In terms of the technical quality of games, the data taken from the Russian Premier League again shows few disparities between performances on the different surfaces. Critics of artificial turf often hold that players are not comfortable in possession on artificial pitches, yet the average number of touches per player remained steady (2.

As a team, Liverpool's passing accuracy in the Premier League so far this season is 81%, which is fairly good, but it means means that 19% of passes are being misplaced in every league game. Who are biggest culprits when it comes to giving the ball away?Before you read any further, try and guess who are the worst offenders.

Trademark volley from the non-flying Dutchman Bergkamp still got it by soccermr Ajax's coaching team like to roll back the years from time to time. Take this video, for instance. Frank De Boer play a lovely Hollywood pass, Dennis Bergkamp gets on the end of it and works his magic by firing in a glorious [.

Trademark volley from the non-flying Dutchman Bergkamp still got it by soccermr Ajax's coaching team like to roll back the years from time to time. Take this video, for instance. Frank De Boer play a lovely Hollywood pass, Dennis Bergkamp gets on the end of it and works his magic by firing in a glorious [.

It's been awhile since I trawled through the Guardian chalkboards for interesting items. I know, we all missed it.
I remain convinced that Liverpool changed tact in midfield during the interval. The key seemed to be Spearing, more willing to stay in his own half and shield the defense rather than pressing higher up the pitch and leaving gaps.

Gabriel Gomez was signed by the Philadelphia Union in late December. Last night was the first chance Philly fans have had to examine the versatile Panamanian.

In a 1-0 friendly loss to the United States, Gomez played as a calming link between Panama's back four and skittish front five.

The good news: He was fantastic.

As we enter the 2012 season, there are many questions surrounding the Union, but one of the biggest is what to make of our young striker, Danny Mwanga.

After a fantastic rookie year, Mwanga seemed to regress in 2011. He started fewer games and scored fewer goals than he did his rookie year, and his appearances were inconsistent: during some games he looked like an absolute world-beater, while more often he was anonymous.

Former Barcelona defender and current New York Red Bulls player Rafael Marquez has hit the streets for Red Bull literally. The Mexican international took to the streets of Mexico City to show off his accuracy and football talent as he performed trick shots throughout the capital.

Check out the video below, and leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Editor's note: The MLS partnership with Opta Sports has resulted in richer ways to understand the performance of the Philadelphia Union and its players through statistical analysis. PSP's efforts to collect and share match statistics have been enhanced by the deeper analysis offered by Ford Bohrmann.

Jonjo Shelvey is hoping his display in his first ever top-flight start for Liverpool at Villa Park alongside Luis Suarez will be the springboard to future success with the Reds.
Kenny Dalglish handed him a role playing just off Suarez through the centre - a position he excelled in during his loan spell at Blackpool, and the No.

Mario hates poor passing The training ground scrap between Manchester City team-mates Mario Balotelli and Micah Richards was started by a stray pass from the England international, Mirror Football reports. Balotelli was unhappy at the accuracy of Richards' passing and told him: "If you won't pass to my feet, I won't move.

Featured image: Paul Rudderow

When I was gathering the season stats for all of the Philadelphia Union players to share with the PSP writers for our forthcoming 2011 season review series I realized no passing stats were available, either for the club or for individual players. Actually, that's not precisely true; you can find passing percentages for the team on a game-by-game basis by clicking on the Stat tab for each game's MatchCenter page at MLSsoccer.

Liverpool midfielder Lucas Leiva has polarised opinion ever since he arrived at Anfield, and he's often been on the receiving end of unwarranted criticism. One of the recurring criticisms levelled at the Brazilian is his lack of attacking impact in the final third of field, but club legend John Barnes insists that he should not be judged along those lines.

Bellamy and Mata top pass stats

Craig Bellamy and Juan Mata topped the accuracy charts for their respective sides. Keep reading for more on this and the rest of the stats from Liverpool's 2-1 triumph at Stamford Bridge courtesy of Opta.

