Villa 0-0 Fulham

A freezing Saturday in the Midlands.  At times it felt as if Villa were playing battleships against Mark Schwarzer. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss.  Miss.  Miss.  Ooooh… miss.  And so on.  But in the final analysis Fulham had two shots on target to Villa’s one, so nobody can complain about us taking a point.

The two Fulham shots were from Clint Dempsey, who once again gave 130% but occasionally risked a red card in so doing.  Having been booked in the third minute he proceeded to launch himself into a series of daring but dangerous flying tackles, most of which he won, thank goodness.   He needed medical treatment at least twice, but fought on regardless.  It was some performance.

His and our first worthwhile attempt came just before half time, a bouncing ball on the edge of the Villa box that Dempsey sent spiralling towards goal with a left footed volley.  Friedel’s save was better than it looked: Dempsey and the defender were 50/50 to reach the ball; the shot came half out of nowhere.  Then in the second half some over-elaboration by the tidy but not particularly dangerous Zamora and Johnson resulted in Dempsey bearing down on goal ten yards out.  He connected with some power, but Friedel’s positioning was impeccable and he parried the shot easily enough.  Good ‘keeper.

At the other end Mark Schwarzer had a strange game.  Villa missed several clear chances, particularly a Sidwell header that went over from close range, and a far post Barry header that hit the stanchion.  Barry had another header in the second half that seemed almost certain to go in, but from four yards out he planted his effort just too near to Schwarzer and our goalkeeper scooped the ball up and onto the bar.  It was hard to know if he’d pulled off an astonishing reflex save or narrowly avoided a terrible mistake.  Both perhaps.  Other than this his work dealing with crosses was terrific.  Villa seemed to be roughing him up a bit, but our man stood his ground.  How good it is to have a goalkeeper taking charge of his area.

Villa played a 4-5-1/4-3-3 that gave them a numerical advantage in the middle of the pitch.  This was noticeable for much of the game. Fulham’s passing was stifled, the passing lanes just didn’t seem to be there, the Villa players were closing our players down well, and frequently our attacks petered out and were recycled through the back four.  It was frustrating, but better to see the side taking care of the ball than panicking into aimlessness.  There is a control about our play even when things are not going perfectly, and this is encouraging to see.   The other effect of Villa’s packed midfield was that Agbonlahor was somewhat isolated up front, which helped Hughes and Hangeland no end (Carew may have been hard to stop).  The Villa forward players are rightly considered among the most exciting in the division, but today was a midfield battle, and we just about held our own.

Two clean sheets away at two of the country’s better sides.  We don’t look like scoring away from home at the moment, but you have to consider the quality of the opposition.  We’re doing very well.

Meanwhile:

I’m not going to get all tactical, but here you see much of why we struggled.  Bullard harried away from the goal we’re attacking, no pass on, nothing to do but pass it back..

Morning!

A cold morning in South London, and a cold afternoon in Birmingham is expected:

Dark at half-time!  Weather.com only did farenheit, but that’s not warm in anyone’s language.

I’ll be back later on Sunday, so feel free to natter away in the comments of this thread.   This is going to be a real test – Villa have outstanding players all over the pitch – but it should be a good game.  COYW, etc.

Danny at Crewe

Couple of reminders of our captain’s journey to the top of English football:

here and here.

With or without you

Right, back to the serious business of using and abusing numbers.

Today my latest thinking (published here a few days ago) hit The Times, and then TiFF.  Someone rightly pointed out that I had forgotten the Schwarzer effect, or The Schwarzer Effect if we’re going to get serious about it.  Say it in Tony Gubba’s voice.  “Schvartser”.

Anyway, how big is The Schwarzer Effect?

I had to find out.

Here’s what I learned.   Our goalkeeper played 128 games for Middlesbrough in the period I could examine, from 2004 to 2008.   In that time he missed 24 games.

In the games he played the team conceded an average of 1.35 goals per game.

In the games he missed the team conceded an average of 1.42 goals per game.

That’s a dead heat really.   The only slight mitigating circumstance is that he missed a seven goal hammering against Arsenal.  Without that his deputies would have averaged only 1.17 goals against.   Now, of course, they did concede those seven goals, so you can’t just ignore it, but still.  We all have bad days.

