The same is true in soccer on several levels, such as assists (because if Xavi gives, say, me a pass, I’m going to blow it and that would mean fewer assists for Xavi despite the fact that he has provided a pass any other striker in the world would put away), so an attempt must be made in any statistical measure to gain a wider perspective on a given player’s contributions to the game.

If, however, we are to give in and attempt to use a per game average for anything, I think it’s important to try and gain some level of perspective and put out a per-90 minutes average. I’ve given this example before in defending Thierry Henry, but here it is again, in longer form (and not concerning Thierry Henry – in fact, the following stats really are for fake people with fake stats, but I think if you follow along with me and act as if these are real players, it will help you to understand my conclusion): if at the end of a season Player A has 5 goals while Player B has 25 goals, who had the better season? Well, if Player A played 5 minutes per game and Player B played 85, I would say that Player B had the better season, but Player A was far more efficient in terms of goals scored per minute played (Player A scored at a rate of once every 38 minutes while Player B scored at a rate of once every 129 minutes).

Another way to look at this same stat is how many shots on goal they had. Let’s say that during their time on the field, Player A had 7 shots on goal, while Player B had 125 shots on goal. Thus, Player A had one shot on goal every 27 minutes, while Player B had one shot on goal every 26 minutes. Per shot on goal, Player A far outscored Player B, but Player B obviously got himself into a position to score more often.

Now let’s say that Player A had a total of 20 shots (remember, 7 on target) while Player B had 145 shots (125 on goal). When he took a shot, Player A put the ball on target 35% of the time. When Player B took a shot, he put the ball on target 86% of the time. So from this statistic, we see that, in fact, Player B does have pretty decent shooting boots after all, though we probably didn’t think so when we heard that he scored once every 129 minutes as opposed to Player A’s once every 38 minutes. Player B forced a giant number of saves out of his opponents, while Player B often put the ball “into Row Z” as they say. (For future reference, let’s call the number of shots on goal that didn’t result in goals as Saves Forced, or SF for short – please note that this excludes shots that hit the woodwork)

So now we’re beginning to get a far more complete picture of each player’s individual contributions throughout the season. However, we’re still missing obviously integral parts of the statistical landscape: everything other than shooting. Our Player A and Player B are both forwards (in case you hadn’t guessed), so let’s add a midfielder, Player C, and a defender, Player D, to our growing squad. We’re going to leave goalkeepers out of this until the very end, so let’s not consider them a part of these questions for now.

We can’t conceivably use the same metrics with Players C and D as we did for Players A and B since neither C nor D will have many shots, saves forced, or goals, at least not compared to Players A and B (we’ll give Player C 2 and Player D 0). Let’s say that Player B is known for his passing ability, despite being a forward. Let’s say that during his 38 appearances (for a manly 85 minutes a game, remember – he missed only 190 minutes during the year) Player B had 6 assists**. That’s pretty rockin’ for a guy who also scored 25 goals and had 100 saves forced, but Player C had 18 assists during that same amount of time. Assuming that Player C also made 38 appearances for 85 minutes a game, that means he achieved an assist rate that is 3 times higher than Player B’s.

However, remembering that a Xavi-Isaiah partnership isn’t going to produce as many goals as a Xavi-Eto’o relationship, we have to consider that any midfielder who wants a lot of assists must rely on his teammates to turn his passes into goals. Assists are a good way to judge when a player was the second-to-last player to touch a ball before it was scored, but is not necessarily a good way to show that a player was anything other than lucky enough to poke a ball between a lunging defender’s legs. Consider this: Player B has 6 assists and has attempted 500 passes during his time on the field. Of those 500 passes, 100 of them found their mark. The other 400 were intercepted by opposing defenders or went out of bounds. Player C has 18 assists and has attempted 1,500 passes over the course of the season. (In case you think these are unreasonable numbers, that averages out to 39.5 passes per game for our midfielder – perhaps that’s a lot, but I think it’s about what Xavi averages, though I could be wrong) Of those 1,500 passes, 1,100 of them found their target. That means that despite Player C being intercepted just as many times as Player B (400 times), Player C has a pass completion percentage of 73%. Certainly that passer rating is better than Player B’s 20%. Stick to scoring goals, Mr. B. (Food for thought: assuming that Player C is responsible for all of the passes that Player B receives and turns into shots on goal, one can surmise that Player B has at least 100 assist opportunities in those 1,100 passes completed, but those “assist opportunities” are not recorded for posterity any more than dropped balls are considered in a QB’s completion percentage†)

Let’s say that Player D has a 60% pass completion rate (600 out of 1000). He is, of course, a defender, so perhaps we forgive him his distributive transgressions. Player C, though encroaches on his defensive territory, intercepting balls every now and then. Player C intercepted 35 balls during the season. Pretty good for a guy with 18 assists, but Player D, who played the same number of minutes as Players B and C (85 per game; man, this is a consistent team!) got 85 interceptions. Not only that, but Player D has also blocked 15 shots throughout the year while Players A and B have blocked 0 and Player B has blocked 3.

On the negative side, Player D has committed 45 fouls over the course of the season. Player C, though, has only committed 25, Player A has committed just 2, and Player B has committed 10. Let’s say A got 1 yellow card, B got 6 yellow cards, C got 8 yellow cards, and D got 9 yellow cards and a red card (that’s why he missed 180 of his 190 minutes). On the other side of that statistical group, Player A also drew just 2 fouls, while Player B drew 30, Player C drew 35, and Player D drew 15.

Back to the original point about per-game averages, if you boil all of these down into per-game averages, you end up with things like Player A gets 0.13 goals per game (5 goals in 38 matches), as well as 1 yellow card every 190 minutes of play. It’s better to extrapolate into 90 minute blocks (or even better, the number of minutes in an average game for that particular league – I suspect it’s something like 93 or 94 minutes in most leagues) because this removes some of the playing time questions about how well a player would perform given more playing time.

Quickly, assuming a 90-minute game (because it’s a round number), Player A’s goal scoring rate (5 in 190 minutes) translates to 2.37 goals per 90 minutes (an absurdly good rate, of course), meaning that in a 38-game season in which Player A played every moment, he would score roughly 90 goals, whereas Player B would score 26 or 27. Because we know that Player B has a better shooting percentage than Player A, perhaps those stats a bit skewed towards Player A by not incorporating all that we know. Keep that in mind going while reading the following sections because I’ll be returning to it.

Now that we have a glut of stats to consider; instead of continuing to pile them on (and there are certainly more), I’m going to shift gears a little bit. Let’s talk, for a moment (or two) about various types of statistics in other sports.

Replacement Players
I’ll begin with baseball’s Value over Replacement Player (VORP). To quote Wikipedia: VORP “is a statistic invented by Keith Woolner that demonstrates how much a hitter contributes offensively or how much a pitcher contributes to his team in comparison to a fictitious ‘replacement player,’ who is an average fielder at his position and a below average hitter.” This concept of a “replacement player” is an intriguing one, though I can’t claim to understand all of its ins and outs. I understand it based on this sentence (also from that same Wiki article), “to calculate VORP one must multiply the league’s average runs per out by the player’s total outs; this provides the number of runs an average player would have produced given that certain number of outs to work with. Now multiply that number (of runs) by .8, or whatever percentage of average the replacement level is designated to be; the result is the number of runs you could expect a “replacement player” to put up with that number of outs.”

