I thought that it was about time I took another look at how each of the Championship clubs are performing using my scatter graphics. These are explained here if you haven’t seen them before.

Shot dominance

First of all, here is how the number of shots taken by each club compares with those they face in return. The average number of shots taken per match is on the horizontal and the average number faced is on the vertical, so bottom right (take plenty, allow few in return) is good while top left (take few, allow plenty) is bad:

Despite sitting a relatively modest 7th in the table, Reading are the division’s most dominant team: they’ve taken marginally more shots per match than Nottingham Forest and allowed over two fewer than Brighton.

Along with these three clubs, Derby and Hull complete a quintet of clubs who are more dominant than the rest, which hopefully means that we’ll be enjoying another close promotion race this season.

Charlton look to have spent the most time on the back foot, having allowed significantly more shots than anyone else, but the team to have taken the fewest shots is high-flying Burnley. We’ll see how they’ve managed this in the next graphic.

Attacking effectiveness

Now let’s look at attacking alone. The horizontal axis stays the same as in the graphic above, but now the vertical shows the average number of shots needed to score each league goal. Therefore bottom right is good (taking lots of shots and needing fewer efforts to convert) and top left is bad:

Despite taking more shots than anyone except Reading this season, Nottingham Forest have been incredibly wasteful in front of goal and haven’t scored more than once in any of their last 11 league matches.

Bolton and Preston have also struggled to convert their (much less frequent) chances and are the only clubs with a lower scoring rate than Forest. For clarity the stripes are aligned to scoring rate: the greener the stripe, the more frequently goals are arriving.

I mentioned Burnley‘s lack of shots above and we can see here that both they and Sheffield Wednesday are taking very few shots but proving very efficient at converting them. Only Fulham have been more clinical so far this season.

Defensive effectiveness

Finally let’s look at the defensive situation – basically take the above chart and replace the word “taken” for “faced” on both axes. Now top left is good – facing fewer shots and able to soak up more per goal conceded – and bottom right is bad:

While Reading have allowed far fewer shots than anyone else, only a handful of defences have soaked up fewer shots for each goal conceded (and not by much). If you follow the diagonal line up you find Nottingham Forest and Birmingham, who have shipped the same number of goals as the Royals despite having allowed around five shots more per match.

We can see from the first graphic that Cardiff have spent a lot of time on the back foot this season and here we can see that their defence has been keeping them in the top half of the table. Despite allowing around two more shots per match than the average team, only Hull and Derby have absorbed more for each goal conceded.

Despite their incredibly efficient attack, Fulham have allowed their opponents to enjoy similarly good fortune in front of goal: they and Rotherham have struggled to both prevent and repel shots.

 

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In case you missed it…

Jon Hare – creator of the legendary Sensible Soccer – is running a Kickstarter campaign to produce a modernised “spiritual successor” to the original. If you’re as excited as I am about this, you can read all about it – and back it if you so wish – here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/towerstudios/sociable-soccer

After a strong start the flow of funds has tailed off a bit – not helped by Jon’s scheduled TV appearance on Sky being cancelled in the wake of the Paris attacks – so please share this link around if you’d like to see it become a reality.