Stats: Win % when taking the lead + Goal types (equalizers, taking the lead, extending the lead) (1 Viewer)

Gazolba said:

It's pretty obvious that when a team scores first they are more likely to win than when their opponents score first. I'm pretty sure this would apply to any team playing any other team regardless of table position.

What I would like Esoterica to analyse is who scores next when the home team scores first, compared to the away team scoring first.
And in particular the stats for CCFC compared to other teams.
This would tell us if scoring first is a trigger to press for more goals or is it a trigger for the away team to equalize.

Click to expand...

Yes, when a team scores first they are more likely to win. In L1 last season scoring first in a game resulted, on average, in winning 69% of those games. There's also an expected discrepancy between % of games won when scoring first at home and away, although not as wide as you might think: 75.3% of home games were won scoring first vs 62.3% of away games.
You can also see how hard it is to come back and win when you've gone a goal down, which was achieved in just 11.1% of games.


When you compare the conversion rate of number of wins achieved after scoring first then our results are pretty much the average. I also added Luton's data in as the league winners. So you can see, I hope, that on the whole we don't have a big issue with winning once we score first - it could be better, but even if we were to apply Luton's conversion % (80.6% wins when scoring first) to the number of matches we scored first in, then it would only have netted us another 7 points at home and 5 points away. Those 12 points alone would still have only scraped us into the final playoff place.

Below I've attached the full 2018/2019 table that the above 'scored first' data is taken from and I've filtered it by % of matches scored first in:


For us that was 24 of 46 matches and therein lies part 1 of the issue. To challenge for autos we need to score first more often than in 52% of the games because we will score an average of 2.25 points per game when we do!

Now let's look at conceding first which forms part 2 of the issue. Our performance here was very poor. 9 points gained from a possible 60 from a losing position. Compare that with the top 6 and they are gaining many more points from losing positions and in far fewer games too.


My point remains from the previous thread this week though, that we don't score early enough in games, especially the poor teams, so teams spend too long with something to play for in matches. Take a look at the average minute our opening goal was scored in last season - the highest in the league. As a result we have the lowest % of Opening goals scored in the first half of matches:


Add that to this:

Just 14 goals extending a lead and then you really see how woeful that is compared to our rivals last season. So we open the scoring late and then fail to extend the lead more often than not. And again this season 80% of our victories are by a single goal margin. Teams are almost always in the game with us and it has a huge knock on with subs, squad rotation and tactics.

The debate to be had around all this is whether it's caused by Robins' tactics, the naivity/inexperience of our squad or just plain old poor finishing!

Raw stats all taken from League One table, stats, form and results | SoccerSTATS.com
Thread stemming from discussion here: The goalscoring debate - stats on when we score.

skyblue1991 said:

Great post!

From what I have seen we are more than capable of producing chances but currently our forwards are playing poor, hence no goal in over 6 hours of football!

I'm confident once we have a little bit of confidence in the final third then we will start picking up wins again.

Sent from my G8441 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

We certainly have carried over some of the issues of last year into this season. My issue has been for a couple of season now that we don't kill games off when on top. We still top the list of total minutes level in games, which we also topped last season too.


We've done better overall so far when conceding first, thanks to the Blackpool, Wimbledon and Doncaster comebacks but the issues with scoring goals and scoring early against the lower teams remains problematic, particularly away from home. We've only spent 205 minutes leading - only Bolton, Tranmere, Shrewsbury and Portsmouth have lead for less time and 3 of those are in the bottom 6.

Another goal-less opening 30 minutes. Still only 3 goals in the opening 30 minutes across our 14 games. It will be an extraordinary season if we are able to keep coming back from behind like we have so far!

kg82 said:

Yeah, it’s a bit worrying and hugely frustrating. The only thing is, and I know it’s just my perception, but I hate scoring early! We always seem to throw that lead away.

Click to expand...

Depends on the opposition I think. I don’t think scoring early matters as much against the better teams in terms of the affect that the early goal has on the opposition. Against a good team it's just longer for them to get back into the game. Points gained against the bottom 6 varies dramatically when we manage to score in the first half though and tells it's own story. That's what I was trying to show here: The goalscoring debate - stats on when we score.

Taken from that thread - the previous 2 seasons results against the bottom 6 when we have scored a goal in the first half: W7, L1 at an 88% win rate. Failed to score in the first half: W2 D5 L9. 11 points from 48.

Not going much better again this season either. 5 games against the current bottom 6. Scored in the first half against Wimbledon and won it. Not scored in the first half against Tranmere, MK, Southend and Bolton. W1 D2 L1. 5 points from 12.