If you can judge what the average player would be (say Joe Schmoe from the minors or, in soccer’s case, Fulano de Tal from the reserve team), then you can compare your players with that particular “average player” and determine if it’s worth keeping your player or replacing him with someone younger, cheaper, and, well, more average. Without having any idea how one would go about calculating what an average player is, it is hard to consider using this as a viable way to determine whether or not a player should be replaced. This is definitely a stat for the future that I think can help the game out. For instance, if Player D is no better than Player X (an exactly average defender) we would know that and we would get rid of Player D.

One important caveat is this quote from Keith Woolner, “Replacement level is a less concrete mathematical concept, but it is an important economic one. In particular, it more correctly values durability and playing time versus rates of production.” Basically, this means that if you can produce 10 goals over a 38-game period, you’re more valuable than the combination of a player who can produce 5 goals over a 10-game period (then gets injured) plus a player who can produce 5 goals over a 28-game period. [If I’m wrong about that, please point it out in an email to me; I admit to struggling a bit with VORP].

Efficiency
Then there’s the NBA Efficiency stat (EFF). I’ll admit that I’m not much of an NBA watcher (though ironically I’m watching the Mavs-Rockets / Bulls-Blazers doubleheader as I write this), so I don’t know how great EFF is at showing who the best players are, but I do think that the idea of weighting stats like this is a pretty good idea for soccer. Here’s how EFF is created:

[Points + Rebounds + Assists + Steals + Blocks] – [(Field Goals Att. - Field Goals Made) + (Free Throws Att. - Free Throws Made) + Turnovers)]

I believe that this stat is weighted towards the offense because if you score 4 points and you get 4 steals, you get 8 points even though your team may have scored 100 points and managed 8 steals. You have 4% of the total points, but you have 50% of the steals (let’s say for the sake of argument that all 4 of your steals led to 2-point field goals, so 8 points). There is some shift back when you incorporate FGA – FGM (let’s say you took 4 shots and scored 2 of them, that reduces your EFF by 2 points), but it doesn’t seem to value defense in the same way. Part of that is the unquantifiable nature of defense (if the guy you’re face-guarding doesn’t ever take a shot, you did your job really well, but you didn’t get any positive stats in your box score) and some of that is the unwillingness to find the proper stats to consider.

I like the concepts behind EFF (there are several others to consider, but they’re mostly hoops-specific so they’re fairly useless to us), especially when EFF is converted to Efficiency per-48minutes (EFF48M) and I’d like to try my hand at incorporating all of the stats discussed above into a single Soccer Efficiency stat. For ease of use, let’s call it Player Efficiency or PEff.

PEff = [Goals + Assists + Blocks + (Passes Intercepted/3) + (Tackles won/3) + Penalties won] – [(Shots – (Goals + Saves Forced)) + (Passes – Passes Completed) + (Fouls Committed – Fouls Won) + Yellow Cards + 2(Red Cards Earned) + Penalties Missed + Penalties Given Away]

Or, we can write it out as

PEff = [G + A + Blk + Int + TW + PW] – [(SH – (G + SF)) + (P – PC) + (FC – FW) + YC +2RC + PM + PG]

Let’s discuss this, shall we?

The first thing that jumps out at me as a potential flaw is the lack of consideration for how important goals are. However, because a select few players earn them, I think that making them worth 1 point each (as they are in reality) is acceptable. The same goes for assists since no one can get an assist and a goal at the same time, yet the assist is vital to the goal. It does, however, specifically remove secondary assists as a category, which may or may not be satisfactory. Remember that goal Keita scored against Huelva (it’s his only one in the blaugrana, shouldn’t be hard to remember)? Henry would get no real credit for that goal despite his beautiful cross, merely a completed pass. I did not add in crosses as its own category because a cross is merely a pass that’s in the attacking third and I did not want to put undo emphasis on things that happen closer to the opponents goal. If Thierry Henry’s pass to Eto’o wouldn’t have been completed, it would have shown up in the incomplete pass category, a mark against his efficiency, which is good enough for me.

I then tried to balance offense and defense with as many defensive categories as possible (blocks, interceptions, tackles won), but with a weight towards how many there typically are in a game. That is, you take the number of interceptions and tackles won and divide those numbers by 3. Otherwise an interception is worth the same as a goal, which doesn’t make much sense. You could conceivably put interceptions and tackles won into a single category of “steals” or “takeaways” if you wanted to, but I prefer to keep them separate if possible simply to note the difference at a glance (my guess is that a Yaya would have more Tackles Won while a Pique would have more Interceptions).

I also take (P – PC) and divide by 100 because of their sheer quantity. Without this, even with a good passing rate (take Player C, below), you’d end up with a monstrously negative PEff. I then multiply the number of red cards by 2 because they are very important for understanding what a particular player did to his team. I’d like to find a way to include the number of minutes you left your team without a player because of those red cards, but I can’t think of a good way to incorporate them.

If PEff is to tell us the true value of players, it must be able to cover all facets of the game. Let’s go ahead and check out our team (well, our 4 players). I’ve filled in the blanks on any stats I haven’t mentioned earlier. The calculations are in the footnotes.‡

Player A’s PEff = -7.25
Player B’s PEff = 32
Player C’s PEff= 18.33
Player D’s PEff= 1

So Player B is an extremely effective player because he produces massive numbers of shots on goal (and goals) while Player A is extremely ineffective because of his horrible shooting rate and mediocre passing rate (50%). Note that Player B’s horrendous passing rate (20%) is overshadowed by his overwhelming shots on target rate (86%). Player C seems an efficient player because of his passing rate (87%) and his high number of assists (18).

Player D was penalized fairly heavily for his fouls committed (45). If he’d had an equal number of fouls received as committed, he would have been just as good as Player B thanks to his high numbers of blocks (15), interceptions (85), and tackles (50).

Because I’m not into the whole per-game thing, if you put the PEff into a per-90minutes mode, we could see some differences. Remember that Player A is given only 5 minutes each game in which to shine. So let’s weight this statistic into 2 categories: PEff and PEff90. The former is what we have already done and the latter is extrapolated based on trends set during time played.***

Player A is the only player worth considering here as he is the one who played such a small portion of the year that extrapolating will make a difference. Like we mentioned above, at his current rate, he’d have a fantastic year in front of goal (90 freaking goals – the best year ever!), but what is his effectiveness when putting all of his miscues into perspective in terms of opportunities?

If we pull each statistic into per-90-minutes, we would find that he would have a PEff of -130.5. A very wasteful player, indeed. For example, those 90 goals would have come from a whopping 360 shots, only 126 of which would have been on target. If Player B were given 360 shots, he would have put 250 of them on goal. This is, in my opinion, more efficient, in the end, because it provides you with more scoring opportunities.

