I'll start with a question: Which one of Total Shots or Shots On Target has the stronger correlation with a team winning a football game?
Chelsea QPR
26(2) | Shots (on goal) | 7(3) |
13 | Fouls | 8 |
14 | Corner kicks | 2 |
1 | Offsides | 4 |
64% | Time of Possession | 36% |
1 | Yellow Cards | 1 |
0 | Red Cards | 0 |
2 | Saves | 2 |
Method
I have used every result this current season and the 3 seasons previous to that and looked at games that have solely been declare a win, thus ignoring drawn games (23%ish). I have only used fixtures that have resulted in a win as we are solely looking to see if the team that wins the Total Shots battle (north of 50%) wins or loses the fixture. I have done likewise for Shots on Target.
Sample Size
Games | |
2009/10 | 380 |
2010/11 | 379 |
2011/12 | 380 |
2012/13 | 208 |
That's 1347 games of data to play with. A healthy enough sample size indeed, although I will return to this topic once I have the time to research seasons past.
For this specific exercise we need to eliminate draws. Why? We are solely interested in a teams ability to win the total shots battle or the shots on target battle and how that correlates with the wining, or losing, the fixture.
Below are the four seasons of data I have collected, with draws subtracted:
draws | remaining |
96 | 284 |
111 | 268 |
93 | 287 |
60 | 148 |
987 games is our reduced sample size. let's begin.
Total Shots Record
We have the aforementioned 987 games sample now, so this is what we are looking at: Did the team that won the total shots battle win or lose that individual fixture?
Games in which the total shots battle was tied are naturally exempted from the win or loss count and are listed in the far right column.
shots won | shots lost | shots tied | |
2009/10 | 184 | 85 | 15 |
2010/11 | 165 | 97 | 6 |
2011/12 | 175 | 102 | 10 |
2012/13 | 97 | 47 | 4 |
Clearly, when examining our 987 fixtures that have resulted in a win or a loss for a team, we see that the team which records a clear majority of total shots wins more games than it loses.
In Graph Form
The total shots record in gaph form gives us a greater visual understanding of the gap between wins and losses.
There is a far amount of variation from season to season, as would be expected due to differences in teams' quality within the league for each individual season.
Using our original sample size of 987 games:
The team that wins the total shots battle went on to win the fixture 62.91% of the time.
The team that wins the total shots battle but went on to lose the fixture occurred 33.53% of the time.
Shots On Target Record
sot won | sot lost | sot tied | |
2009/10 | 210 | 49 | 25 |
2010/11 | 192 | 55 | 21 |
2011/12 | 202 | 53 | 32 |
2012/13 | 104 | 34 | 10 |
Immediately, and even in table form, we can clearly see that the team which wins the shots on target battle and goes on to win the fixture is far greater than the Total Shots numbers listed above.
In Graph Form
Again, there exists variance from season to season but this is to be expected.
When looking at the team which wins the SoT battle in a fixture, we can see that not only does that team go on to win the fixture at a higher rate than TS told us, but that team that records that higher share of SoT is losing far, far fewer games.
In short, a team that wins the SoTbattle is far more likely to go on and win that fixture than the team that wins the total shots battle. Shots on target should, logic determines, be able to tell us more about that teams performance than Total Shots does.
Using our original sample size of 987 games:
The team that wins the Shots On Target battle went on to win the fixture 71.73% of the time.
The team that wins the Shots On Target battle but went on to lose the fixture occurred 19.35% of the time.
Year By Year Total Shots v Shots On Target
So I have decided to take things slowly and break the data we have already looked at into smaller pieces. The above graph shows us how many wins the team that recorded the highest proportion of Total Shots and Shots On Target. Those two numbers are placed side by side for each of the 4 seasons.
Blue is Total Shots, Red is Shots On Target.
When we directly compare the win record of Total Shots and Shots On Target it becomes clear that there is a disparity between the two popular stats. Winning the Shots On Target battle is a better fit, and predictor, at who will win that fixture than Total Shots is.
That is what the 4 years worth of numbers tell us.
Total Shots vs Shots On Target Losses
Below we will see the Number of games where a team won the Total Shots or Shots on Target battle but lost the fixture, year by year.
Blue is Total Shots, Red is Shots On Target.
Remember, the loss numbers listed above for Total Shots and Shots and Target are for the team who won those individual battles but lost the fixture.
Again we see fluctuations year to year for the three completed seasons. The 2012/13 season exhibits signs of the gap between Total Shots and Shots On Target being much closer, but that gap will widen as the season progresses.
Losses for Total Shots are 331 in 987 games
Losses for Shots on Target are 191 in 987 games.
Again, the information in front of us points us to the conclusion that a team which wins the Total Shots battle being a poorer predictor for who will win the fixture that Shots On Target is.
Total Shots vs Shots on Target: Win%
In the following series of graphs we take the raw numbers that are listed above and convert into %'s
The methodology is simple, take the games won by the victor of the Total Shots or Shots On Target battle and divide them by the games which didn't finish as a draw.
We can see that the win% for each season varies and that 2009/10 looks like an outlier of sorts. Shots on Target win% is consistently superior to Total Shots win%, and despite year to year variance the gap in win% between the two numbers remains within the 9-10% corridor for the three full seasons of data we have.
The mean line indicates the average difference between the two shot statistics.
Total Shots vs Shots on Target: Loss%
Same method as above, only this time we are looking at the % of time a team lost a game despit winning the Total Shopts or Shots on Target battle.
Loss% displays a touch more variance season to season than win% did, but we arrive at the same conclusion as we did for win% as we do now for Loss%: Total Shots has a poorer correlation to the team that wins the fixture than Shots on Target exhibits.
That is clearly evident in the above data showing us that the team which wins the Total Shots battle loses a far higher % of games than the team which wins the Shots on Target battle.
4 Year win, draw and loss %'s for Total Shots and Shots on Target
Total Shots is the red line, Shots on target is the yellow line
This is purely a alternate take on the information we have seen above.
Shots on target has a higher win rate than total shots. Shots on target has a lower loss rate than Total Shots. And the number of non drawn games that were ruled out due to the Shots on target count/Total Shots count being tied at 50-50 in any particlular fixture is listed at the bottom of that graph as tie%.
Conclusion
Although we know Total Shots and TSR to be the most repeatable skill from season to season, the above information clearly shows that the team which wins the Shots on Target battle has a higher chance of winning the non-drawn fixture than winning the Total Shots battle does.
Winning the SoT battle in non-drawn games, results in a team winning that fixture 71.73% of the time and losing the fixture 19.35% of the time.
Winning the TS battle in non-drawn games results in that team winning the fixture 62.91% of the time and losing the fixture 33.53% of the time.
This study is not designed to win any arguments or state that using total shots is incorrect. The original question was: Which of Total Shots or Shots On Target has the stronger correlation with a team winning a football game?
Now, although both metrics strongly correlate with winning that fixture, it is Shots on target which has the stronger link by virtue of having a win% 8.82 percentage points higher than Total Shots does using a sample of just short of 1000 games.
Cheers for reading and congratulations if you made it to the end!