End of Year Review- Shooting Statistics

In today's end-of-year review I wanted to take a look at shooting statistics. I took at look at this stat a couple of times last year and found the information very interesting. You can get a sense of where the RSL attack was coming from by looking at who was taking the shots and how aggressive each player was in front of the net.

When I analyze shooting statistics I take a look at three different aspects. First is the ability to get a shot off. Second is the ability to keep the shot on frame. And finally, are the shots that players taking hitting the back of the net? Each of these aspects is a skill and just because a player is good at one doesn't mean he is good at the others.

Below are the shooting stats that I compiled for the forwards. These stats are only for MLS regular season matches. I feel that it is important not just to look at shots and shots on goal but to also average them over 90 minutes (Sp90 and SoGp90) so we can have a better comparison between players regardless of the total amount of time that they played over the season. I also look at the percentage of shots actually being on goal (SoG%) and the percentage of shots that result in goals (GpS%). As a point of reference, the team averaged taking 13.2 shots a game and had 4.9 shots on goal a game.

Player	Shots	Sp90	Shots on Goal	SoGp90	SoG %	GpS %
Saborio	52	3.48	21	1.4	40.38%	23.08%
Findley	37	2.64	15	1.07	40.54%	16.22%
Plata	50	2.74	19	1.04	38.00%	8.00%
Sandoval	18	1.83	9	0.92	50.00%	16.67%
Garcia	33	2.98	14	1.27	42.42%	15.15%

What do these numbers tell us? First, that when he played, Saborio was by far RSL's most aggressive player. He led the team in every shooting category except shot on goal percentage. Granted, his numbers are a little inflated due to him scoring 4 times due to penalty kicks.

Garcia was also very aggressive when he was in matches. For a player so young he was also very accurate with his shots. His shot on goal percentage of 42% is very impressive. What is even more impressive is that shots that hit either the post or crossbar is not considered a shot on goal. I believe Garcia had at least four shots that hit either the post or crossbar this past season. 

While he was very impressive in other parts of his game, Sandoval needs to work on taking more shots. Having less than one shot on goal per 90 minutes played is a little disappointing. Now as I said above, these stats include regular season matches only. It was good to see that he was much more aggressive in the playoffs and in US Open Cup matches.  

Out of all the information above, the one number that stands out the most to me is Plata's goal per shot percentage. Only 8% of the shots he took hit the back of the net. That has to improve. Especially since his shooting rate is pretty high. 

Here is a look at the RSL midfield.

Player	Shots	Sp90	Shots on Goal	SoGp90	SoG %	GpS %
Gil	36	1.57	13	0.57	36.11%	13.89%
Grabavoy	28	0.94	10	0.33	35.71%	17.86%
Morales	47	1.85	18	0.71	38.30%	17.02%
Velasquez	20	2.02	8	0.81	40.00%	0.00%
Stephenson	21	2.39	7	0.8	33.33%	4.76%
Beckerman	44	1.74	17	0.67	38.64%	9.09%
Alvarez	9	0.83	5	0.46	55.56%	11.11%

It is interesting to look at the midfielders. I was surprised to see how often both Stephenson and Velasquez took shots. Grabavoy had a very good goals per shot percentage. Morales also had some very good shooting statistics but his numbers are also slightly inflated due to 2 penalty kicks that he took over the course of the season. Beckerman also seems to take a higher amount of shots than would be expected from his defensive midfield position.

There are a lot of interesting pieces of information that can be gleaned from the above stats. I would love to hear anything you picked out.