Are we, then, to conclude that Mark Schwarzer makes no difference?  Not at all.  He seems to have made a very big difference to our team.  The number of times he’s made important (and dramatic) late claims on dangerous crosses already this season…

But no, I think this serves to emphasise a point I half made the other day, that, for the most part, single players don’t make all that much difference to a team if you have other good players available and playing well in a good system.  It’s a theory that is sure to be tested as the season goes on, but I think it’s sound.   Arsenal managed without Thierry Henry, for example.

Final note:  did you see that the Official Site had an interview with Jimmy Bullard about how the opposition can’t score when Fulham are in possession?    I appreciate that this is not the world’s greatest ever insight, but I did make the same point two days ago.   Could it be that Jimmy’s reading?   Of course not, but still, made me wonder.  Actually, if you are employed by Fulham Football Club in any capacity and are reading this, please do drop me an email to say hello.

Roy on video.  Early on he uses the word “filip”. Fantastic.

Other news:  Ed Smith has retired from cricket.   Interesting man, and a fine example of why I go on about luck in sport so much.

There are countless formulas for pressing flowers

Rats, no time for what I wanted to type, that will have to wait for tomorrow. So here’s some music:

Brilliant!

And look, there’s Pat Smear as a secondary guitarist.   Good article in an old Observer Music Monthly about The Germs, a 70s LA Punk band that Smear played in.  Have a read.

Meanwhile, I put my Hangeland/Zamora thing up on The Times website, slightly edited to remove basketball references.  I tread a fine line over there as it is without talking about the wrong sports altogether.

Dan at Hammyend.com has pointed me to a story he thinks we’ll like, about an African team formed from Kenya’s slums.  I haven’t had a look in detail yet, but trust Dan’s judgement.   Have a read.

Virgin have made Mark Schwarzer their player of the week (says their marketing man who emails me trying to send traffic there).

Finally, one for our American readers:  our friends at SoccerPro have a sale on for Thanksgiving.

* Orders Over $50 Gets $10 OFF
* Orders Over $100 Gets $20 OFF
USE COUPON CODE – THANKS2008

The First XI

———–Hodgson————

Hodgson-Sanchez-Hodgson-Sanchez

Coleman-Coleman-Sanchez-Coleman

——-Hodgson-Hodgson——–

Discuss.

Heart Shaped Rocks

I meant to mention this the other day, but the local paper a couple of weeks ago mentioned that our manager is a huge Jackson Browne fan.  Is that news?  I don’t know.

It also mentions the JP Donleavy thing.   I mentioned – I think – that when I met Roy at the fans’ forum I got him to sign my copy of Schultz.  He said he was re-reading Donleavy.  I stood there, dumbstruck.

It’s worth noting that Donleavy has (had) a tremendous beard.

Anyway, it occurs to me for such an interesting man, we know little about Roy Hodgson.

Little to declare tonight.  I am tired and there is no news.  I am, however, going to Villa park on Saturday, which will be nice.  I like it there.

Territorial missings

It pays to keep up with other sports as sometimes there are insights to be gleaned about our own.  To whit, today I was reading an online chat about basketball, over at baseballprospectus.com.

Tony (Brooklyn, NY): What % of defense is an individual skill, and what
% is knowing where you’re supposed to stand and lifting your hands over
your head when the guy shoots?

I’m not sure how to answer because knowing where you’re supposed to
stand is a skill in my book (and a valuable one at that). The more
interesting question to me is what percentage of defense is individual
ability and how much of it is team system/coaching. My answer to that is
as high as 60/40 and as low as 40/60. Then again, the Spurs being 17th
in the league in Defensive Rating might convince me to increase that
number.

This is very relevant isn’t it?  People are spending a lot of time talking about how good Brede Hangeland has been this year – and he has – but how much of this is him and how much is coaching?  I’d be willing to bet that more of it is coaching than almost anyone would guess.  When you think about it, we have a watertight back four consisting of:

a player who couldn’t get much of a game at West Ham, and who was largely seen as a fun but accident prone right back
a player who has always been quietly effective, but who many fans wanted to replace this season
a player who, while imposing, was by no means infallible when he arrived at the club
a player who, while generally handy, has never been enormously well thought of in this country, failing to stick at both Spurs and West Ham.