View the full story here: Liverpool FC

A news article on 2011-11-21 12:33:12 from: Liverpool FC

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

Will Liverpool add to their 242 goals against Chelsea? Ten key stats for this weekend's Premier League action

Goal.com takes a look at 10 key stats ahead of the weekend's action in England's top flight including Aston Villa's poor defensive record and Mikel Arteta's passing accuracy

View the full story here: Goal

A news article on 2011-11-18 20:24:00 from: Goal

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

You may well have already seen this, but on the off chance you've been off the grid, as I have, in the last 24 hours or so, here's the extended highlights of England's 5-0 win over Iceland in the 2013 European U21 Championships qualifier in Colchester.

Nathan Delfouneso was in the starting eleven, but left the pitch with the game barely 10 minutes old after pulling up chasing a ball into the box.

In the world's leading football (soccer) leagues pinpoint accuracy, speed and intensity can make the difference between a top flight place in the standings or relentless pressure to avoid league and cup disappointment. With the stakes so high, players look for a ball that gives them unrivalled touch and feel to ensure it goes exactly [.

One of the persistent (and unfair) criticisms of Charlie Adam this season is the alleged 'fact' that he can't tackle, and that he's poor defensively. Lucas is widely accepted to be Liverpool's best defensive midfielder, so I've compared Adam to Lucas in a bid to show that the criticism of the Scot's defensive ability is completely unwarranted.

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has suggested that Luis Suarez may be feeling the strain over Patrice Evra's recent allegations.
In a post-match interview, Dalglish again made it clear that the club is 100% behind Suarez, but he also seemed to suggest that the the stress from Evra's unsubstantiated allegations may have been playing on the Uruguayan's mind during the game:
"Sometimes you don't finish [chances], but that doesn't take away from him [Suarez], his ability, and his integrity and everything else as a footballer.

Photo: Nicolae Stoian

It was as poor a performance as we've seen from the Philadelphia Union this season against a New York team that, with rare exceptions, did not look at all good.

With the obvious exception of the number of goals, when looking at the match statistics, there appears to be as much parity to be found as there is advantage.

Scousers' skill school (not that there's any Scousers involved) Liverpool stars Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson, Jonjo Shelvey and Martin Skrtel were put through their paces as they faced off in a skills challenge. The players competed in a crossbar challenge, extreme keepy-uppies and a trial of shooting accuracy in the 188BET Skills Challenge.

Rooney v Suarez stats going into the Liverpool v United game - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

We compare two main striking threats for Manchester United and Liverpool, Wayne Rooney and Luis Suarez, and look at their stats for the start of the Premier League season.

ROONEY MAN UTD'S MAIN THREAT

Wayne Rooney has started the season in blistering from.

Photo: Earl Gardner

The Union midfield has been called one of the weaker parts of the team this season. What does the data suggest though? Specifically, I wanted to answer two questions about the midfield: How does the midfield fare in terms of passing percentages? And are better midfield passing percentages associated with Union wins?

Nike's latest edition to their flagship accuracy boot the T90 LASER IV FG hits the shelves after becoming the boot of choice for global superstars such as Wayne Rooney, Fernando Torres and now......Danny Welbeck. With an RRP of £139.99 these boots don't come cheap because they're a serious boot for a serious player.

The blog has been quiet for a few days, and for a reason. I´ve been busy working on a little side project. Before too long, I´ll tell you more about that, but one of the things that have come of out of it has been a more detailed look at various performance indicators across leagues with better and more recent data.

The blog has been quiet for a few days, and for a reason. I´ve been busy working on a little side project. Before too long, I´ll tell you more about that, but one of the things that have come of out of it has been a more detailed look at various performance indicators across leagues with better and more recent data.

I had the opportunity to head to New York this past week to check out the all new Nike T90 Laser IV. Nike did a pretty awesome job, giving us a full presentation of the boots technology, followed by the opportunity to actually test out a pair on one of the oldest soccer pitches in New York (the Met Oval in Queens).

