SoccerBlogs

Santi Cazorla moved to Málaga at the beginning of the 2011-12 season. The fortunes of Villarreal nose-dived culminating in relegation. Exactly the opposite happened at Málaga. Relegation candidates in 2010-11, Málaga finished fourth in 2011-12, qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in the history of the club.

Villarreal had a disastrous 2011-12 ending in an agonizing relegation to the 2nd division in the dying minutes of the season. In 2010-11 Villarreal reached the semifinals of the Europa League and finished 4th in La Liga to qualify for the Champions League. I focus on the performance of Villarreal in the attacking third of the pitch in 2011 and compare it with that of 2010.

In this special podcast recorded for Forza Futbol, we have Simon Kuper, author of the recently published Soccernomics 2nd edition.
Simon is also the author of "Football Against the Enemy", "Ajax, the Dutch, the War" among others. Simon writes a weekly column in Financial Times.

In this special podcast I recorded for Forza Futbol, I talked to Professor Stefan Szymanski, economist and author of the recently published Soccernomics 2nd edition. Stefan is a Professor of Kinesiology at School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan and is an author of various books on economics in sports.

Villarreal had a disastrous 2011-12. They are relegated to the Spanish Segunda Division in the dying minutes of the season.

The obvious question was "What went wrong?"

The easy answers are the exit of Santi Cazorla and the long-term injury to Giuseppe Rossi. But that doesn't fully explain how a team that featured in the Champions League group stage could get relegated.

Club football seasons across most of Europe have ended. The lack of serious football (apart from the Euro 2012 in a few weeks) means the off-field stuff like transfer rumors and player agents take the center stage. Recent news items like the deal of Bebe to Manchester United highlight the inefficiencies and the lack of transparency in the transfer market.

If you are not from the blue half of Manchester, any discussion that involves Manchester City quickly boils down to buying titles.

A few weeks ago when City played Arsenal at the Emirates, there was this banner:

With the Manchester Derby looming on Monday, there are a slew of articles centered on arguments like buying titles and class.

The astute reader will recognize the title of this post as a play on Edward Tufte's book of a similar name. Â While Tufte's work focuses on turning quantitative data into an easily consumable format that has a clear message, it's also important to do so with qualitative data. Â Qualitative data can often be the "how" or "why" to go along with the "what" provided by quantitative data.

There was an interesting article this morning on Soccernet about Robin Van Persie being in the "injury red zone". Â Hyperbole aside, it raises the point that Arsenal have had the luxury of playing Van Persie in every league match so far (starting 12 of 13) but will have to manage his workload a little more conservatively or risk a decrease in performance or potential injury.

I'm always on the lookout for new ways to visualize data in the hopes that it might lead to a better understanding of the data. Â In the first leg of the tie between Real Salt Lake and Seattle Sounders FC, the Sounders midfield was completely MIA for large portions of the game while RSL enjoyed large periods of maintaining possession.

There has been lots of talk about the goal glut that is happening in the Premier League right now. Â Are pricey strikers to blame or is it the death of quality defense? Â Decision Technology's Ian Graham has already taken a look at debunking the Guardian's piece on the "goal glut". Â I thought I'd add my two cents.

It was rough being a Sounder's fan last night.  Amidst discussions of a CONCACAF Champions League curse, playing at altitude and missing one of their best players of the season in Mauro Rosales, the Sounders had a tough playoff matchup against Real Salt Lake.  While most fans would have been surprised if the Sounders had come away with a first leg lead, going down 3-0 was a bit of a shock.

During tonight's MLS Playoff match between the New York Red Bulls and FC Dallas, the "Curse of CONCACAF Champions League" was brought up. Â FC Dallas has had to play more matches than NYRB this season and came into the match looking a bit fatigued. Â Since the CONCACAF version isn't as lucrative as the European version, it is getting the reputation as being a drain on teams.

Previously I've written about examining conversion rates and shots as a way of examining which areas an offense or defense excels at or is struggling with. Shots can be a crude estimation for opportunities and conversion rate and estimation of how well a team executes on those opportunities. I had looked at offense and defense separately in the past, but decided to combine the two to see if any interesting patterns emerged.