It must be remember that the PEff stat is 1) a work in progress and 2) not a stand-alone stat. It should always be considered alongside the actual numbers, including the specific stats it incorporates. Saying Player X is wasteful without providing the details how that player is being judged wasteful is not a good way of going about the business of rating players.

If PEff is changed slightly to give more weight to goals (doubling their value), then our PEff ratings change:

Player A’s PEff = -2.25
Player B’s PEff = 57
Player C’s PEff= 23.33
Player D’s PEff= 1

Equally, if we just change the value of passes (meaning we make goals worth 1 point), by making our calculation (P – PC)/50, then all of the players lose several points on their totals.

Player A’s PEff = -7.5
Player B’s PEff = 28
Player C’s PEff= 17.33
Player D’s PEff= -3

I would like find a way to create benchmark (perhaps different for different positions) that would help to understand what is a good PEff and what is a bad PEff. As was pointed out in one of the links above pointed out, great players are a great rarity, good players are rare, average players are somewhat common, and bad players are absolutely everywhere you look (such as on the street corner, on buses, in my mirror), so being able to distinguish them is very important.

Goalkeepers
I promised I would return to goalies and so I will. There’s little to say about them because their stats are fairly well kept. Goals Allowed, Saves, Times Caught Picking Their Bums on Camera. I dislike the Zamora “coefficient” because it doesn’t mean anything. A terrible keeper with a brilliant defense in front of him can have a good goals allowed per game rate, but that does not a good goalie make. I propose the NHL method of determining goal keeper ability:

Save Percentage. If a shot comes your way and you stop it, good. If it goes in the net, bad. If your SV% is 95%, you’re probably pretty good. If it’s 76%, you’re probably pretty bad. However, it’s still instructive to see all of the stats laid out.

For instance:
Valdes has 8 goals allowed in 11 games. Woohoo!
Palop has 8 goals allowed in 11 games. As good as Victor!
Valdes has made 16 saves (a 66% save rate!)
Palop has made 32 saves (an 80% save rate…ooh, that’s better).

For my money, Palop is statistically the better keeper, but Valdes has the better defensive unit in front of him. (For the record, Palop has 7 clean sheets and Valdes has 4). And for those of you who are down with Casillas being considered the best keeper on the planet (and I am), “San Iker” has allowed 17 goals and made 29 saves (meaning he has a 63% save rate). Not the best year for him at all. I don’t have access to all of the keepers in La Liga to go through them and say who is the best, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Wrap Up
As I said before, the PEff is a work in progress. I want to get your feedback on it as well as suggestions. This is the first of many posts, I imagine, especially since I didn’t really cover as much as I wanted to (and it’s just about 5,000 words long!); if all goes well, we’ll develop a good system by the end of the season.

As always, your feedback can be negative criticism – without some sort of negative response, I’ll get too big an ego and forge ahead without considering whether or not I could improve on PEff – though I definitely prefer constructive criticism to the casual “you’re an f-ing tool” remark. Mom, I’m looking at you.

Here’s a brief list of things I’m probably going to be looking at in the future; send me your suggestions about other things too, of course:

Stats by possession (how many goals per possession? This is a basketball stat that may or may not make sense with soccer)
Salary efficiency (how well does a team do, weighted by salary)

And with that, thanks for reading and have a good one. Oh, and by the way, because of how much time I’ve put into this one, I’m not planning on doing a Getafe preview, though I will put up a comments post before the game begins. Official prediction: 2-0. Goals by Eto’o and Bojan.

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FOOTNOTES:

*Take, for instance, Ichiro Suzuki, who had a record 262 hits during the 2004 season while netting 60 RBIs. During that same time, Miguel Tejada drove in 150 RBIs on 203 hits. Does that mean Miguel Tejada is just better at hitting or does it matter whether or not Tejada’s team was better during that year? Team on-base percentage (OBP) comes to matter more than an individual’s stats in this case, yet RBIs are routinely considered suggestive of a player’s abilities. They are not.

**Let’s assume that all assists are judged in a specific way and that there is no discrepancy between any player stats – that is, for our purposes here, they are collected in the same manner across the board. What is an assist in one place is an assist in another; the same is true for all other stats.

†For you NFL and MLB stat kids, if a walk (BB) is recorded as a non at-bat, then why isn’t a dropped ball considered a non-pass? There should be a statistical category in the NFL akin to the MLB’s Error for these situations. It doesn’t count against the pitcher if the first baseman pulls a Bill Buckner, so why should it count against a QB if his pass hits a target in the numbers, bounces off, and is intercepted? The same should probably be said for a midfielder whose pass arrives at the feet of a bumbling forward who shanks his shot out for a throw-in, but that’s too many judgment calls, I think.

‡PEff calculations:
PEff = [G + A + Blk + Int + TW + PW] – [(SH – (G + SF)) + (P – PC) + (FC – FW) + YC + 2RC + PM + PG]

Player A:
5G + 1A + 0Blk + (2INT/3) + (1TW/3) + 0PW = 7
(20SH – (2SF + 5)) + ((50P – 25PC)/100) + (2FC – 2FW) + 1YC + 0RC + 0PM + 0PGA =

13 + 0.25 + 1 = 14.25

PEff = 7 – 14.25 = -7.25

Player B:
25G + 6A + 0Blk + (10INT/3) + (5TW/3) + 6PW = 42
(145SH – (100SF + 25G)) + ((500P – 100PC)/100) + (10FC – 30FW) + 6YC + 0RC + 0PM + 0PGA = 10

PEff = 42 – 10 = 32

Player C:
2G + 18A + 3Blk + (35INT/3) + (20TW/3) + 1PW = 39.33
(45SH – (25SF + 2G)) + ((1500P – 1100PC)/100) + (25FC – 35FW) + 8YC + 0RC + 1PM + 0PGA = 21

PEff = 39.33 – 21 = 18.33

Player D:
0G + 2A + 15Blk + (85INT/3) + (50INT/3) + 0PW = 62
(15SH – (1SF + 0G)) + ((1000P – 600PC)/100) + (45FC – 15FW) + 9YC + 2(1RC) + 0PM + 2PGA = 61

PEff = 62 – 61 = 1

***I’d like to note here that I am not against per-game-statistics when we’re talking about full teams, though I do think that these stats, like individual stats, should be expressed as per-90-minutes or as per-average game length and they should consider Strength of Schedule (that is, who these numbers were achieved against – in soccer you could probably easily make a case for incorporating the average/median table position of previous opponents into these stats).

Onwards and ever upwards:

The 100th league game was played this weekend (Getafe – Valencia), so I thought it would be appropriate to give a brief rundown of where Barcelona stands in the league. Most of us already know that Barcelona is 1st in the table with 25 points, but there are other things to consider. I’ll be discussing not only the league, but also the other competitions we’re involved in. I will not be comparing this year with last year, by the way.