These are all good players, but until this season, nobody would have expected them to have made up a watertight unit that is among the stingiest in the division.  Sure, they have improved, but I’m sure that much of it is coaching.  As I’ve said before (and I think I got this from Brian), defensive coaching is like baking, where there is a right way to do things and you generally stick to the recipe.   Roy had Finland conceding under a goal a game in Euro 2008 qualifying; this is not a coincidence.

And neither is our inability to score.   One thing that is slightly frustrating on the message boards is people saying “the defence is playing great, but the forwards aren’t doing their bit”.  The two are not unconnected.  Only the very best teams can be super-effective at both ends of the pitch.  The rest of us must strive to be as good as we can at one end and strive to do our best at the other.  Fulham’s play is not massively defensive, in that we do look to play when we have the ball, but our defensive work does require the full commitment of the entire team (while the attack usually only gets 2-3 players).  This being so, when we win the ball back we rarely have a numerical advantage.  We do well in possession, but very rarely will you see Fulham attacking opponents with a numerical advantage.   We are set up not to concede.  This makes our defenders look very good and makes our forwards look less effective than they are.

Another point covered in the basketball discussion is the notion of ‘tempo’.  I looked at this last year, but what it means is this:  if a team has the ball for half an hour and scores 5 goals, they are more efficient in possession than a team that has the ball for 45 minutes and scores 5 goals.  This is regarded as one of the great ‘hidden’ numbers in basketball; if a basketball team attacks quickly and scores 100 points they may not be better at attacking than a team that attacks slowly and scores 90.  But in the book people will see 100 and 90 and make a simple judgement on the relative merits of the two teams.  Which might not be correct.

In football this is most relevant to us as a defensive unit.  If we have the ball we are not defending.  If we have the ball and play within a pre-defined framework that means we are in good positions when we lose the ball, we will not be under that much pressure.  These two points are important distinctions between this year’s team and last year’s team.  Last year’s team could not keep the ball, so spent longer defending.  If you spend an hour defending you are more likely to concede than if you spend 45 minutes defending, right?   And when we do have the ball we are careful with it, we don’t overcommit, and when we lose it our players are very quick to slow down opposing attacks.  And as noted, Hodgson has the defenders themselves set up perfectly too.  Result: much better defence.  Paintsil, Hughes, Hangeland and Konchesky are under a lot less pressure – or are under a better sort of pressure – than would be the case were we not so well coached.

I’m not trying to take anything away from the way our defence has played this year.  Clearly they have been outstanding.   But it is important to realise that they have been put into a situation that is strongly geared towards their success.  They still have to do the job – and they have – but this is a team thing, and sometimes it seems unfair that the team’s attacking players are getting grief when the team is not constructed with them in mind.  Which makes the Johnson and Zamora partnership all the more impressive to me.

Telegraph fun

Other notable stats:

Aaron Hughes 3 tackles
John Paintsil 6 tackles
Danny Murphy 5 tackles
Jimmy Bullard 66 passes (54 accurate)

Pretty good.  We were winning the ball higher up the pitch than Liverpool, which reflects our first half ascendancy and our standing tall in the second half.   Nice.

Density interesting too: look at how Johnson played a lot deeper than usual.  The commentator said that he spent some time man marking Alonso.  So that would be part of it.   But also he did a hell of a lot of chasing back.   Good man.

Roy’s post match interview

Here.

Liverpool 0-0 Fulham

This morning Liverpool were top of the league.  They had already beaten Manchester United at home and (famously) Chelsea away, but today they could not find a way through a Fulham team that defended exceedingly well.  A fantastic point for the whites.

The Fulham back six had a stormer, collectively and individually.  The team unit worked hard and did all it could, but against the top teams there will be times when a system can be outmanouevered, at which point individuals need stand tall – literally and figuratively – and save the day.   Our defence did so on several occasions.

Mark Schwarzer’s contributions were vital. In the first half Liverpool, somewhat fortunately, found a way through the defence, and there was Robbie Keane, in front of goal with only Schwarzer to beat.  The forward hesitated but Schwarzer certainly didn’t, hurtling out and charging down Keane’s shot when a goal seemed all but certain.  In the second half Schwarzer saved the day again, clawing out a drive from Dirk Kuyt that looked like it was heading for the top corner.   In front of him John Paintsil made a number of telling last-gasp interventions and stood firm in the face of a prolonged assault down the Liverpool left.  To his left Aaron Hughes was similarly impressive, nullifying Fernando Torres and making half a dozen telling tackles.  Hangeland and Konchesky did their jobs impeccably as well. Danny Murphy had an off day with the ball, but tackled like he has never tackled before.

