It’s perhaps too long after the weekend’s game to still be raking over the details, particularly as it was a fairly uneventful match aside from the off-the-field drama that surrounded Town’s encounter with Derby. But after the summer break from Huddersfield Town, it’s good to be back to having games to talk about, so I’ve decided to wring one last article out of this match.
Stats in football are divisive among fans, some love them and many are bored to tears. I’m hopeful that those that have clicked on this article are in the former category and are as interested as me in the little stories that emerge when you dig into the numbers produced during Saturday’s match.
Sorba Thomas’ nine key passes
It’s widely acknowledged that Sorba Thomas was the star of the show for Town on Saturday and the stats back that up too. The onet that illustrates his creative influence most clearly is that he produced nine key passes during the game, a truly astonishing number.
A “key pass” counts as a pass, cross or deflected shot that then leads to another player having an attempt at goal, including set piece deliveries, which were a consistent source of chances for Town at the weekend. While Sorba Thomas being on free kicks and corners gave him a leg up on this stat, he created plenty in open play too. No other player in the Championship came close to this number of key passes in the opening weekend.
To offer a little more context, last season the Town player that created the most key passes per 90 minutes was Carel Eiting, with 1.3 per game on average. Which goes to show that it was an unbelievable effort from Thomas and perhaps we shouldn’t expect those levels every single week.
Pearson’s passing percentage shows he’s a different type of player
There’s another interesting little story in the individual pass completion statistics for the back three. Levi Colwill had a pass completion rate of 94, Naby Sarr 92 and Matty Pearson just 71. I’m not so sure this is a sign that Pearson’s not as good as the other two but instead a symbol of how he’s a different type of player. When he arrived he paid lip service to playing out from the back in his opening interview on the club’s official channel but his history shows that he’s a no-nonsense, kick it into Row Z kind of defender. I’m not sure I’m against that either.
Pearson’s naturally a more straightforward kind of defender and when he’s in doubt he’ll boot it down field and relieve a bit of pressure on the back line. Sarr and Colwill both retained the ball more and took a more patient build up approach. Typically Pearson’s style would lead to fewer errors at the back but it’s worth acknowledging that he did make a mistake which would have cost us if Schofield hadn’t bailed him out.
Digging even further into the numbers, Pearson played almost as many long balls (12) as Colwill and Sarr combined (13). It also seems that the other two were more thoughtful and deliberate with their long-range passing, with nine out of those 13 long balls finding a minty coloured shirt. Pearson managed to find a man with just two of his 12 efforts. It’s worth bearing in mind that he’s come from a very different kind of football team, where booting the ball away from danger would have been encouraged, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to try and change this as messing around at the back was a major source of opposition goals last season.
Shot stats show goalscoring is a team responsibility
One slightly unusual stat from the weekend was that Jonathan Hogg was the only outfield player who started the game to not have an attempt at goal in this game. Almost a year ago Carlos was asked regularly during press conferences about whether he needed another striker (spoiler alert: he did then and still does now) but he would bat away these questions by saying scoring was a team responsibility. These stats show just that.
Most of the defenders attempts came from coming up for set pieces but everyone in the team at least trying to score a goal is encouraging and means that all but Hogg contributed to the respectable tally of 17 shots. The fact that only six were on target suggests that extra finishing practise should be pencilled into this week’s training timetable.
Just like every transfer window since summer 2017, Town still need another striker in my eyes as it feels like the ones we’ve got have too many question marks hanging over them. While the fact that everyone in the team is trying to get on the scoresheet is encouraging, I’d feel better if we had a striker capable of getting into double figures.
The heatmap shows Town used the right far more than the left
Given how we all raved about Sorba Thomas’ shift as a left wingback on Saturday, it’s somewhat of a surprise to see the heatmap of possession showing that the majority of Town’s play came down our right-hand side.
The coloured blobs on the heatmap below, provided by whoscored.com, show that we tended to have the ball on the rightback area most of the game. This is borne out by the fact that the two Town players with the most touches were Pearson (76) and Turton (72). I wonder if this was a deliberate tactic to try and protect the inexperienced Sorba Thomas and Levi Colwill after Covid ruled out both of our specialist leftbacks.
Whether it was tactical or natural, this tendency to have the ball over on the right-hand side of defence may be part of the reason Sorba Thomas had so much joy down his side of the field, as we regularly attempted diagonal balls to him to try and stretch Derby and get Thomas one-on-one with his fullback.
xG suggests a draw was a fair result
There are plenty of people who hate xG but I find an interesting metric that gives you an idea about the quality of chances your team have had. The fact Town had 16 attempts on goal sounds impressive but when you look at the xG data the only decent chances were the one that led to the goal and Fraizer Campbell’s late chance from close range (apologies for the number of times I’ve spelled his name incorrectly on previous posts). The other chances Town created were, from a statistical point of view, fairly speculative.
An xG of 1.68 is pretty respectable and was among the highest in the Championship last weekend. If we’re able to create that many quality chances throughout the season then we should be absolutely fine, though I’ve already said earlier that we shouldn’t expect Sorba Thomas to create so many opportunities every week.
Derby’s xG was 1.41, so a bit below Town but not by a significant margin. I suppose in theory you could round 1.41 down to 1 and 1.68 up to two and say that we should have taken it 2-1 but the draw was about right. It’s frustrating that we conceded a fairly soft goal from a set piece but Derby fans could say the exact same thing, as Naby Sarr was in acres of space for his header.
If you like reading in-depth statistical analysis then you’ll find much more on the HTAFC Statto website and Twitter account.