We’ll start, though, with La Liga. So yes, we’re 1 point up on second placed Valencia (25pts to 24pts), but we’re also the holders of the best offensive and defensive records. With 34 goals scored, we’re 6 better than the second-most prolific offense: Real Madrid (28). The least-scoring team in the league is Osasuna, with a blink-inducing 3 goals in 10 games. You read that right, folks: 3 goals scored in 10 games. Blink. By the way, 34 goals is the most goals scored through 10 goals in La Liga since the 1959/60 year. We’re on pace to score a whopping 129.2 goals (so, I guess, 130 goals), which would be the most goals scored by 22/23 (the record is 107). Yowza, as they say.

Our attack has been bolstered by 13 goals from (current Pichichi) Samuel Eto’o; he accounts for just over 1/3 of all our goals (but let’s be more precise: 38.2352941176% — 10 decimal places!). Lionel Messi, with 6, accounts for just under 18% of the goals, Henry with 4 accounts for just under 12%, and Gudjohnsen and Xavi with 3 each account for just under 9%. All told, these 5 players account for 29 of the 34 goals (just over 85%). The other 5 goals are spread across 5 other players.

Defensively, Barcelona has allowed 8 goals, tying us with Sevilla and putting us 1 better than Villarreal, Valencia, Deportivo La Coruña, and, um, Osasuna. There’s another blinker. What is wrong with Osasuna? Do they play 12 men behind the ball or something? Do they have Atom in goal?** A goals-allowed rate of 0.80 has earned Victor Valdés a share of the Zamora trophy with Sevilla’s Andrés Palop. Neither compares to Segunda division keeper Juan Calatayud from Hercules, though, who has allowed just 5 goals in 11 games. I’d like to note here that Soccernet credits Valdés with 14 saves (FCB’s official stats page claims 18) while Soccernet also credits Palop with 29 saves. That’s quite a difference in terms of shot-blocking and is suggestive of Barcelona’s defensive superiority as a team, but also of Palop’s current run of form between the sticks. Valdés has had 3 clean sheets while Palop has had 6.

Barcelona hasn’t achieved their success by being dirty defenders, though, having received the fewest number of yellow cards (15) and the fewest number of red cards (0). Only Valencia also has no red cards, but they have 25 yellows. Osasuna, of all teams, has just 16 yellows, but they have 4 reds to go along with them. The team with the most yellow cards is Racing Santander (34) and the teams with the most red cards are the aforementioned weirdo team Osasuna and Recreativo Huelva.

Just for the records, I’d like to make a few statistical notes. You’ll read a lot of places about Barcelona’s goal average (3.4 through 10 games) and that’s well and good, but it doesn’t necessarily suggest how good Barcelona is right now. The first game of the season was a 0-1 loss at Numancia. The second game was a 1-1 draw with Racing Santander. If you take out those two games from the stats, you end up with a streak of 8 wins, during with the team has scored 33 goals and allowed 6. During that time, Barcelona has scored over 4 goals per match on average (4.125 to be exact).

Still, we should look at median scores to remove the outliers, if possible. We’ve had games where Barcelona has scored 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6. That puts the median at 3.5 goals per game, which is extraordinarily close to the average, but is slightly higher. If you remove the first two games, the median for the 8-game winning streak is 4.5 (as opposed to the 4.125 average). Keeping in mind that our goals against average is 0.80, let’s find the median: 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 gets us a median of 1 goal per game. The outlier appears to be the 2 goals allowed during the Betis game, but it’s hard to say we won’t have more of those coming our way over the next 28 league games.

Here’s another piece of stats info to keep in mind going forward: the team’s official stats page lists the team as having played 942 minutes over its first 10 games (if you’re going “huh? But games only have 90 minutes” it’s because you’re forgetting stoppage time). The way you tell how many minutes have been played by the team is by going to Valdés’ stats page and checking out how many minutes he’s played since he’s played every minute of the La Liga season so far. Whether this includes the time spent not on the field during the Espanyol game or not, I’m not sure. If it does, it’s a bogus stat, really. Still, it’s nice to note that we as a team score a goal once every 27.7 minutes. That’s once every 27 minutes and 42 seconds for you nerds out there. Okay, yeah, that one was for me.

Now to the Champions League†. With 2 games left in the group stage, Barcelona has made mince-meat of Kevin’s plans to watch a meaningful game by simply qualifying early, though the draw with Basel puts them only 1 point ahead of Sporting. Despite having guaranteed themselves a place in the knockout stages, the potential for ending up 2nd means that Pep will want to get maximum points from visiting Portugal before hosting Shakhtar (and Kevin!) in the last group stage match on December 9. This is especially important because the Shakhtar match is sandwiched between league games against Valencia and Real Madrid.

The team sits in first in Group C by just 1 point, after putting together a 3W-1D-0L record. That 1 draw, a 1-1 home draw against Basel, is what keeps them within touching distance of second-place Sporting. With a Goal Differential of +8 (11GF 3GA), the team is basically where they are in the league (2.75 goals per game average; 2.5 median), though with different statistical leaders. It’s Messi who is the leading scorer with 4; Bojan and Xavi each have 2; and Eto’o, Márquez and Busquest each have 1.

Comparing Barcelona to all the other teams comes up with a rather favorable impression for us, I think. FCB has more goals scored than any other team (Arsenal and Lyon have scored 10) and only ManU has allowed fewer (1), though Sporting CP, Chelsea, Atletico, Arsenal, Juventus, and Dynamo Kiev have also only conceded 3. [Note that Sporting CP is in 2nd behind Barcelona and all of their conceded goals were in their game against Barcelona; also note that Dynamo Kiev is in 3rd place in their group because they only have 3 goals for]

With such a small sample of games, it’s hard to say what will happen or who is really all that good or bad — a more complete breakdown will happen before the first knockout match, of course, so I’ll end my CL report with this: it only gets tougher from here, but go Zenit.

As for the Copa del Rey, it’s a little early to truly assess what’s gone on, but I’ll give it my best shot in tomorrow’s preview of the second leg of the Benidorm tie. Suffice to say that we’re averaging 1 goal per match (the median is 1), our leading scorer is Bojan, we’re 100% in clean sheets…all right, I’ll stop.

For those of you keeping tabs on my statistical analysis progress, I’m currently attempting to figure out how to use the NBA’s efficiency ratings effectively. Off the top of my head, this is the best stat I’ve seen so far, but is it basically what ACTIM does? Without a real explanation of what ACTIM does (their FAQ is intentionally vague the site itself is littered with statements like “[ACTIM stats] have been statistically proven to measure a player’s effectiveness in winning matches”…you can check out their best FAQ here)

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*If you’d like to know, this stat puts us 3rd in terms of Offside subsidiary blogs, behind only Roma and Italy. Yippee for bronze medals! And if you’d like to bump our fellow (and excellent) La Liga bloggers up the list, just click their links above. If you’re interested in starting a team page for one of the teams not currently being covered, please let the main page contributors know.

**That’s the only video I could find; I know it sucks. Here are the lyrics.

†Please note here that I am not including the 2 games against Wisła Kraków in this discussion of the Champions League. The main reason is because it skews the number of games played and the scoring stats when comparing FCB to the other teams.

