Is It Time To Bench Jamie Carragher? - originally posted on Soccerlens.com
Carragher without a doubt has been one of the most reliable and consistent players for Liverpool
over the past decade. The veteran defender even now is brilliant with his abilities, however the
major concern is that with his age the errors are increasing as well.
A few days ago, I wrote about different ways of measuring a team's performance - either in absolute
or relative terms. Relative metrics are useful if we are interested in drilling a little deeper
into what players or teams are able to do, given the resources they have or in relation to some
other event on the pitch, not simply whether they do a lot or a little (like scoring or possessing
the ball).
Despite what Cesar Luis Menotti may want you to believe, football is a game of offense
and
defense. So as a follow up to my recent post on last season's offensive performance in the big
leagues, I thought it was only fair to defenders and goalkeepers to take a look at who has been
doing a great job keeping the opposition at bay.
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.
I have occasionally written about defensive production in terms of how many goals, shots, or shots
on goal teams allow in a match. One of the best of these measures, so far as I can tell, is whether
a team allows their opponents to place
accurate shots on goal. If you think about it,
allowing an opponent to shoot is one thing - anyone can sling the ball in the general direction of
the other side - but only accurate shots have a chance of actually crossing the goal line.
Which teams are the worst (and best) defensive teams in the big leagues of European soccer? Let's
take a look at defensive performance so far this year - since it's roughly the halfway mark
everywhere, these numbers should be more or less comparable across teams and leagues (assuming that
the leagues are similar in important ways, which we know to be sorta true from previous analyses
I've posted here .
