By Benjamin Leinwand and Chris Anderson
When it comes to pay, not all positions are created equal. In fact, we have long known that strikers command a premium for their services. So it should come as no surprise that Major League Soccer is no exception. In 2011, average earnings were distinctly tilted toward the offensive side of the pitch.

By Benjamin Leinwand and Chris Anderson
Prior to the start of the 2011 season, Major League Soccer teamed up with the Castrol Index to deliver a more statistically advanced version of the match day player ratings. According to the creators, "the Castrol Index objectively analyses player performance, tracking every move on the field and assessing whether it has a positive or negative impact on a team's ability to score or concede a goal.

Now that the January transfer window is closed, clubs are gearing up to be ready for the rest of the season. For promoted clubs in particular, the Premiership adventure has entered the second - and possibly last - half of the season. Whether they will be able to continue their adventure is anyone's guess, but judging from the league table, Norwich and Swansea look to be in a good position to stay up.

On this side of the Atlantic, the football news that received quite a bit of attention over past few days was Friday's FA Cup tie between Everton and Fulham, featuring Clint "Hat Trick" Dempsey, Landon Donovan, and Tim Howard. Everton won, and as SI.com put it,

Landon Donovan etched his name further into Everton lore with two assists in the Toffees' FA Cup victory over Fulham.

Football's a simple game. If you score more or concede less than the other side, you win the match. So I thought it would be worth taking a look at which teams have been doing better than their opponents. The simplest way of doing just that is to calculate differentials for the stuff that matters most - goals - and the stuff without which - shots - the stuff that matters most usually doesn't happen.

Here's a short PS to my earlier post about Manchester City's offensive performance so far this season. It provides a summary of shot creation and finishing for the first and second 10 weeks of the season. Dots mark the club's performance in an individual match. The number next to the dot indicates the week.

Arsenal have had a most unusual season of highs and lows. After a rough start to the campaign, the ship seems to have steadied. Robin van Persie is on pace for a record setting season; his 19 goals so far are only one less than last year's 20 scored by Golden Boot winners Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov.

When Manchester City dispatched Manchester United in commanding fashion earlier this season, the City steamroller was powerful, efficient, and impressive. It looked downright unstoppable. As Kevin McCarra noted the day of City's 6-1 trouncing of United in The Guardian, "For the football world at large, it is more significant still that City have 33 goals from nine league games.

With the pressure and excitement of each and every week's matches, it's sometimes easy to lose the overall plot of how a season has evolved in the league as a whole. Since we are just past the halfway point of the season, I thought I'd take a look at a couple of trends in teams' output in the Premier League this season.

Note: This post comes with a Geek Alert!
Television has had a profound influence on football: the players, agents, business models of clubs, the relationship between league play and international football - you name it. And few television programs are more loved by fans than highlight shows like the BBC's Match of the Day, which has been on the air with interruptions) since 1964.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about offensive performance in the Premiership so far this season, here's a simple graph summarizing clubs' defensive performance this season. Naturally, it's limited in what it can tell you - all stats are - but the picture does provide some interesting pieces of information.

Now that the transfer window is open, I thought it was time to take a quick look at how Premier League clubs have been performing on various dimensions. Let's start with offense for today. Which clubs have been doing exceptionally well, and which ones seem to need some help, perhaps by finding a player or two?

Here's an amazing interactive data visualization from Andy Kriebel's beautiful VizWiz blog. Click on the graph to go to the real thing. Enjoy!

Amidst all the hoopla and hilarity of the season's first managerial sacking in the Premiership - Steve Bruce by Sunderland FC - it's easy to lose sight of the fact that it typically doesn't help to sack the manager. To be sure: there often seems to be a bounce-back in results for teams that appoint a new manager; but statistically speaking, the bounce-back is likely to occur in any case, with or without sacking the gaffer.

Hard to believe, but roughly one third of this year's Premier League season has been played already, and some clubs are starting to look over their shoulder with a nagging worry. They're looking at their current squad and manager, and they wonder: is it enough? Will we make it?
Sunderland's Steve Bruce is this year's first managerial sacking, surely brought on by a lack of results, but also a niggling fear of not surviving in the Premiership.