Let’s take it one step at a time, though. These are early days in the league and if you’re Guardiola, you’re still getting to know your squad, especially the new players. It’s easy to say “play this guy, he’s good,” but in a squad like Barça’s, there are lots of those players. In the case of Bojan, he’s an 18-year old who last year played in 31 league games and 9 Champions League games (that’s 40 total games). Of those, he started 17 of them and subbed on the remainder (23). Perhaps Guardiola is holding off on using Bojan because he doesn’t want to wear the lad out; it was Bojan, after all, who peremptorily turned down a spot on the Spanish Euro2008 team because of exhaustion. Maybe they’ve worked out an arrangement where Bojan will play more and more throughout the coming months, especially after January.

Next, let’s go to the actual statistics.

Barcelona has had 11 competitive games in La Liga and the CL (I’m not counting Copa Catalunya, in case you were wondering). Bojan has subbed on for 6 of the 7 league games and 1 of the CL games. In fact, the game against Athletic was the first league game Bojan did not take any part in. I don’t have his total minutes available (I’d love to get my hands on an accurate number because it would help focus this section). During those 6 substitute appearances, Soccernet lists him as having 4 shots on goal and 1 assist. Not exactly monster numbers, but, as many people have pointed out, the stats don’t really point to the energy and movement that Bojan creates while he’s out there. Still, Bojan has taken part in 7 of the 11 games so far (64% — look, no decimals!).

Let’s compare that to some of the other field players out there:

Xavi: 10/11 (91%) [10 starts, 0 subs on]
Abidal: 9/11 (82%) [9 starts, 0 subs on]
Messi: 8/11 (73%) [6 starts, 2 subs on]
Yaya: 7/11 (64%) [5 starts, 2 subs on]
Busquets: 7/11 (64% [5 starts, 2 subs on]
Caceres: 2/11 (18%) [1 start, 1 sub on]

This is a fairly random smattering of players from all over the field (my sample is actually really heavy on midfielders) — I purposefully threw Caceres in order to point out that other players are getting the same treatment as Bojan. Perhaps they are completely different situations, but can anyone really doubt that Caceres is a quality defender? Bojan is a quality striker, but neither he nor Caceres are the finished products yet. It appears to me that Guardiola is using practice time and late game situations to mature them before throwing them to the wolves (it’s a commonly held idea that strikers mature faster than defenders — and also expire faster).

Now, Guardiola obviously uses Pedro and Busquets (especially the latter since the former is injured at the moment, I think) much more frequently, but they are also older than Bojan by a couple of years. Pedro is 21, Busquets is 20. So their temperaments and their abilities are more likely to be solidified than Bojan’s. No doubt practice with Henry, Eto’o, and Messi is helping Bojan to mature without some of the constant pressure he was facing last year. Yes, last year he scored 10 goals in his 31 league appearances and 1 goal in his 9 CL appearances.

If Kevin is right about the team concept that Guardiola is putting in place, it would be foolish to attempt to force his hand in playing Bojan before both of them are ready for that situation. That would disrupt everything that the team has going for it. However, I do not want to see Bojan left on the bench simply for the sake of saving him if he would do a better job on the field than the people who are supplanting him in the rotation. If the score is 5-1 us over Atleti in the 70th minute, why send in Bojan? Why not send in Pedro at that point? When the score is 1-0 us over Athletic, why send in a-just-off-the-DL Hleb instead of a fully fit Bojan?

I can’t really argue with the results, but it’s those situations that make me wonder about Guardiola’s desire to have the kid in the squad. He’s better than Pedro, so he should be higher on the totem pole. For my money, he’s better than Hleb as a left wing forward and certainly has more chemistry at the moment. (And I’m not knocking Hleb, but who can give 100% immediately after an injury? Also, Hleb cannot be construed as a defensive sub or really a tactical one since Bojan would have played in that exact situation)

We’ll see more of Bojan, I’m sure, and while I too hope it’s soon, I think Guardiola has it right in saving him up and not using him up. Save him at the right moments and put him on the field at the right moments. So far, Guardiola has been earning very high marks for his insight into how to tactically change a game and I hope he uses Bojan to do just that throughout this year.

Now, have your say in the comments.

I’m easing my way back into the day-in day-out blogging grind by way of another in my fabled series, State of the League. Some of you might point out that “fabled” is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, but I’m looking at it from a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way. Cause, you know, Kevin has been really laying it on the last couple of weeks and getting all the plaudits for, um, his hard work. And that just seems monstrously unfair to me, someone who hasn’t bothered to do anything during that time.

As usual, I’m going to keep all the latest rumors out of this post. With, ahem, the exception of that last self-link. The point of these posts is to discuss the league from a perspective that might not be generally done by most posters and not concentrate too much on Barcelona’s current state of affairs. That is to say, I won’t be looking much up on Barceloogle.

So far, the league has disputed 18 of the total 114 possible points, meaning we’re 15% of the way through the league (2/19ths) and not particularly close to crowning a champion. Nor should we assume that the basement dwellers are necessarily headed down.

Let’s start with those subterranean clubs, though, where things have been going pretty much according to plan:

20. Real Betis 2pts (0W-2D-4L, 4GF 8GA, -4GD)
19. Sporting Gijon 3pts (1W-0D-5L, 8GF 20GA, -12GD)
18. Recreativo Huelva 4pts (1W-1D-4L, 2GF 10GA, -8GD)
17. Numancia 4pts (1W-1D-4L, 5GF 9GA, -4GD)
16. Osasuna 4pts (0W-4D-2L, 2GF 4GA, -2GD)

Of these teams, two (Sporting Gijon and Numancia) are new to this year’s edition of the league so it’s not particularly surprising to seem them so far down the table. The other Segunda call-up, Malaga, is in 12th with 7 points. I can’t say I saw the Real Betis tank job coming this early in the season, but their dismal performance point-wise isn’t actually all that bad statistically. Tim Stannard pointed to this in a previous column, but it bears a little bit of repetition.

Real Betis have now played 6 games (just like everyone else); their first two opponents were Recreativo Huelva and Getafe and they managed an 0-1 loss and a 0-0 draw. Then came the hellish 4 weeks that absolutely everyone must endure twice during the season: Sevilla, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Villarreal. If you’re at home to one, the next week you’re away to the other and vice-versa. Betis drew with intercity rival Sevilla 0-0, lost to Barcelona 3-2 at the Camp Nou through a late Gudjohnsen goal, were barely edged out by Real Madrid on a 90th minute Ruud goal, and lost to Villarreal at El Madrigal 2-1 thanks to a come-from-behind victory. They outshot both Sevilla and Villarreal and were only one shot behind Real Madrid. This does not a disaster make, says the statistician in me. If you can compete at that level against 4 of the top 5 sides in the league (we’ll get to Valencia in a minute), I’m going to put my money on you staying up by beating the pants off several weaker sides.

