As usual, Julian de Guzman was the talking point after yesterday’s 1-0 loss to Columbus. The midfielder is a target of many – most, probably – TFC fans who need to find a scapegoat to pin their frustrations on.
Yesterday, de Guzman lost the ball near midfield creating the counter that Columbus used to score the game’s only goal. Where I was in the stands, there was an immediate explosion of anger directed at him. That there were at least two other comical errors by the Toronto defense after the giveaway was irrelevant to the fans. It was de Guzman’s fault.
In fact, the entire loss was being hung on him. Every time de Guzman touched the ball the complaining started. Even if he actually made a positive contribution to the game, he was at fault in their mind.
As this played out I was involved in a long debate with a friend I watch most home games with (Hi Sonja!) about whether the fans were right to target him.
Her position was that fans need to be inspired by players that are in important positions. By virtue of his contract – and the attention that brings him – de Guzman was held up as a key part of TFC by the club and, clearly, he wasn’t inspiring many fans, she said.
I argued that the fans were blinded by one or two isolated moments a game where de Guzman made a mistake and thus were unable to see the multitude of moments where he made contributions that were above and beyond the typical MLS player’s ability.
She countered that it was impossible to take passion out of a fan’s experience and that trying to use logic to counter passion was not likely to be effective.
She wasn’t wrong. Fans have every right to express their frustrations at a player they feel isn’t meeting expectations. Where our opinion differs is in the impossibility to sway opinion.
In he post Bill James sports world many fans are as passionate about looking for evidence of a player’s performance as they are in screaming at the stadium. The two solitudes of stats-grinding geek, and drunk, rowdy super fan are no longer separate. They are the same. It’s all forms of obsession.
With that in mind I set out today to create a measure that could be used to compare de Guzman to the other players on the pitch yesterday. The numbers are unlikely to stop many of those that blame de Guzman for the team’s struggles. However, they might allow us to have a more informed discussion about his – and others' – play.
Below the jump, a look at the numbers
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]I attempted to create a measure that would put a value on how effectively a player utilized possession. As with any statistical evaluation, it’s only a partial look at a player’s performance and is not intended as black and white evidence that one player is better than another.
Since we are looking at de Guzman’s play in particular, I chose to look at a factor that is more important to a defensive midfielder than it might be to other positions on the field. For instance a defender may score high on this measure, but struggle in other areas that are more important for a defender. That doesn’t mean the findings here are irrelevant to defenders. Rather, they are simply less important than they are for midfielders. We will provide data for all outfield players that played in yesterday’s game.
I have created two statistics. Positive Outcome Possessions (POP) and Possession Effectiveness (PE).
POP is found by taking the total amount of possessions a player had in the game (i.e. how many times he had the ball in all situations) and subtracting the amount of times the player lost possession (failed passing attempt, or a turnover resulting from a challenge).
The POP is a measure of how involved a player is in the game. However, it doesn’t necessarily illustrate how effective he is. A player with a high amount of lost possessions is arguably less effective than a player who has less of the ball, but does more with it. So, I took the POP number and divided it by the amount of touches he had. That number is the player’s Possession Effectiveness.
All data can be found on MLSsoccer.com in the game reports. Click on the Chalkboard tab. I encourage readers to have a look at the raw data there and to make suggestions about how we can make this measure better.
The numbers are below, presented without comment. I have excluded players that had less than 20 total touches:
TFC
POP -- PE
- HARDEN - 42 -- 67.7%
- De GUZMAN - 48 -- 67.1%
- DUNFIELD - 29 -- 64.4%
- KOEVERMANS - 17 -- 62.9%
- MORGAN - 31 -- 49.2%
- ECKERSLEY - 45 -- 47.3%
- JOHNSON - 26 -- 45.6%
- PLATA - 17 -- 44.7%
- SILVA - 17 -- 39.5%
- SOOLSMA - 10 -- 30.3%
Columbus
POP -- PE
- MARSHALL - 30 -- 71.4%
- GEHRIG - 39 -- 68.4%
- VARGAS - 18 -- 64.2%
- GAVEN - 31 -- 58.4%
- MIROSEVIC - 43 -- 57.3%
- MIRANDA - 33 -- 52.3%
- ANOR - 22 -- 52.3%
- FRANCIS - 23 -- 38.9%
- RENTERIA - 11 -- 34.3%
- URSO - 15 -- 34.0%
As stated, I will not speculate on any conclusions from these numbers. However, I encourage readers to have a look at this and to offer your conclusions and suggestions to make the measure better. Later this week we will expand on this and take an even deeper look at de Guzman’s play.