In the first half we gave as good as we got.  Liverpool’s passing was ragged, while Fulham moved the ball incisively and enjoyed long periods of possession.  It can be hard to find shooting room against Liverpool, but twice Fulham players could have scored.  First Johnson scuffed an a tricky volley following good work by Bullard, then Zamora accelerated down the right, stopped and started and left Mascherano on his backside, cut inside, and weighed up his options.  Bullard had pelted into the box but checked his run and dropped back to the edge of the area; Zamora saw him and played a fine ball infield; Bullard’s strike screamed towards the top corner; Reina just flicked it over the bar.  Close.  Great work from Zamora, whose intelligent build up play is getting more impressive each week.  He had a stormer today.

In the second half Liverpool did the sensible thing and brought on Xabi Alonso.  This was disturbing, but the defence held their nerve and kept their concentration. Considering the quality of the opposition, they were not unduly troubled.  The second half seemed to last an hour, but Liverpool could find no way through.   Yes, this was as good a point as we’ve won this season.

Bobby Zamora will have his revenge on Seattle

Or perhaps not. But I have been listening to In Utero a lot today and by jove it’s a fine album.  Chopper, one day we shall have to engineer a situation in which Nevermind and In Utero go head-to-head in some kind of album battle.   My money would be firmly on the latter.

And so much for that.  The team play Liverpool tomorrow, and it is going to be very difficult.  Here’s the data on Liverpool this year:

The trick with Liverpool is that they don’t let you shoot.   And generally speaking, when you do manage to shoot you’re under a lot of pressure because you’ve got Javier Mascherano in your face.   Look at the above.  Until Bolton last week (and I’m going to guess that someone important wasn’t playing*) only Chelsea had got into double figures for shooting in a game against them.  It’s bloody hard.

How does this affect us?  Well this year we haven’t taken advantage of our shooting chances, which either suggests that the law of averages is about to turn in our favour or that we’re not going to score.   We shall see.  But a lot of Fulham fans seem quite optimistic, an optimism I share.  Perhaps it’s because Steven Gerrard is out – that helps, although Fernando Torres is due to play – or perhaps it’s a reaction to the recent good form.  Who knows?   An intriguing game awaits us.

*nope, Alonso and Mascerano both played

Nothing to do with Fulham: Mirsad’s football site

Weird one this.  We get a million link requests and usually I’m afraid I just ignore them.  It feels a bit rude, but you’d be surprised at how many emails I get like this.  But I got an email tonight from Mr Mirsad Hasic who runs Soccer Training Guide, and maybe you might want to wander over.

At first glance it looks like any other site, lots of google ads, nothing out of the ordinary.   But dig a little deeper and you find that Mirsad has created page after page after page after page of writing, mainly coaching ideas, on the great game.  English isn’t his first language, but it’s fine for what he’s doing, and his love of football really shines through.   He clearly cares a great deal about the game, and is spending his time writing about it.    Good on him.  So yes, Soccer Training Guide.  Have a look.

Half on this subject, the great Adam Spangler was pondering the absence of a New Yorker for Football type site recently.   I know where he’s coming from, but as he says, where are you going to get the time for that?  There might be a budget for it over here, but most football fans aren’t going to be interested in long essays about the game.   Even Adam’s amazing piece on Clint Dempsey barely got a murmur when I posted it on TiFF.  A couple of “wow, didn’t know thats” and then the usual suspects decided it was a good time to remind us that they didn’t rate the player.  Well yes, fine, but what about the writing?  What about that writing?!  Frustrating isn’t the word.

What is there?  We have When Saturday Comes, but their longest pieces are two pages, the magazine seems to be thinner every month (if not literally then certainly in terms of worthwhile content).   World Soccer is a serious magazine, but they’ve recently dumbed down in an attempt to stay relevant.   The world demands shorter, bite-size chunks of everything now.    I know Italy has some serious football writing, but I can’t read it.  France has l’Equipe every day and France Football twice a week, but while these are ’serious’ publications, there’s no in depth reporting of the sort Adam’s talking about.

Dunno.

Any good sites I should know about?  Football sites that are worth a good look.  Not news sites, I guess I’m just wondering where else you all go for football reading.