Sporting Gijon’s route to survival is, well, exactly the same as Betis’, only it takes place a week earlier. Their only win (in fact, their only points) come from a win at Mallorca after having been soundly beaten 1-2 by Getafe, 4-3 by Sevilla, 1-6 by Barcelona, and 7-1 by Real Madrid. They’ll probably scrape a few points together against weaker opponents, but I still don’t seem them ever really recovering from those twin ass-kickings metted out by the big boys. That they did, in fact, compete at Sevilla is a testament to their testicular fortitude. Take out Barcelona and Madrid from their schedules and their stats are 6GF and 7GA. That’s not half bad, really. Does anyone blame them for losing at home 0-1 to Villarreal? Only those two major losses suggest deeper issues of quality and, um, depth. We’ll see starting next week when they host fellow strugglers Osasuna if their win at Mallorca was a fluke or the real deal. My guess, to be honest, is fluke — perhaps only because I’m hedging my bets, though.

If there’s a team that’s showing its true colors already, it’s probably Recreativo Huelva, a team that has played only one team in the European spots (a 1-0 loss at Almeria) yet has collected only 4 points out of a possible 18. On the surface this would seem to be better than what Gijon and Betis have done, but take a look at Recre’s opponents: @Betis, Espanyol, @Atleti, Athletic, @Almeria, Malaga. They won the game at Betis and drew against Athletic, but were summarily stomped by Atleti and Malaga 4-0. Thus they’ve shipped 11 goals while only scoring 2. Because Athletic and Betis are in the bottom quarter of the table, success against them can only be viewed through that lens, not as serious success. Based mainly on their inability to score (ranked last) rather than their poor defense (2nd to last), I predict a bottom 3 finish for them. After all, who do they have that they can rely on? One of their keepers is named Riesgo!

Those who are out of the relegation zone aren’t necessarily that much better off. Numancia sits on 4pts, just like Recre, but their overall record and who they have played is much more likely to keep them from going down than Recre’s abysmal start. Los Rojillos will long remember their opening to this campaign, a 1-0 home win against Barcelona and no doubt their goalscorer, Mario, a local boy, is free of bar tabs for at least the rest of the season. Unlike their newbie brethern from Gijon, Numancia have really showed up for the matches against the big boys. They took all 3 points off of Barcelona and managed a 4-3 loss at the Bernabeu and a 1-2 loss at home to Villarreal. This is, of course, where the question of whether or not teams wear each other out fighting against the big guns and thus leave themselves open to getting beaten by worse opponents afterwards by dint of being fatigued. Since playing Villarreal, Numancia has earned only 1 point out of a possible 9, but they have never been blown out. They play Valencia in the Mestalla next, so don’t expect them to move up in the immediate future, just in the resulting few weeks. They may yet slide down, but they have the best shot of the bottom 5 to stay up.

Then there’s the case of Osasuna. They barely survived last year’s relegation battle, ending up 17th by 1 solitary point. Having faced Villarreal to start the year, they got a solid result (1-1 at home), but still have not managed a win. They’ve got 4 points from 4 draws (Villarreal, @Mallorca, Depor, @Numancia), but have also lost twice (@Valencia and vs Racing). No one has yet to score more than 1 goal against Osasuna, who are tied with Valencia and Sevilla for the second-best defensive record in the league: 4 goals allowed). They are, however, tied with Recre for the lowest goals scored (2). That doesn’t bode well if they start leak a few goals here and there, but I have a strange feeling that they’ll put together a nice little bit of magic in front of net at some point during the season and will stay up by those frazzled hairs on their chinny-chin-chins.

There are, of course, 15 other teams to cover, but I’m going to skip upwards, to the top 5, not just to make this a shorter post, but because the middle of the pack is as muddled as always and going through each individual team statistically would be bothersome for you, the readers, as well as for me. 4 points separate the 15th placed team (Racing Santander) and the 8th ranked team (Atleti), meaning there’s very little statistical difference between them. We’ll discuss those teams as they either lunge upwards or slide downward. And I’m also skipping Almeria for the time being because, um, I like things to be symmetrical. And I don’t want to write about Almeria (as exciting as Alvaro Negredo’s output has been).

The top of the table:

5. Real Madrid 13pts (4W-1D-1L, 18GF 9GA, +9GD)
4. Barcelona 13pts (4W-1D-1L, 18GF 7GA, +11GD)
3. Sevilla 14pts (4W-2D-0L, 12GF 4GA, +8GD)
2. Villarreal 16pts (5W-1D-0L, 9GF 3GA, +6GD)
1. Valencia 16pts (5W-1D-0L, 13GF 4GA, +8GD)

If you’re going to pick the La Liga winner and runner up before the season starts, you’re most likely going to put your money on either Real Madrid or Barcelona, no matter who you actually support. The top 5 is really only interesting enough to talk about because those two teams aren’t the top 2, but instead sit at the bottom of the CL spots (for all intents and purposes, Madrid is a CL team because of how close they are to being so and because of how much time is left in the season).

But what of Schuster’s men? Real Madrid is coming off another championship and were looking like finally keeping some semblance of order in their ranks until Cronaldo didn’t make the move and Robinho jumped ship. They’re certainly not floundering, but they haven’t shown themselves to be true world beaters either, at least not in the league. They may not be as flawed as their opening-day loss to Depor suggested, but they’re not necessarily that much better than the sugestion either. Numancia scored 3 times on them in the Bernabeu. Their goals against record is fairly abysmal for a team in the top 5 (9GA, tying them for 4th worst with Numancia), but they’re dealing with a sort of hodgepodge backline and I expect their goal differential to rapidly improve over the next few weeks as people settle in a bit. And they do score boatloads of goals (tied for first with 18). They recently drew with Espanyol in the Bernabeu, which suggests continued struggles, but I don’t forsee that in their future, as players return from injury and find their forms. They have a well-balanced attack that isn’t reliant on any one player, so cutting out their scoring is never going to be easy. They’ll definitely be a CL team next year, if not the champions; a 3-peat is just so damned hard to pull off, after all.

Next, my own beloved Barcelona. I won’t dwell on them too much, since this site is dedicated to the team and has a review of every game they’ve played. Much like their rivals in the capital, the blaugrana suffered a defeat in their opening game, but followed that one up with a draw. Since then it’s been maximum points (12), with the occasional heart-stopper, just in case you weren’t paying enough attention. Though they’ve managed 18 goals in their 6 games (12 of which came in 2 games), they’ve yet to record a clean sheet; still, they’re tied (with 4 other teams) for 7th best defensive record with 7 goals allowed. They are also tied for first in goals scored (18). Of those 18 goals, 10 of them are shared by 2 players (Eto’o and Messi with 5 each). This lack of attacking versatility is not necessarily a hindrance to a championship run as long as the odd man continues to put in goals (5 other players have notched at least one goal). A definite CL finish for this team, but in today’s Liga, nothing is certain.

