The Stephen Kenny era got off to a difficult start last week with a draw away to Bulgaria and defeat at the Aviva to Finland. It was obvious to anyone watching that Stephen Kenny has completely overhauled the Irish way of playing, but what does the data say about Ireland's performances and our chances of qualifying for Euro 2020? Dominic Corrigan, who does data visualisation for Arseblog among others, has crunched the numbers around Ireland's two Nations League fixtures for Balls.ie and emerged with a pretty interesting statistical portrait of the early days of the Kenny regime.
PVA - what is it?
Possession Value Added or PVA is a really interesting metric for measuring how successful teams are at creating goalscoring chances. Advanced metrics look to get beyond measuring just goals and assists to gauge a player's overall contribution to the team. Possession Value is a popular metric for gauging a player's performance. Essentially, PVA measures the increase or decrease in the likelihood of a possession ending in a goal based on the successful passes a team makes. This is a really important metric for Stephen Kenny as he looks to instil a playing philosophy that values possession, and hopefully leads to more goals. Ireland had a lot of possession against both Bulgaria and Finland but only scored one goal and created few scoring opportunities. So what do the advanced metrics tell us?
Below, I've crunched the Possession Value Added difference in both Ireland games to show how threatening Ireland are with the ball and whether or not their passing was effective in increasing scoring chances.
You'll also see the cumulative running total of Possession Value Added by the teams in both games.
(Click on the photo to see the photo in more detail)
BULGARIA V IRELAND GAMEFLOW
IRELAND v FINLAND GAMEFLOW
PVA BY PLAYER BREAKDOWN
The below table shows the average touch map of the starting XI’s and Possession Value Added of the players used from both games.
Here are some learnings for Ireland fans. Robbie Brady excelled against Finland with his passing increasing the likelihood that Ireland would score from possessions he was involved in by 92%. Conor Hourihane lead the way in the Bulgaria game with a PVA of 77% (note that both of these players take set pieces which may boost their numbers but are essential to the way Ireland play).
Despite this we can see that more players (7) had a negative PVA in the game against Finland than the game against Bulgaria (5). In layman’s terms this means that the passing of seven Ireland players resulted in a decreased chance of Ireland scoring in those possessions. That's a worrying statistic for Stephen Kenny.
From the average touch maps we can see that, against Bulgaria, Ireland had a strong right-sided bias in attack, with Jeff Hendrick and Matt Doherty pushing up the pitch to support Callum O’Dowda.
In the game against Finland however Doherty did not get as far forward and Hendrick was replaced by debutante Jayson Molumby who played much deeper, allowing Robbie Brady to push forward on the left-hand side.
COMPARING IRELAND'S MIDFIELDERS
Stephen Kenny made the bold move of starting 6 different midfielders in Ireland's two matches, with two completely different midfields selected for the two games.
Let's take a look at how the two midfields performed.
This is a PVA Pass Map for both midfields from the two games. Blue passes show passes that reduced Ireland’s chances of scoring in that possession, orange passes show passes that slightly increased the chances of scoring in that possession and red passes show passes that massively increased (20-25%) the chances of scoring in that possession. From this we can clearly see that the midfield three selected against Bulgaria did a better job of getting the ball into threatening areas than the midfield three selected against Finland. Look at the passes to the right wing from the first game and compare it to the second game where there is a clear lack of any threat down that flank from the midfield. We can also see that Harry Arter had a negative impact on Ireland’s passing against the Finnish whereas James McCarthy, who played the same role against the Bulgarians, increased Ireland’s chances of scoring by 20%.
IRELAND'S CORNERBACKS
Another area of interest for Stephen Kenny is the full-backs. Kenny made the brave selection to pick Matt Doherty over captain Seamus Coleman. Fans were very interested to see how Doherty and Enda Stevens function in Kenny's system. Let’s first look at the new Tottenham man.
Below we have two charts that track his defensive actions and his PVA passing. When we discuss defensive actions, we are referring to headers, tackles, interceptions etc.
From the PVA Pass Maps, we can see that Doherty did a good job of progressing the ball up the right flank in both games, but was much more threatening with his passes in the game against Finland. Doherty increased Ireland’s chances of scoring by 45% in the Finland game and only 16% in the Bulgaria game.
In terms of Defensive Actions, Doherty had a quiet game against Bulgaria, with the Tottenham man only attempting three defensive actions and completing two. Against Finland Doherty had a busier game defensively, attempting seven Defensive Actions, completing four and failing in three, with two of those unsuccessful Defensive Actions coming inside his own penalty area.
Now let’s look at Enda Stevens in terms of defensive actions and PVA passes.
From the PVA Pass Map we can see that Stevens was far more involved in the game against Finland, which is likely a result of the introduction of Robbie Brady and the left-sided bias in possession. Stevens’ passing resulted in a 25.58% increase in Ireland's chances of scoring against Bulgaria and a 26.6% increase against Finland.
Stevens also had a quiet defensive game against Bulgaria, with the Sheffield United man completing three out of his three attempted Defensive Actions. Against Finland, Stevens attempted five Defensive Actions, completing four and being unsuccessful in one attempt.
All in all, this was the not the start Stephen Kenny would have wanted, but it’s 180+ minutes under the belt and Kenny has had the opportunity to try out a lot of different players in preparation for next month’s game against Slovakia.
Dominic Corrigan is a suffering Arsenal fan an an Economics graduate with an interest in Data Analytics and Visualization and the Irish soccer and rugby teams. Follow him on Twitter here.