Haven't had much time these past few days to do much in terms of detailed analyses, so here's just a fun (ok, "fun for geeks") graph of efficiency ratios (accuracy and conversion) for teams in the big 4 leagues during the 2010/11 season. Accuracy is defined as the ratio of accurate shots to all shots created; conversion is the ratio of goals to accurate shots.

Haven't had much time these past few days to do much in terms of detailed analyses, so here's just a fun (ok, "fun for geeks") graph of efficiency ratios (accuracy and conversion) for teams in the big 4 leagues during the 2010/11 season. Accuracy is defined as the ratio of accurate shots to all shots created; conversion is the ratio of goals to accurate shots.

Nike's latest release comes in the form of a completely redesigned boot for the modern day striker the T90 Laser IV. You are going to see top players like Wayne Rooney and Wesley Sneijder sporting this new range in the coming weeks.

Focused on adapting to the technical demands and movement of a highly mobile striker the new T90 Laser IV is 20% lighter than the previous version and features a streamlined silhouette that provides enhanced fit and feel on the ball.

Stoke City Vs Liverpool FC | Defence v Attack

AnfieldIndex Liverpool FC Stats | Liverpool FC Blog | Liverpool FC Forum It was not a good day for Liverpool FC on Saturday, 10th September. A loss to Stoke at the Britannia Stadium for the second consecutive season does not make for good reading.

For such a high-priced signing, a lot of us didn't know a whole lot about Bryan Ruiz. Unfortunately, I haven't found many good information sources for the Dutch Eredivisie, but Ruiz does have a handful of Champions League and international appearances that I can pull shooting data from. A few things I was able to find:

• Has a 60-40 preference toward his left foot, but seems competent with both.

In Chicago on Wednesday night, it was another ugly showing by the Union.

In 90 minutes of play, the Union managed one shot on goal. Fortunately, Veljko Paunovic made no mistake with the shot. Recording three shots on goal in six appearances, he has now scored two goals.

With a little time away from the emotions of the match, it is perhaps easier to accept that a point on the road is a good thing (even if three points are what should be expected when the Union plays one of its games in hand against a last place team).

In the next installment of "what happened last season in the Premier League?", here are season totals on teams' defensive prowess. Much has been made of Arsenal's inability to defend well and its need to improve defense during this transfer window. But the numbers tell a slightly different story - at least in part.

One of the biggest subplots in the Philadelphia Union's 2011 season came to a head tonight: team manager Piotr Nowak officially announced after tonight's 2-1 loss to the Colorado Rapids that forward Carlos Ruiz will no longer play for the Union. The Brotherly Game has been passing along various international reports for about two months now about Ruiz and his future, and now it appears that there was, indeed, accuracy to the beliefs of some discomfort between the Ruiz and Union.

It's that time of year again when I start going through my data from last year to make sure everything is up to date and accurate before the new season begins. In the (tedious) process of coding and cleaning data sets, I try to have a little fun and benchmark a couple of things for the upcoming campaign.

It's that time of year again when I start going through my data from last year to make sure everything is up to date and accurate before the new season begins. In the (tedious) process of coding and cleaning data sets, I try to have a little fun and benchmark a couple of things for the upcoming campaign.

I thought it would be informative to compare the performance of the Union starters to those of the Union's subs in the Everton and Real Madrid friendlies. After all, much of the exciting offensive action for the Union was produced in the second half of each of those games, the highpoints being young Marfan's cheeky chip against Real Madrid and the finish of the even younger Hernandez against Everton.

You gotta love a road win, especially against a conference rival.

Sunday's emphatic 3–0 win over the Revolution—only the third time this season the Union have scored more than two goals and the fifth time they have scored more than one—puts the Union back on top of the Eastern Conference where the Union are undefeated against conference rivals with a 5–0–2 record.

Sunday's final vs Japan is going to be verrrryyyy interesting!! 2 completely different teams but with the same die hard attitude! I'm torn over who I want to win, because I'm not totally sold on the US team yet. Their style is...not so attractive, but their chemistry and attitude is immense.

Lauren Cheney will need to control the tempo in midfield if the US are to defeat Japan.