Then there’s the case of Sevilla. For the past few years, Sevilla has appeared to be one of the powerhouses of La Liga, at least for the first few months, if not for the entire campaign. Still, they are a force to be reckoned with when they’re on form. At home they’ve only allowed 3 goals, all 3 of which were scored by Sporting Gijon of all teams. While they haven’t faced the toughest of opponents (who has, though?), they’ve put up good numbers against most opponents. They have yet to lose, have drawn only twice (opening day @Racing and @Betis), and in their 3 wins not against Sporting Gijon have outscored opponents 7-0. Naturally it’s Freddy Kanoute who is atop their scoring chart with 3, though he is tied with the ever-resurgent Javier Chevanton (at what point does one stop being resurgent and get regarded as just plain good?). Despite their next game being against Almeria, who sit in 6th, Sevilla has a fairly easy road for the next few jornadas. November 23 starts their run when they face Valencia, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Villarreal in 4 consecutive matches. That’ll be fun. By then, though, they should be fairly well positioned to withstand any loss of points that may (and probably will) occur, though the only away game of those 4 is at the Bernabeu. Not bad. Expect to see them in Europe this year, though the CL could be so hotly contested that even a team as good as Sevilla gets the shaft and falls to the NIT UEFA Cup.*

Onward and ever upward, we next encounter Villarreal, the Yellow Submarine whose place in the hearts and minds of all underdog-lovers was so very nearly cemented forever, but was summarily blown by, of all people, Juan Roman Riquelme in the CL semis against Arsenal. Anyway, JRR is gone, and has been replaced by Marcos Senna, who, instead of missing that PK, would have kicked Jens Lehmann in half. Until they at least get close to overcoming that defeat, Villarreal seems destined to be that other team from Spain; they’re not flashy, they don’t sell players for a gazillion dollars to other teams, nor do they buy them for much. But they are solid and their current record speaks volumes to their ability to find talent where others haven’t (Santi Cazorla, Joseba Llorente). They lead the league in goals allowed (3) and have yet to allow more than one in a game (meaning they have 3 clean sheets). They’re also tied for 6th (with Almeria) in the league in goals scored (9). Their schedule for the next few weeks isn’t particularly easy (@Espanyol, Atleti, @Athletic, Almeria), but they should get maximum points from 3 of those games, keeping them at least tied for 1st going into their easiest stretch of this half of the season, before heading over to visit Sevilla. They’ll be back in the CL next year.

And then there was one: Valencia. Where did Los Che come from? They’ve always had the talent to compete, but last year they were such a disaster I thought for sure they’d be a midtable club throughout the season. Apparently I was wrong, at the very least about the beginning of the season. They started the season with a 3-0 home win and then drew away to Almeria; since, they’ve outscored their 4 opponents 8-2. They are 3rd in the league in goals scored (13) and tied for 2nd in goals allowed (4)**. Valencia beat Depor La Coruña 4-2 (granted, at the Mestalla) and plays Numancia next. In about 4 weeks we’ll be able to compare what Valencia has done to what FCB and RM have done, but for now they’re leading based on merit, rather than on anything else. Their leading scorer, David Villa, has nearly half their goals (6) and is the current Pichichi; they’ll have to diversify their scoring a bit if they want to maintain their pace, though 5 others have scored at least once, so that’s not bad (Mata has 3, everyone else has 1).

—–
*If you’re unfamiliar with the NIT, visit the Wikipedia page to see why I roll my eyes whenever anyone mentions it or the UEFA Cup.

**I’ll point out here (not for the first time) that Barcelona and Real Madrid are tied for first with 18 goals scored. This is actually a HUGE statistical difference, except that 6 of Barcelona’s goals and 7 of Real Madrid’s came against Sporting Gijon, a team Valencia has yet to play.

[Note: If anyone has any statistical category they'd like to help me track, I'm all for it. Currently I track win/loss/draw percentages as overall/home/away as well as using those three categories for GF/GA/GD. I'd like to be able to keep track of shots on goal, corners, fouls/cards, as well as passing percentages, but I know of no resources that provide that sort of information. If anyone knows, please send me an email at barcelona[at]theoffside[dot]com or post a comment below. I think that these State of the League posts would be much more useful if there was a much stronger statistical backbone (complete with charts, of course, which I’m going to design for the next post). Thanks, Isaiah]

It’s never so simple as showing up and getting a 3-point door prize, but Levante is the worst team in the league by about a nautical mile (in my rough calculations that’s 8.4 radar miles…hmm…my calculator is off, I think). Barcelona should take home the bacon/cake/points with relative ease, though, if statistics are anything to go by. And you know I go by them.

Barcelona’s home record is 11W-0D-1L while Levante’s away record is 1W-1D-9L. Barcelona has scored a total of 44 goals (28 at home); Levante 19 (5 away). Barcelona has allowed a league low of 16 (5 at home); Levante has allowed 42 (21 away). All signs are pointing towards an utter ass-whooping, but Barcelona will need to show up, show some steel, and really put it to Levante. I think that returning a scoreline of 3-0 or 4-0 would do a world of good before the Valencia Copa del Rey match on Wednesday, I think.

The lineup hasn’t been officially announced, but there are already some missing pieces. Marquez is definitively out thanks to a foot hematoma (which pretty much just means bigass bruise) he picked up against Celtic. Even if he’s capable of playing against Levante, with Valencia coming up, there’s no reason to push him. It’s a lucky break for Barca that we don’t have a top-tier opponent, but we do still have to win. Drawing or losing are both not options right now in the league. It’s do or die, really, and I think that Barcelona will do. Rijkaard might rest some players for the Valencia match (especially with @Atletico coming up the next weekend), but that might be a mistake if the team goes out flat. I imagine, however, that the subs will try to impress either Rijkaard or the scouts who are coming to see them for future contract negotiations.

What I envision is the inclusion of Sylvinho for Abidal, Xavi for Deco, Gio for Ronaldinho, and Bojan for Messi. I don’t know if that radical a change would happen, but I’m fairly convinced that Henry should not start against Valencia, so why not use him against Levante where he can do real damage? With Zambrotta possibly returning (he has been training), Puyol could slide into the middle or perhaps be replaced by Thuram (just to give SuperCaptain a little bit of a breather). Edmilson could conceivably make the start instead of Toure, just to rest the Ivorian, but I see no real need to get that crazy.

As for Levante, while FCB’s official website makes mention of their recent run of form (in the last for games they’ve gone 2-1-1 with 1 away victory), Sport and El Pais are reporting that the squad didn’t train on Friday as a form of protest against the lack of a resignation from Pedro Villarroel, the head of the Levante Cultural and Sporting Foundation (or some such). I don’t know diddly about who Pedro Villarroel is or what he does, but I do know that Levante has previously gone unpaid during this season and that might have something to do with it. Whether this affects their performance on the field remains to be seen, but running out onto the Camp Nou is a far cry from any field they’ve played on during the current spell of only occasionally losing (W@Murcia, D Racing, L@Bilbao, W Osasuna) and doing so without proper training might not be the best way to handle the situation. But to each his own, eh?

The player to look out for is Riga Mustapha, Levante’s leading scorer. He’s got 5 goals so far this year, which isn’t much compared to what is being put on display elsewhere in the league (Luis Fabiano is the current pichichi front-runner with 16), but it’s enough to take notice and consider the possibilities of marking the guy, right? I’ve only seen Levante play once this year and that was the first time Barcelona played them, a game that the real blaugrana won while wearing their blue away jerseys 1-4; remember, that’s the game Henry got a hat trick in and Messi put away the fourth before Levante pulled one back through Emilio Viqueira. Incidentally, Viqueira is on loan to Xerez (my favorite Segunda club, thanks to FIFA 2007).

