Which European League Has The Most Shots on Target?

With so little fantasy debates to be had at the moment, with most decisions revolving around getting an XI who will start and some good bench options if needed, I decided to have a quick look at something a little different. To be honest, I mainly just wanted to test out the new box and whisker plots that are available in the new version of tableau 8.1.

I decided to use data from WhoScored and look at attacking stats from the top 5 leagues in Europe (Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1) and since we all know the importance of shots on target as an indicator of attacking performance I choose to look at this.

Learn About Tableau

A quick explanation for the uninitiated (or those who have erased their memories of high school maths), each column is a league, and each data point is a team from within that league, along the y-axis we have Shots on Target per Game. The box and whisker plot itself is made up of 5 points, the minimum which marks the lowest of the group (in this case each league) and the maximum marking the highest. The median is also marked, which is the midpoint of the data, and the 'box' is constructed from the lower quartile to the upper quartile, such that 50% of the data is within the box. This is very useful for seeing the distribution of teams within a league and for comparing leagues. Graphically, the different points marked are:

Comments on the Box Plot

I don't want to indulge in a huge piece of analysis, and would rather you make up your own mind about what can be taken from the graphic, but here's a few comments:

• The Bundesliga has the highest median shots on target with 4.9. So an average game would see 9.8 shots on target, with an expected number of goals of over 3 per game. Does this make the Bundesliga the best league? Well, we cannot answer that, but it may be the most exciting league if you believe more goals leads to a more exciting game.
• Real Madrid are likely to score the most goals across the top 5 leagues, while Dortmund, Juventus, Manchester City and PSG top the charts in their respective leagues. No surprises here, apart from the fact that Bayern don't top the Bundesliga, their impressive record can be attributed to their defensive strength however.
• Sunderland are the worst attacking team, and by some way. According to my model they might be lucky to score 30 this season in the league, on current form at least. Cardiff, Fulham, Crystal Palace and Hull don't fare much better with only 2.8 shots on target per game. These 5 teams are worse than any team across the 5 leagues with the exception of Ajaccio. The belief that the English league has strength in depth certainly doesn't hold on the offensive side of the game.
• La Liga is positively skewed more than any other league, which we'd expect with 3 brilliant teams in Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. This is at least in part to the way TV revenue is distributed in the Spanish league. Serie A is similarly skewed, but if we remove Juventus' supreme attack we actually see a cluster of good but not great attacking teams.
• The Bundesliga is also positively skewed by the presence of 3 stand out teams. It's certainly true that there is greater parity in the Bundesliga once you remove these teams though, at least from an attacking standpoint.
• The Premier League seems to be the most evenly distributed league, there are no run away teams and no teams falling far behind. There is also no cluster in the middle like we see with the Bundesliga, or towards the bottom as La Liga shows. Again, TV revenues likely play a part here, with the distribution of them being much more even across all teams than in other leagues. Does this mean the Premier League is more competitive? I'll leave that one open to debate.

If this post proves popular there's a few stats that throw up interesting box and whisker plots. There's some interesting stuff on the defensive end as well.

Update to the Player Rater Model

Also, there's a slight change to the expected points table. In selecting teams you now make your selections and click 'Apply' to apply that filter. This should be a lot quicker when you want to select or deselect a group of teams as you no longer have to wait for the viz to update with every single selection made.