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The Constituent Parts Of PDO

If anyone isn't familiar with the stat PDO listen up! It takes a team's scoring% and save% adds them together as a way of evaluating how efficient each team is at converting it's shots on target into goals (scoring%) and preventing the opposition from doing the same (save%).

Okay, so we do have a grasp as to what pdo entails? Good.

The league average PDO is 100. League average scoring% is 30% and save% is around 70%. Every team has a unique PDO, some teams have an excellent scoring% which pushes their pdo up, some teams have an excellent save% which does likewise.

Today, we will ignore the impact that score effects has on team PDO, and ignore the boredom that entails once I tell you how luck driven this stat is, instead I will only list the overall, all encompassing numbers.

Not only will we list the PDO numbers, but I will show you the constituent parts of each teams PDO. Do Man United really rely on scoring% to register a high PDO? Is Man City's poor PDO being dragged down by Save% and Joe Hart's poor luck in being beaten from distance this year?

Let's find out.

PDO with Scoring% and Save%

Team_pdo_30_medium

A slight clusterfuck element to this chart. A lot of teams tightly bunched high 70's in save% and low 30's in scoring %, bang on the mean of 100.

Wigan and QPR post the poorest pdo scores in the league but for very different reasons. QPR cannot convert their shots on target, Wigan cannot prevent the opposition from doing likewise.

United with an astronomically, historically, unsustainably high scoring % lead the league in PDO (scoring % has regressed from 45%. Chelsea are in second place with a very good scorig% and an even better save%.

Both teams lead the league in percentage of time spent winning by a lonely, cold, drunk walk home in the rain mile.

In Table Form


Scoring% Save% PDO
Man Utd 41.07 73.95 115.02
Chelsea 36.25 76.74 112.99
Arsenal 35.95 72.17 108.12
West Brom 32 72.86 104.86
Reading 36.84 67.06 103.90
Swansea 28.37 75.16 103.53
West Ham 26.89 75.93 102.82
Sunderland 29.2 72.73 101.93
Fulham 29.41 71.43 100.84
Liverpool 34.13 65.49 99.62
Stoke 29.03 69.84 98.87
Everton 27.22 70.69 97.91
Southampto 35.29 62.32 97.61
Aston Villa 31.63 65 96.63
Norwich 26.92 68.92 95.84
Newcastle 27.7 65.1 92.80
Man City 28.18 64.38 92.56
Qpr 21.85 70.19 92.04
Tottenham 26.56 64.08 90.64
Wigan 28.23 61.11 89.34

A coupleof very quick points here.

PDO is all over these in regards to it correlating to anything valuable like points or league position.

Tottenham and Man City are both in the bottom 4 of pdo, remarkable isn't it! I feel pretty comfortable in stating that if Man City and Tottenham had posted anything over a pdo of 100 then these two clubs would be a lot lot closer to Man United.

If we assume Spurs and City had enjoyed league average luck/scoring%/save% then Spurs would be 12 goals better off (57 scored, 31 conceded). Man City would be 7 goals better off (54 scored, 22 conceded).

This will be a focus for another post (luck independent conversion %'s) but a last thought on Man United's high conversion %'s. If Man United had enjoyed league average %'s then United would have been, roughly, 23 goals worse off (51 goals scored, 36 conceded)

23 goals is an enormous amount, and Man United owe a huge amount of their points haul to their high %'s. How many points are 23 goals worth? More than 15?

On the balance of things, it's a small miracle that Man City are only 15 points back from United considering the whopping 22.5 percentage points back of Man United's pdo.