A Breakdown Of Joe Hart's Goals Conceded

Right, hello. Good morning. Welcome to this post on Man City's goals against in the 2012/13 season. Today we shall be looking at things slightly differently, I won't bog you down with reasons why Man City have conceded certain goals in certain games.

No, I want to solely examine which part of the field these goals have been scored from and which part of the net the goals have been shot into. pretty simple so let's get going!

Total Goals Conceded in 2012/13

Forgive the graphics, if anybody knows where to get my hands on a penalty box template please let me know in the comments section.

OK, so I recorded the data using game highlights and this is how it shakes down.

Grid C1 naturally features the most goals conceded. The closer to goal a shot is taken the greater likelihood of that shot firstly being on target, and secondly being a goal.

80% of the 20 goals conceded have come from inside the 18 yard box.

50% of the 20 goals conceded have been scored from the central area.

There is nothing too unusual about the distance distribution of the goals that Joe Hart has conceded.

Direction Of The Goals Against

Now then. The large blue mass of pie in the chart above denotes goals conceded to the left of Joe Hart.

In simple terms, imagine the goalkeeper being stood on his line, a player shoots to the left of Joe Hart, as Joe sees it, and scores. That goal is recorded as the Left Side in the chart above. Now, if Joe Hart races off his line, on a 45 degree left angle, and a player shoots past Joe's right side, again, as Joe sees it through his eyes, this is registered as a goal conceded to the Right Side. I guess you understand what I am trying to say.

So 60% of the Goals Hart has conceded this year have been scored on his left side, 25% of the goals conceded to his right side. 2 goals have gone centrally over him, and I classed Zamora's goal line header when Hart was on the floor as an open goal.

60% of all goals conceded have been scored to Joe Hart's left side, this seems like a very high proportion. A couple of notes of caution on this figure.

1) It's still early in the season, these numbers may well level out.

2) It's unlikely a keeper with such talent has a fatal technical flaw in his game.

3) It may say more about opposition targeting weak links in Man City's defence

4) These numbers may just be random luck.

5) Without shots on target totals and their placement we cannot tell if Joe has a lower save%, and thus a weakness, with, say, shots to his left than compared to shots to his right. For this I need game video. If I had game video you would be reading far more advanced articles on footballs workings.

Something to keep an eye on.

Premier league and Champions League Splits

Blue is the PL, red is the CL. When we split the two competitions, placement distribution becomes even more stark.

The CL sees a far more even distribution of goals in terms of placement. The PL, on the other hand, sees a completely skewed set of numbers. 70% of Hart's goals against come from that aforementioned left side. Again, I must repeat, it may just be strange anomaly, a weird quirk. We need to see more goals against before we can come to even some half conclusion.

I do have more data on how the goals are conceded such as pressure, exact distance, method, build up etc, but now is the time to delve too far into this. At the half way point, I shall write a far more detailed post on why and how Man City concede the goals they concede.