For such a high-priced signing, a lot of us didn’t know a whole lot about Bryan Ruiz. Unfortunately, I haven’t found many good information sources for the Dutch Eredivisie, but Ruiz does have a handful of Champions League and international appearances that I can pull shooting data from. A few things I was able to find:

• Has a 60-40 preference toward his left foot, but seems competent with both. He’ll mix a few headed shots in, mostly off of set pieces and crosses.
• Didn’t seem to create a lot of shots on crosses from out wide, but can create from central positions. That could show his versatility – he’s not necessarily just a winger.
• Generally hasn’t been used as a set piece taker. When he misses, he’s more likely to miss left or right than over the bar, so he may not have the excessive power that many teams want on free kicks. Relies more on accuracy.

Most interstingly, he really likes to shoot from long range, and he’s really great at it. Out of the 18 games I looked at, he only had one shot blocked. That’s excellent – only about 5% vs a Premier League average rate around 25%. He put 38% on target, which is slightly below average overall, but a very good rate for long-range shooters. If you take away set piece situations (where he seems to be a bit less effective), he’s up to 50% on target despite taking very difficult shots. Fantastic.

There’s been discussion of whether or not we could use him as a striker. It’s a small sample, but these numbers suggest that he’ll be extremely effective from typical midfield positions, and we should try to take advantage of that.

Lots of excellent points brought up in Timmy’s post (and the comments that followed) this past Sunday regarding possession. Our front six at West Brom looked like this:

          Dembélé - Kamara
Dempsey - Greening - Baird - Gera

Then, at home v Wigan:

          Dembélé - Dempsey
Davies - Greening - Murphy - Gera

That’s Murphy for Baird, Dempsey for Kamara, and Davies for Dempsey. L and Chopper pointed out in the comments that our forward combination of Dembélé and Dempsey helped improve our ball retention. I put together a table showing each player’s total touches on the season, total “negative possessions” (where the ball is given away – misplaced passes, shots off target, balls gone out for opposing corners, etc), and possession success rate (percentage of touches that weren’t given away):

Much of this is going to be dictated by a player’s style and tactical usage, so I don’t want to read too much into it, but it does explain some things. Clint Dempsey is a significant improvement over Diomansy Kamara. Further, Simon Davies has controlled the ball more effectively than Dempsey, making the impact even greater. It would appear that the observations were right on.

Of course, this isn’t to take anything away from those at the bottom of the list (we expect attacking players to lose the ball more often), but that’s another discussion.

Before I get started, allow me a quick introduction.  I’m Colin, who you may remember from my dormant blog Championship at Best.  Yep, I’m that stats geek.  Rich invited me to contribute an occasional piece over here, and since I haven’t really had the time to maintain a site on my own, that invitation sounded excellent.  I’m excited to share any  interesting bits of information I come up with, and that’s what I’ll try to do now.  So, on to the fun stuff!

One thing I see a lot, especially in team-oriented sports such as football, is that fans will compare their players with other players.  Most often, I see comparisons of physical attributes – height, strength, pace, sometimes even nationality.  Sometimes these comparisons work, sometimes they are easily debunked.  I’d like to see if we can come up with something totally objective, and just maybe, something that works.

A ton of my work has been borrowed from baseball writer/statistician Bill James.  One thing he came up with was the concept of a similarity score, where he compared players in several statistical categories and show us how different or similar two players are.  It’s a simple formula – start with 1000 points, and subtract the difference in each category.  The closer to 1000, the more similar the players are.  Here, I’ve taken this concept, and applied to the 2009/10 Premier League season.  Each category is weighted differently, depending on how “important” it is to that player.  For example, if Clint Dempsey makes a lot of tackles, then tackles are weighted more heavily in determining the players most similar to Dempsey.  As it is, Dempsey is a unique player, and one whose place has been under debate recently.  Here are his top ten comparables, based on last season:

It’s interesting to note that two of the players he’s competing with for a place (Gera and Duff) make the list.  This may say a lot about Roy Hodgson’s shape, structure and defined roles, but it could also suggest that the three are interchangeable.  Let’s look at the other two players in question.  Here’s Gera’s top 5:

and Duff:

It’s interesting to see that one-time rumored signing Craig Bellamy (who instead joined Cardiff on loan) was Damien Duff’s #1 comparable.  While Bellamy is obviously a major talent, his signing might have created an even greater logjam for us.  If we were to sell a player, say Dempsey or Gera, then perhaps Birmingham’s Larsson would be a suitable replacement?   At the very least, this makes it appear that he would be able to slide in and do the same job.

And I feel that that’s where this information might be most useful.  If a key player gets sold, can we find a replacement that fits in with our system?  What if Brede Hangeland moves on to a bigger club?   His comparables suggest that finding a drop-in replacement could be difficult and costly:

Similar story for Bobby Zamora:

While the top three are going to be out of our price range, we had heard rumors earlier this summer that Fulham were looking to sign Frédéric Piquionne.  And more recently, I’ve read that Roy is interested in Carlton Cole for his Liverpool squad.  I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

I expect that this formula will always have some tweaking to be done, but I think we have some reasonably accurate results already.  If my programming skills will allow it to happen, I hope have an online tool available soon to check these comparisons for any player.  I’d be happy to answer any questions or implement any suggestions, so feel free to share any ideas!