London is Blue Dispatch #012

The League Table… Lies?

As the season’s first international break kicks in, I know you’re doing your best to forget. You’re trying not to see that after the tumultuous shipwreck that was last season and after a preseason that promised renaissance and revival, we are, unfathomably, in the same place in the league table – twelfth.

I write to you today from Prague, 6,154 kilometers away from home. For the first time in three years, I have gone three straight days without watching a full football game. As much as our obsession about something deepens our bond with it, I want you to know that sometimes, it is good to forget, momentarily. Especially about us, and this season. You know why? Because league tables always lie.

Welcome to a TedX Talk

Those are not my words, unfortunately. Those are the words of Rasmus Ankersen, from his Tedx Talk on what football analytics can teach successful organizations. Rasmus’ career ended in his very first senior game for his boyhood club FC Midtjylland in Denmark, after which he turned to coaching. Almost a decade ago, he struck up a friendship with Matthew Benham, a professional gambler with a degree in physics from Oxford, who would later become the owner of Brentford. Brentford’s well-documented recruitment experiment needed a sister club back then, and Ankersen suggested Midtjylland to Benham, who bought it and made Ankersen chairman.

Ankersen says gamblers believe that league tables lie, because in a highly volatile game like football, the line between luck and skill sometimes blurs to the point of being indistinguishable. Which is why at Midtjylland and at Brentford, they decided to put their faith in a “table of justice,” a league table which reflects a side’s “true” standing – one that reflects its performance in crucial metrics while trying to nullify luck’s influence on results. I have always had the mathematical aptitude of a cheese-grater, so I cannot illustrate this for you vividly with a similar table, but I’ll try to do my best with words.

Chelsea’s expected goal difference last season was -3, the 10th best in the league. With a little randomness factored in, we finished 12th. Albeit a very small sample size this season, our expected goal difference is 4.1, the fourth best. We are third for non-penalty expected goals, 2nd highest for progressive carries, 3rd highest for progressive passes and 2nd highest for big chances created. Justice has not been served.

There are certainly a few causes for concern too. We are joint first for big chances missed with 11, and our shot-on-target accuracy is 25.8%, which is 18th worst in the league. Only one team in the league has attempted 100+ crosses. That’s us. Quite the head scratcher considering none of Jackson, Sterling, Mudryk, Madueke, Gallagher, Enzo, Caicedo, or even Nkunku/Chukwuemeka are poor aerially. Bar two of those names, finishing quality is a rare, infrequent commodity. Nico Jackson has missed six of our 11 big chances, the most in the PL. This is three clear of Haaland, who has five more goals than Nico.

And that, pretty much, is where we started before the season began, trying to drastically improve on last season's underlying metrics, while drastically improving the players participating in generating it. The former (long may it continue) is already there to see. The latter was the reason this was called "Vision 2030" and not "Inception 2023," yes?

"Lord, give me patience. BUT GIVE IT TO ME NOW!" isn't quite how it works. "But we are Chelsea!" is an incantation that no longer carries magic, because titans like Drogba won't leap into the stratosphere to power in a header at the far post, and Lampard won't belt a comet from outside the box into the top corner. It took Arsenal three-and-a-half years to build what they have become, and the PL's quality has gone up exponentially since. There will be days where those underlying numbers translate and we end up smacking for four or five. There will also be days like the ones we've seen, where inexperience & luck overshadow all effort. Ask Ankersen, who stepped down as co-director of football in 2021 to start Sport Republic, a sports investment fund. In January 2022, they acquired Southampton. The rest I'm sure you know.

So at least until the break is done, forget the lies of the league table. I walked 29,000 steps today on Prague's cobbled streets, did an impromptu photo-session for a Japanese family on Charles Bridge. I bought a Trdelník, which I ate slowly by the shore of the Vltava, licking vanilla and cinnamon sugar off my fingers, watching boats full of tourists float by. Life is a lot like football – sometimes you just don't get what you deserve. It is our job to recognize effort. The results will come in due time, now or later.