So, here’s the official prediction: 3-0 Barcelona. I just don’t see Levante having the firepower to overcome a Barcelona side that hasn’t look as good as it did last game for almost a year. It’s just bad luck for Levante, really, that Barcelona is back to being almost entirely healthy. After conceding 2 goals against Celtic, I think the back line will be fired up to put a boot in and crush all attacking players like the horrible insects they are. So that was a bit harsh, but whatever, Puyol, Milito, Thuram, Abidal, Zambrotta, Toure…those are all names that would put fear into my heart if I were a worthless piece of scum an opponent. Big Manly Men they be.

Here is what I compared:

1. The stats from the first 16 games of the 2006/07 season vs the current season.
2. The 2006/07 season totals vs a projection of the totals for the current season (07/08).
3. The stats from the group stage of the 06/07 Champions League and this year’s CL group stage.

1. Comparing the first 16 games of this season and 06/07:

06/07: 10-5-1 35pts 35GS, 11GA; home 6-2-0, 19GS, 4GA; away 4-3-1, 16GS, 7GA
07/08: 10-4-2 34pts 32GS, 12GA; home 8-0-0, 22GS, 4GA; away 2-4-2, 10GS, 8GA

The overrall record for two seasons in question is almost identical to what it was after 16 matches. Barca is currently 1 point behind the pace set by their 06/07 selves, the difference being an extra loss away and no draws at home. So that is basically a wash, in terms of points. As for goal differential, the numbers are +24 and +20, the advantage to 06/07. The major difference is the number of goals scored away because, despite an advantage for the current season in home goals scored, it’s the +6 in away goals for the 06/07 season that has made the difference. Everything else is pretty much even. It does make you realize that the defense isn’t better, statistically, than last year’s version and that this season’s offense has been stuttering, comparitevly. The team is better at home this year than last year, but are quite a bit worse on the road.

2. Let’s do a full season, though. The first stat set is the actual stats from last year’s full season while the second set is the projected stats were the current trend to continue (that is, were the final 22 games to have the exact same results as the first 16).

06/07: 22-10-6 76 pts, 78GS, 33GA; home 14-5-0, 41GS, 12GA; away 8-5-6, 37GS, 21GA
07/08 projected: 24-9-5* 81pts 77GS 29GA, home 19-0-0, 53GS, 10GA; away 5-9-5, 24GS, 19GA

If this projection holds true, Barca will have been better this year than in 06/07. 1 less goal scored and 4 fewer allowed. Naturally, it’s hard to imagine that the team will go 19-0-0 at home (especially with Real Madrid, Valencia, and Espanyol yet to visit), but so far that’s the only projection one can make. Another issue I have is that I don’t believe Barca will draw away 5 more times while losing 3. It remains to be seen, but I would imagine we’ll end up with a record somewhere near 24-8-6 (home 16-2-0; away 8-6-4) which is 80 points. That’s a very large number of points, though fewer than Madrid is projected to garner (83), so winning El Clasico will be a big step towards gaining parity. Assuming that Barcelona’s away day doldrums are behind them, this year’s title race will be as good as last year’s. Only this year we’ll win…

3. The stats from the group stage of the 06/07 Champions League and this year’s CL group stage.

Last year, Barcelona came in second in a group comprised of Chelsea, Werder Bremen, and Levski Sofia. In retrospect, last year’s group stage was much, much tougher than this year’s, with Lyon underachieving and Stuttgart basically not showing up. Rangers was what I expected, but Chelsea and Werder were strong last year in ways that no one was in this year’s group.

Last year: 2nd place, 3-2-1 11pts, 12GS, 4GA
This year: 1st place, 4-2-0 14pts, 12GS, 3GA

So, really, a much better showing in this year’s CL, especially if you consider that Barca gave up 2/3 of their goals in one game, to Lyon and only gave up that pesky 3rd goal in a game that didn’t matter. Granted, in 06/07 Chelsea scored 3 of the 4 goals and Werder the other. So it is perhaps unfair to last year’s team to say that they were worse, defensively. What’s interesting is that this year had a more even distribution of goals scored during the group stage; in 06/07 the first game was a 5-0 thrashing of Levski Sofia, while this year the scores were more evenly spread out: 3-0, 2-0, 0-0, 2-0, 2-2, 3-1. And there were no losses like the one at Stamford Bridge (in fact, there were none at all).

4. Analysis of the stats

I fully realize what I’m about to do here: ignore my own stats. However, I’m going to attempt to justify saying that this year’s defense is much, much better than last year’s. The main factor in goals scored against Barcelona has been injuries. During the loss to Villarreal, Oleguer was starting on the right side and Toure was out. The back line consisted of Oleguer, Milito, Puyol, Abidal. Against Getafe, the lineup was slightly stronger: Puyol, Thuram, Milito, Abidal, Toure and Zambrotta subbed in for Thuram before getting a red card. While there is no legitimate excuse for giving up 3 goals in a game, 2 happens now and then and it was the offense that was misfiring during that game. But the point is that the defense has been far less settled than it was last year, when there was little to no movement throughout the year in terms of who started. With Milito, Abidal, and Toure new members of the defensive scheme, there is always going to be a period of acclimation, of learning the style of play required to work as a cohesive unit. I believe that that is now being found, that ESP connection, thanks to a constant lineup: Puyol, Marquez, Milito, Abidal. I think that this lineup will only get better, giving up fewer and fewer goals, especially if they can stay healthy (granted, that’s a big if, especially for this season’s Barca…).

My final thought is that yes, the defense was worth the investment, not just because they’re already a bit better than last year’s, but because they’ll remain better for several years to come. Puyol is 29, Abidal 28, Milito 27, Marquez 28, Zambrotta 30, and Toure 24. If we buy Philipp Lahm, as the current rumors suggest we’ll do as a replacement for Zambrotta, he’s 24. So for now we have an average starting lineup of 28 (Puyol, Abidal, Milito, Marquez); add in Toure and it’s 27.2…Replace Marquez with Lahm and the age drops to 26.4 for the back 5. That’s fun times for the future, I think.

What do you guys make of these stats? Was the defense worth the very large investment made? We paid 44million euros for the 3 at the back. Will they return that investment with fewer nail-biting moments? I believe they already have, though it would be interesting to see a 3-4-3 in a game or two (Puyol, Milito, Abidal staying at home at the back, Toure in front in midfield, along with Xavi, Iniesta, and Deco, then Ronaldinho, Henry, and Eto’o in front of them). Maybe against Murcia…

*This is a rough projection done by hand. I took the total number of games (38) and divided by the number of games played (16). That is, in case you’re wondering, 2.375. Then I just multiplied all the other stats, rounding to the nearest whole number (23.75 wins became 24, 9.5 draws became 9, 4.75 losses became 5). The easiest was the projection that we’ll be perfect at home. While that’s probably completely absurd, it’s the trend so far in this half of the season. For goals, I rounded up no matter what because half a goal is worth a full goal. The win against Valencia was taken into account for this analysis, by the way.