Damn lies and Statistics: La Liga Year End Stats!

It's that time of the year again. The end of the 2010-11 La Liga season and I love the numbers game. I wanted to share a few interesting stats, along with the usual suspects. So hear we go!


Stadium Attendance aka Where the atmosphere lives!: What were the top 5 stadiums that were filled to capacity and most well attended? Not the biggest or prettiest, but the most well attended (some may say the most loyal fans). Well, this may surprise you, but here is the top five.

1. San Mames, Athletic Bilbao's stadium - 40,000 seater, 19 games, 691,000 attended, 91% capacity.
2. Santiago Bernabeu, Real Madrid's arena - 80,000 seater, 19 games, 1.359.500 attended, 89% capacity.
3. El Molinón, Sporting Gijón's home - 25,885 seater, 18 games, 405,100 attended, 87% capacity.
4. El Madrigal, Villarreal's stadium - 22,000 seater, 19 games, 355,500 attended, 85% capacity.
5. Reyno de Navarra, Osasuna's arena - 19,800 seater, 19 games, 305,979 attended, 81% capacity.

Assists aka Goal Creators Who were the Top 5 players with the last passes that ended up in the back of the net?

1. Messi BAR - 17 assists in 33 games
2. Ozil RMA - 16 assists in 36 games
3. Mata VAL - 12 assists in 33 games
4. Dani Alves BAR - 12 assists in 36 games
5. Xabi Prieto RSO - 12 assists in 37 games


The Bad Boys of La Liga - Who were the top 5 players with the most Yellow Cards? Quite indicative of the most defensive and in your face teams.

1. Puñal Osasuna - 16 out of 33 games
2. Gurpegui Athletic Bilbao - 15 out of 31 games
3. Lopo Deportivo La Coruña - 15 out of 33 games
4. Ponzio Real Zaragoza - 14 out of 32 games
5. Diogo Real Zaragoza - 14 out of 33 games

The Villains of La Liga - Who were the top 5 players with the most Red Cards? More indicative of a rush of blood to the head, in my opinion.

1. Xisco Nadal Levante - 3 out of 25 games
2. Castillo Athletic - 2 out of 11 games
3. David Navarro Valencia - 2 out of 17 games
4. DeMichelis Malaga - 2 out of 18 games
5. Stankevicius Valencia - 2 out of 21 games


The Marathon Runners aka the Iron Men - Who were the players that played the most minutes on the pitch? (excluding Goalies). Impeccable athletes with very little injury problems. Quite impressive!

1. Iraola Athletic - 3,290 minutes played
2. Bruno Villarreal - 3,274 minutes played
3. Xabi Prieto Real Sociedad - 3,236 minutes played
4. Gabi Real Zaragoza - 3,229 minutes played
5. Jarosik Real Zaragoza - 3,197 minutes played


Mr. Penalty Kick - Who were the top 5 players that scored from the spot?

1. Ronaldo RMA - 8 out of 8
2. Gabi ZAR - 6 out of 6
3. Nekounam OSA - 5 out of 5
4. Diego Castro SPO - 5 out of 5
5. Tied with 4 out of 4 - Xabi Prieto RSO, Rossi VIL, Messi BAR, Luis Garcia ESP


Pichichi - Top Goal Scorers

1. Ronaldo RMA - 40
2. Messi BAR - 31
3. Aguero AMD and Negredo SEV both at 20
5. Tied at 18: Villa BAR, Rossi VIL, Soldado VAL, LLorente ATH

Ronaldo with a historic goal tally in the League.
Lots of goals scored this season in the Spanish League, for the most part.


Zamora - Least amount of Goals Allowed

1. Victor Valdes BAR 16/32 games
2. Iker Casillas RMA 32/35
3. Dani Aranzubia DEP 32/36
4. Diego Lopez VIL 38/44
5. Ricardo OSA 38/46

Valdes the clear leader, head and shoulders above the rest.


(SOURCE: DON BALON)

Forza Futbol 144: A Fantasy League

On today´s episode Elisa is joined by Laurence Alexander of Fantasy Football: La Liga, a site that helps in understanding Spain's Primera Liga through opta stats and the highs and lows of contesting Yahoo's Fantasy Football Liga competition.

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Can WAGs and team rankings provide reliable statistics?

Let me set one thing straight: I deal in stats -- cold, objective data. Anything you can think to track about a sport, I find interesting. I'm not talking about just the basics, such as how many passes were completed or who scored and assisted. I'm talking about the nitty-gritty, the kind of information you can't believe found its way onto paper. For example, Ronaldo hasn't scored (a goal) since his girlfriend, Irina Shayk, pictured more modestly here, landed the SI Swimsuit cover. Has his mind been too preoccupied for his body to perform on the pitch? I'll let you decide, but it certainly adds a story to the mix. And it's something that can be tracked.

