Today we dive deeper into what happens when teams score the first goal.

Today we carry on from last weeks episode where we looked at 'How Important Is The First Goal?'

The question I asked David this week was in two parts.

1) Is there a style of play that makes you more likely to come back from conceding the first goal?

2) Could we use data to identify players who would fit this style?

As always David has gone beyond the call of duty and delivered a very precise answer...... as precise as we can be of course. As David always says, this is a 'Blunt Instrument'. The first iteration of a process that would no doubt need to be refined many times over a period of time. The point being that at least we have a process to start with, it's not random, and it's not tainted by any bias we may have for certain players that we have already formed an opinion. That can be a dangerous place to start, and likely to make us sleep walk into making a poor decision.

The numbers will carry no bias, the player is either delivering on the metrics we are testing, or they're not. If not, then they don't even make the first cut.

We expected to find that a certain style of play would help teams recover from conceding the first goal, but the numbers told us different. It wasn't the teams who were patient, played short passes to try and break down a retreating and packed defensive shape that were successful in the EFL Championship. It was the teams that got the ball forward fast and often. Turned the opposition and got the ball into the box for a strong aerially dominant striker to create chaos and goal scoring chances.

David also brings us the results of his initial recruitment searches both from a worldwide pool of players, and also from a selection purely from the leagues in the English Football League (EFL).

Ep30 Tables and Charts

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