Passing Your Way to Success, Part II

In the first part of this two-part post, Passing Your Way to Success, we looked at how passing and pass completion percentage was the most critical factor in determining whether your team will be successful or not. This according to Daniel Finkelstein, writing for the London Times in a Fink Tank column from November 13, 2004. A few months later, in a sort of follow-up column entitled “What do stats tell us that a team must do better? Pass“, Fink Tank looked into which statistics best indicate what the final score will be in a game. In other words, what explains the variation in goals between two teams competing in a match.

Passing Your Way to Success

A few years ago I ran across a series of articles written by Daniel Finkelstein of the London Times. He authors a column called Fink Tank which looks at soccer through the emotionless eyes of a statistician. The first column, “Identifying top teams more than just a passing fancy“, attempted to discover what differentiates good English Premier League football teams from bad ones. He found that the obvious choices – shots on goal, shots on target, style of play, etc. – did not lead to a definitive conclusion on what separates the men from the boys.