Nothing delights me more than to think I have an original idea. I started a blog, Yahoo Fantasy Football Stats, because I couldn't find a site that covered the info I wanted. And with my passion for stats, I found ways to extract data from data sets, to highlight some arcane matter in hopes of finding perfection, that ever elusive correlation coefficient of 1.00. A stat I find unique to my site that has shown some fascinating patterns is team performance against other teams ranked whatever: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20. The implications of this one stat could influence casual fans, fantasy football managers, and gamblers alike.

Take Barcelona and their performance across the season. Now that their home winning steak is over, where are you supposed to turn for certainty, insofar as stats may be able to provide it? Would it surprise you to learn that Barca have won every match, home or away, against opposition not ranked 11-15? It's true, the three times they have slipped up this season, they've done so to teams ranked 11-15, losing at home to no. 14 Hercules in week 2, drawing at home to no. 11 Mallorca in week 6, and drawing away at no. 13 Sporting Gijon in week 23.

Coincidence, perhaps? Could be. But take a look at some other coincidences, if so:

- Athletic Bilbao have earned just 1 win but 6 losses against opponents ranked 1-5; 2 wins, 2 losses against those 6-10; 5 wins, 1 draw, and 2 losses against those 11-15; and 4 wins and 1 draw against those 16-20. The results form a clear-cut pattern of wins, draws, and losses.
- Atlético Madrid are 0-1-5 (W-D-L) against opponents 1-5.
- Espanyol have lost all five matches against opponents 1-5, but have won all six against those 6-10.
- Mallorca buck the trend against opponents 1-5, with a fairly even and respectable 3-2-3 record. But against those 6-10, they're 0-0-4.
- Real Madrid remain perfect against one set of opponents, those ranked 6-10: 9-0-0.
- Real Sociedad against opponents 1-5: 0-0-5.
- Sporting Gijon have not won a match against the lowest-ranked set of opponents, 16-20, earning 3 draws and 1 loss. Against the next highest group, 11-15, they're 1-4-1. So why might Gijon be flirting with relegation? Answer: They can't put away teams in the bottom half of the table!

The same trends occur in the English Premier League, the other league I track. Some notable results:

- Arsenal appear to struggle with opponents ranked 6-10, with a pedestrian 2-3-3 record, but they look stellar against bottom dwellers, winning 8 and drawing 1, with 0 losses.
- Chelsea have earned just 1 win in four matches against opponents 11-15.
- Fulham have lost only one match all season to a team ranked 6-10, 11-15, or 16-20. In other words, they're rubbish against the top quarter of the table, with an 0-4-5 record.
- Liverpool have the opposite problem and have lost merely once to opponents 1-5 or 6-10. They struggle with the bottom bracket of teams, apparent again recently versus West Ham, with a 2-2-4 record.
- Man City have earned 22 of 24 points against opponents 6-10.
- Man U's record against top-five oppositions, in order: WDWDW. I'd say they're in for a draw against Chelsea. Any takers?
- Tottenham, like Liverpool, struggle with bottom teams -- they're 1-1-3. But against opponents 6-10, they're the bullies of the schoolyard: 7-2-0.
- West Brom have 0 wins in eight matches against opponents 16-20, with an 0-4-4 record. Their companions in misery, Wolverhampton Wanderers, have fared about as well against the same set of opponents, with an 0-3-3 record. Are these abysmal records foreboding, in terms of the teams' prospects of avoiding relegation?

Why don't professional sports journalists track these data, if they're so useful? My guess is that it has to do with the fluctuating nature of the rankings, and to be fair, I should point out that I base rank on how things stand prior to the first match of a game week. To the skeptics out there, I will say that it's true, sometimes a team's performance against a certain set of opponents yields a hodgepodge of results. Case in point: Deportivo's record against opponents 16-20 is 2 wins, 2 draws, and 3 losses. But this only serves to illustrate the shortcomings of blind devotion to any one statistic. If Deportivo were coming up against a bottom-quarter team, how would I make a call? This is where other stats -- goal differential, home/away record of each team, last five results, and more -- come into consideration, providing a composite correlation that casts a metaphoric stone into one pan or the other . As a season plays out, the stats grow more reliable. Or at least, that's what any responsible stats-tracker goes for, picking up threads along the way and dropping others as they become less promising. For now, I'll let the jury be out on WAGs' influence on scoring (or defending), the impact of shooting a work-placement student, and the many other bizarre elements of football. One way or the other, you can be sure it won't stop me from taking note.