Defence Action Review

English Premier League 2022/2023

Intro

The English Premier League which was established in 1992, before was English Football Division 1, has a captivating history filled with legendary clubs, fierce rivalries, and unforgettable moments, making it one of the most celebrated football leagues globally, with more than 3 billion viewers throughout one season of competition.

A strong defense is crucial in preventing goals and securing victories. Defensive stats such as clean sheets, tackles, interceptions, and blocks demonstrate a team’s ability to protect their goal and limit the opponent’s scoring opportunities, ultimately influencing the outcome of matches.

About the Data

This review aims to know EPL Defensive statistics in the 2022/2023 campaign, both in general and per club basis, also to get know how each team pressing intensity.

EPL Teams Defensive Actions sorted by League Rank

Not all defensive data that is available online used in this review, only defensive action data such as tackle, interception, block, and clearance also PPDA data that is the result of tackle per opponent pass in their ⅔ field. Every data represents active action when defending against an opponent but not including errors on defense.

Here is definition of each parameter :

• Tackle : A tackle is defined as where a player connects with the ball in a ground challenge where he successfully takes the ball away from the player in possession
• Clearance : This is a defensive action where a player kicks the ball away from his own goal with no intended recipient.
• Block : When a player blocks a shot on target from an opposing player
• Interception : This is where a player reads an opponent’s pass and intercepts the ball by moving into the line of the intended pass
• Pass Per Defensive Action :
• count of the number of passes an opposing team’s defense makes before any defensive action such as a tackle, interception, foul, etc. is made by the team out of possession

Method

Data that used in this review is shared online on sport statistics website. After the data acquiring process is complete. The data was cleaned by removing unused row and column in Ms. Excel. After the data was cleaned and there is no missing value, the review continues to the visualization step.

Using tableau in the visualization step is really simple and user-friendly. After connecting the data in tableau, which is just done in a sec, the data dimensions and measures are automatically addressed for each data type. Dragging data into one and another shelves, perhaps, is the easiest way to get closer to the visualization that answered all the review questions. Dashboard is like a blank canvas that a painter uses to paint a mesmerizing visual, but for now it is the blank canvas for the data to be shared to inform about moments and something behind it, which the easier information from the visual in the dashboard read, the better it is. (Writer Hope this review’s dashboard is easy for all of you to read!)

This review’s dashboard can be divided into three parts to answer the goal of this review. You can access the dashboard using this link!

EPL 2022/2023 Defensive Actions Dashboard

Analysis

Total Defensive Actions in EPL

Total defensive actions in EPL last season was 43,611 actions, averaging 57 defensive actions per game. The higher the number of defensive actions, the more active the out of possession team tries to regain the possession.

Defensive Actions per EPL Team Chart

Teams with higher League Rank most likely to have less total defensive action and the team lower team attributing higher sum of defensive actions. This trend may happen because higher team tend to having more ball possession than their opponent also the more defensive actions each team have, the more likely they being attacked or lost in ball possession

Pass Per Defensive Action vs League Rank Chart

Majority of teams with lower rank (11–20) having their PPDA higher than average PPDA, 12,81, this condition tells us that lower rank teams usually have less pressure on their opponent half than the higher rank teams (1–10). The more pressing the team has, the higher chance the team recovers from losing ball possession.

Conclusions

Defensive Actions Statistics or PPDA alone cannot be used to measure how well a team is going to have a result such as a clean sheet or winning the game with low conceded goals. Chelsea and Leeds having the example that higher pressing rate cannot be the only measure to determine how good the team defending their goals. But having good defensive attributes may lead the team to the right path on winning games or even higher, the Premier League.

Limitation

• More advanced data like expected tackle won and other raw analysis data only available on paid version
• Data only Available on Summary per Team Basis not per game
• Writer knowledge limited to using simple analysis

Future Work

• Try using per game data instead of summary of season data
• Comprehend the study with wider data such as tackle won rate and defensive error
• Approach the study with more holistic analysis

Dashboard : tinyurl.com/Indra-PacmannViz

Watch Video : https://youtu.be/L_MQhFeL1Eg

Slides : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HOGHbpfPF2p8QHKDVjgJUzcvuaq4GRF0GmFGQWyEzj8/edit?usp=sharing

Credit

Data Source : https://xvalue.ai/stats/en/league/premier_league

Definition :https://www.statsperform.com/opta-event-definitions/ , https://medium.com/@buildingblocks/football-stats-ppda-and-packing-a750a0df18ef