Goals created and Wins created

Like many others, I have the MCFC data set. I used it to toy with data and created two new statistics. In fact three, I'll explain later.

The main thing I tried to do is to assess the impact of a player on the season in terms of scoring opportunities and wins. So first of all, I did some computation, and selected the data I needed:
 - Appearances
 - Assists
 - Big Chances
 - Goals
 - Key Passes
 - Time Played
 - Shots

I have to say that I'm not too happy with the data set. Many events are not recorded with a name, so you have data that cannot be used when you look at player production. But I managed to do what I wanted with the data. All data are from the MCFC data set, I rely on them for accuracy.


First thing I looked at: topscorers.

Rank	Player full name	Goals
1	Robin van Persie	30
2	Wayne Rooney	27
3	Sergio Agüero	23
4	Clint Dempsey	17
5	Emmanuel Adebayor	17
6	Demba Ba	16
7	Grant Holt	15
8	Edin Dzeko	14
9	Papiss Demba Cissé	13
10	Mario Balotelli	13
11	Danny Graham	12
12	Steven Fletcher	12
13	Luis Suárez	11
14	Rafael van der Vaart	11
15	Frank Lampard	11
16	Daniel Sturridge	11
17	Jermain Defoe	11
18	Peter Crouch	10
19	Javier Hernández	10
20	Peter Odemwingie	10
21	Gareth Bale	9
22	Danny Welbeck	9
23	Steve Morison	9
24	Nikica Jelavic	9
25	Darren Bent	9

But this table doesn't really help. Van Persie scored 30 goals but what if all 30 where scored home when Arsenal already lead 3-0? Remember the data are for the 2011/2012 season, so he's still at Arsenal. It doesn't give us an idea on how much this contribued to Arsenal's succes. Peter Crouch scored 10 goals, but maybe 10 winners. So my idea was to calculate how many goals each player created and how much wins were derived from these goals.

I created a new statistic called Goals Created. The formula is simple but yet comprehensive :

                Goals Created = (Key Passes + Assists) * Chance Conversion Rate

In fact it is just Chances created * Chance conversion rate. This last value is calculated by dividing each team's total chances by the number of goals scored. This is a kind of efficiency rating. So now the top 25 goals creators:

Rank	Player full name	Goals created
1	David Silva	17
2	Robin van Persie	14
3	Juan Mata	13
4	Samir Nasri	13
5	Luka Modric	12
6	Gareth Bale	10
7	Morten Gamst Pedersen	10
8	Stéphane Sessegnon	10
9	Mikel Arteta	9
10	Rafael van der Vaart	9
11	Yohan Cabaye	9
12	Sergio Agüero	9
13	Wayne Rooney	9
14	Leighton Baines	9
15	Danny Murphy	9
16	Aaron Ramsey	8
17	Martin Petrov	8
18	Ryan Giggs	8
19	Matthew Jarvis	8
20	Emmanuel Adebayor	8
21	Ashley Young	7
22	Frank Lampard	7
23	Patrice Evra	7
24	Joey Barton	7
25	Bobby Zamora	7

Well, the picture is changing. Robin van Persi stays high, but Peter Crouch dissapears. David Silva is the leader with 17 goals created. Stéphane Sessegnon and Morten Gamst Pederson both with 10 goals created are not from top teams but are better than Wayne Rooney or Frank Lampard. I think this quite interesting, but we can go further.

By a simple formula I created, you can convert a player contribution in wins.

                  Win Created = (Goals + Goals Created) * Goal in Win Rate

The Goal in Win Rate, is simply the weight of a goal in terms of win. This helps correct for high scoring teams by reducing the weight of each goal. For teams with few wins, each goal has a higher value than teams with many wins and high scoring. 
I corrected this value to each teams real win numbers. For example for each you have 50 Wins Created when the team only won 20 games. So I kind of normalized the data, so it keeps a real meaning. I called this the Corrected Wins Created.
I think one can keep the Wins Created, because it favors Attackers and Midfielder. I'm working on the same of stats for Defenders and Keepers, and the results are likely to be negative. So when adding each players Win Created, you should find the team's real number of win. Allright enough talking, now the top 25 wins creator:

Rank	Player full name	Corrected Wins created
1	Wayne Rooney	8,4
2	Robin van Persie	7,9
3	Sergio Agüero	6,2
4	Clint Dempsey	5,5
5	Demba Ba	4,9
6	Emmanuel Adebayor	4,6
7	David Silva	4,4
8	Luis Suárez	4,1
9	Stéphane Sessegnon	4,0
10	Juan Mata	3,8
11	Rafael van der Vaart	3,8
12	Edin Dzeko	3,7
13	Papiss Demba Cissé	3,7
14	Frank Lampard	3,6
15	Gareth Bale	3,6
16	Grant Holt	3,5
17	Danny Welbeck	3,4
18	Samir Nasri	3,4
19	Yohan Cabaye	3,4
20	Peter Crouch	3,2
21	Javier Hernández	3,2
22	Mario Balotelli	3,2
23	Ashley Young	3,1
24	Nicklas Bendtner	3,0
25	Mikel Arteta	3,0

Not surprisingly, Robin van Persie is still on the top spots with 7.9 Wins Creates. But the #1 is Wayne Rooney with 8.4 Wins Created. Stéphane Sessegnon keeps a nice 9th place with 4.0 Wins Created. Demba Ba, the former Newcastle Striker has 4.9 Wins Created. David Silva, our creator has "only" 4.4 Wins Created. Clint Dempsey with 5.5 Wins Created will certainly make Fulham weaker this year because of his transfer. Mario Balotelli, despite being... Mario Balotelli has 3.2 Wins Created. Not bad when you look at his behaviour.

With all the data I collected, I created a third variable, Goal Situations Created. As I'm still working on improvements on the model, I will not give details. I based my work off the work of Bill James' Run Created formula. The results for now:

Rank	Player full name	Goal situations created
1	Robin van Persie	46
2	Wayne Rooney	37
3	Sergio Agüero	35
4	Emmanuel Adebayor	33
5	Clint Dempsey	26
6	Demba Ba	21
7	Edin Dzeko	21
8	Grant Holt	20
9	Luis Suárez	20
10	Danny Graham	19
11	Mario Balotelli	19
12	Rafael van der Vaart	18
13	Papiss Demba Cissé	18
14	Gareth Bale	17
15	Danny Welbeck	17
16	Daniel Sturridge	17
17	Frank Lampard	16
18	David Silva	16
19	Theo Walcott	16
20	Steven Fletcher	16
21	Javier Hernández	16
22	Peter Crouch	15
23	Peter Odemwingie	15
24	Jermain Defoe	15
25	Darren Bent	15

To conclude, I want to say that I enjoyed toying with the data and found some interesting stuff. I created two new statistics, Goals Created and Wins Created by using relatively easily accessible data. Unlike american sports, football (or soccer for my American readers) has only a few publicly available.