Anyway, I have now been reminded that it’s late.  Twice.   Best be off….

Thursday music mugwamp

Oof!  Seriously.  Oof!

USA beat Guatamala 2-0 and Clint didn’t travel.  So that’s good.

Not much else to declare.  Liverpool away Saturday.  They’re top of the league and all, so this’ll be one of those “do your best” games.   We went last year and had the bewildering experience of watching a Kuqi/Healy strike partnership try to take on the tightest defence in the Premiership.  Looking back I don’t know why that didn’t strike me as being strange at the time.   Now it seems almost unpossible.  I mean… well, we’ve all moved on haven’t we?

That’ll be me for now then.   Enjoy your Thursday.

Bit late on this, but this is a great read from Jonathan Wilson.  It talks about tactics and how different approaches lead to different matchups and therefore different sets of exploitable situations.     I urge you to read it, and urge you to pick up Wilson’s book, “Inverting the Pyramid”, preferably from Crockatt & Powell.   Any readers of this blog would enjoy that.  You should also buy Musa Okwonga’s “A Cultured Left Foot” and David Goldblatt’s “The ball is round”.

Feel it

Just read the following in David Goldblatt’s monumental “The Ball is Round” (it’s almost a thousand pages long, which is why I’ve referred to it as work in progress over so many months):

Touch is everything, from the spine tingling, hair raising reflex that football brings to the back of the neck, to the soft precision pressure that brings a high swirling ball to a stop.  Johan Cruyff would judge the quality of a shot or a pass by its timbre.  His team mate Gerrie Muhren hated high winds because ‘You have to hear the ball during a game.  You can hear from the sound it makes on the boot where the ball is going, how hard, how fast.  If there is a big wind you are angry with the ball.  You kick the ball but it doesn’t listen to you.’  It is amazing that they could hear so much, high winds or not, for football’s crowds have not merely cheered and booed and sung, chanted and roared.  As Arthur Hopcraft put it: ‘The sound of a big football crowd baying its delight and its outrage has no counterpart.  It is the continuous flow of football that excites this sustained crescendo.’  That flow is based on motion, on the continuous making and breaking of patterns and spaces that so dazzled the man from The Times* under floodlights; no still photograph, no graphic, no painting can do justice to this.

*he’d mentioned a Times correspondent at the start of the chapter

Bit of a ‘wow’ moment for me, that.  Isn’t this what football’s all about?  I remember last year Jamie saying how he’d heard the ball hitting the net at Eastlands when Diomansy Kamara scored.   It must have been an astonishing moment.   The flow, motion, making and breaking of patterns: this is what draws us isn’t it?  The almost infinite variety, knowing that of all the hundreds of possessions, only one or two will count, but being transfixed nevertheless.   True, I’m guilty of selective memory here – it wasn’t long ago that Fulham forwards were there to try to control bouncing balls or to head on high punts – but the stuff we’re seeing now is bloody entertaining isn’t it?

Aesthetically pleasing too.   Players like Simon Davies aren’t just good players, they’re good to watch.  There’s a natural athleticism, a fluidity of movement that makes their work interesting.  Dempsey is the same, and Murphy’s economy of movement in his new role is fascinating to study.  Bullard and Johnson are less fluid, more busy in their running style perhaps, but they’re good to watch too, magnetic sometimes.  Zoltan Gera makes me laugh:  a friend of mine suggested that Gera runs like a marionette, and I can see that.  But he has his moments too, those surging tackles or those surprise soaring headers.   All good stuff.   Easy to like this team Roy’s assembled isn’t it?

England:  sadly Jimmy wasn’t required by England tonight, but hopefully he had a nice trip.  Watching Carrick and Barry out there may have been instructive.    They looked pretty good whenever I was watching.

Trying again (pretending to be Andy Gray)

Alrighty, we conceded another goal on Saturday, so let’s have a look and see what we think of it:

Conclusion:  probably Spurs got through us a bit too easily there, but they played their hand to perfection as the move developed.   Looking again, the key seems to be Jenas beating Bullard and attacking a space that Murphy had just vacated to cover infield (before he realised Jenas was beating Bullard) and that was not watched by Paul Konchesky (who had been attacking).

