So after getting distracted with not nearly as interesting, real life work, I’m back to provide a look at Melbourne Heart’s passing statistics for this year (thanks go to the helpful people over at the Foxsportsstats.com.au website which has a ridiculously comprehensive database for every game played this year). Passing can be broadly broken down into two statistical categories in football, how much passing you’re doing and how well you’re doing it (this is obviously a gross simplification, but it’ll do for now). These stats are typically a function of the position played, the system being implemented and the ability of the player making the pass, defenders playing the ball around the back four are going to have a higher raw efficiency rating then an attack midfielder whose trying to play a pin point ball under pressure. It was routinely lamented that there was no outlet for Melbourne Heart this year and that a lot of ball was being played around the back four then being hit fairly long, often rather aimlessly, would this be reflected in the statistics of the year as a whole?
Figure 1 – Passing activity (the function of number of passes made per minute on the field) vs passing efficiency (expressed as a percentage). The players have been grouped into their positions (legend) and then noted on the main graph, given that several players played across a number of positions this year, they were classified into where they played most of their football. Players who played less then 90 minutes this year (Mauk, Kaya and Grella) have been excluded from the results.
This graph, exemplifies a few hallmarks of Melbourne Heart’s season, sadly most of them aren’t very positive.
Firstly Josip Tadic, he didn’t get a lot of the ball this year, if we extrapolate his passing activity out across the whole game he averages under 15 passes per 90 minutes of football. Now while this isn’t the total touches he has on a game, this is the amount of passes he attempts in a game, combine this with his relatively low efficiency he completes, on average 10 passes per 90 minutes of football, given he played most of the season as a lone striker, for him to be completing only 5 passes a half is going to make it very difficult for him to be a productive member of the Melbourne Heart team, while the efficiency is quite low (which is likely due to constantly playing balls under pressure and playing at the top of the line) the fact that he’s given such a lack of opportunity to make these passes speaks of a larger break down across the entire team, he simply wasn’t afforded of the ball to get involved in the game, given the confidence based nature of a striker such as Josip, this is likely the cause of much of his struggles this year.
A good way to look at the differences between the first and and second halves of the season is to compare the work of our fullbacks, promisingly Walker and Mitchinson, our replacements for mid season departures Behich and Marrone show that they reached a very similar level of efficiency across the year, what’s more telling is the number of passes each player was making per game. Given that Behich especially loved to tear forward and get involved in attacking set-ups, we’d love to see the amount of passes he was making in a game being higher then the other fullbacks, sadly, this isn’t the case. Jeremy Walker was making, on average, 10 more passes a game then Behich, given that the average from our other fullbacks (Coyne and Mitchinson, who provide a similar number of passes per game to either Marrone or Behich) during Walker’s time on the pitch isn’t noticably lower (indicating a preference to use Walker) its probably noting something we already new, our defenders were busier in the second half of the season, however the passing efficiency isn’t any lower from Walker, when trusted with more of the ball, he did well, leading to another big tick in the young man’s development as a first team footballer.
The defenders are easy to interpret, Colosimo and Vrankovic were very much stay at home central defenders who had good passing efficiency and saw a lot of the ball, the more expansive Gerhardt saw slightly less of the ball, but had an inflated efficiency due to the system employed this year.
This graph also reveals quite a bit about our system this year, it shows that the attacking midfielder’s who were used centrally (Fred, Kalmar and Garcia) saw a lot more of ball this year then those who were predominantly used out wide (Williams and Mebrahtu), given the style of our wide players, this isn’t entirely un-expected, or a bad thing.
So in terms of an overall team dynamic, who had the best rating (over a 90 minute period) for keeping the ball safe and who was doing a bit more butchering then we’d like to see? Interesting the three chief culprits for misplacing the ball are Garcia, Germano and Macallister, who on average missed 10 per 90 minutes (although we’ll give a bit of leniency to Macallister who was often thrown on in the last few minutes in an attempt to get a goal, but his efficiency was easily the worst of anyone who took to the park for Melbourne Heart this year). However seeing Germano and Garcia up there is somewhat surprising, both were seen to have decent seasons, both got a lot of the ball for midfielders, but were perhaps guilty of trying to overplay possession, especially when Germano is compared to his defensive midfield counterpart in Thompson.
And who ends up with the chocolates? Eli Babalj is well worth a mention, people said he wasn’t the same player when he came back from his sojourn overseas, however he received little of the ball and on average, misplaced just 3.5 passes per 90 minutes of football, quite a good achievement considering he was part of a side which was struggling at the end of the year. Garrucio and Duganzic also were very tidy in possession, both likely due to the limited amounts of minutes played by either, however its good to see Garrucio with the highest efficiency of any attacking minded midfielder this year, even if he wasn’t seeing a lot of the ball. My tip for the most important ball player this year goes to Matt Thompson, who was maligned through a lot of the year and let go at the end of the season, he misplaced 6 passes a game, however he was making 49 passes a game, the most of any player this year and a full 8 more then his defensive midfield counterpart, Jonathon Germano. So while many people might have been happy to see the back of Thommo, someone is going to need to step up and make a lot more passes on a game to game basis, because regardless of what was thought of the man, an 87% pass completion rate is nothing to be scoffed at.
All Heart 