This meant that Jenas could keep running until he half-encountered Brede Hangeland.  Drawing Hangeland was one thing, but Aaron Hughes had (rightly) followed Roman Pavlyuchenko so John Paintsil was left on his own in the middle, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.   He really did have to close down Bentley, it was just a question of whether he might have somehow been able to do this while also keeping an eye on Fraizier Campbell.  If he erred in his positioning it wasn’t by much (that’s how I see it anyway), it’s just that by now the defence was so broken we didn’t have much chance of salvation if Spurs played the attack well, which Bentley and Campbell certainly did.

So no real finger pointing this time, although in retrospect Bullard might have been a bit cleverer in stopping Jenas, by fair means or foul.   After that the only thing that might’ve saved us would’ve been Dempsey or Murphy getting back, but as you can see they were both 10 yards behind the attack.  Ho hum.

Interested to hear others’  views here, it looks like a couple of mistakes growing into something bigger through circumstances and good attacking play to me.

Calling America (nothing to do with Fulham)

Dear American readers

I need to borrow $5.94!

If anyone out there can think of a way to retrieve this ‘album’ then send it to me electronically then I’ll happily send you PayPal for the full amount (more maybe: you could make 6c or more on the deal).   As it stands the LimeWire store is US only, so it’s not possible for us Yurpeans to buy owt from there.  And it’s the only place the songs are available.  Sooooo…..

If this is illegal then I apologise and retract my request.

Enormous thanks to anyone who might be able to help!

Rich

Bullard called up again

Here.

We get down on him when he doesn’t play well, but we all know that an in-form Jimmy Bullard is a huge asset to the Fulham team.   It’s sometimes hard to keep track of how good a player like him is:  first he’s clearly underrated, then his game slips subtly and at once formerly underrated player becomes overrated by fans but is still underrated by the media, then he gets called up for the England squad and he’s overrated by the media and the fans, then he plays quite well again and maybe becomes underrated again.

Anyway.  Well done that man.  I didn’t even mention him in Saturday’s report, but he had a good game didn’t he?  Some cracking shots, did everything we could’ve asked him to, with and without the ball.

Pictures and stuff

You won’t see this again. Danny “centre-back” Murphy.

Is John Paintsil moonwalking here?

What’s happening here?  On the left it looks like the ball’s flying, on the right several players have fallen over one another.  All in all it may be my most action packed photograph ever.

Ah, beautiful.

Closer each day

I’ve suggested before that I don’t think there’s much different about the way we play home and away.  I suspect we play for a win at home, and while we probably do away too, there’s half an eye on a draw too.  Put another way, if we’re drawing at home we would usually try to turn it into a win;  if we’re drawing away we’d usually be happy to protect that point.

As far as the team is set up, I have long been fascinated by one of the Telegraph’s stats:  where on the pitch we win the ball, on average.   Think of it this way:  if we are camped in the opponents’ half we’ll generally win the ball higher up the pitch; if we defend deep or play a counter-attacking game we’ll generally win the ball on the edge of our own box.

The decision of where to defend is partly made in advance and partly a reaction to circumstance.  The conventional wisdom is that the higher up the pitch you defend the better, because winning the ball nearer the opponent’s goal gives you less far to travel with it, and you’re further away from your own goal too, so less at risk.   Against that, if you defend too high up you leave massive gaps behind you, which can be very dangerous if the opponents either have pace up front, or are given time in midfield.  We saw Bolton try to push up against Liverpool at the weekend, but they didn’t close down Liverpool’s midfielders, who picked them off with throughballs all game.   Generally you adopt a compromise, a position that theoretically gives you the best of both worlds.

All of which is leading up to a quick analysis of where we’ve been defending this season.

It’s not the be all and end all, but we can see a degree of consistency here.  We – on average – win the ball 25 metres from our own goal, and opponents win the ball 28 metres from their goal.   In other words, we’ve been very slightly on the back foot this year.   Generally speaking this is a good indicator of territorial advantage:  you can see that Arsenal really pegged us back (as did Portsmouth, which surprised me a little) and that the highest line we’ve played this year was against Bolton.

Again, there’s noise here:  it’s an average of where the ball is won, which can be distorted by all sorts of things, but the further up the pitch you win the ball the higher the number, so it does work as a proxy for how deep you played in a game.  And guess what?  We’re the same both home and away.  We lose the ball a bit further away from the opponents’ goal away from home, which is presumably a slight lessening in attacking intent, but the overall pattern is remarkably consistent game by game.

No great revelation here, but something to ponder.