OK, OK, we’re only nine games in, but an international break is one of those times when you pause to take stock, so we’re having an ‘as it stands’ moment and seeing if there are any patterns that help make predictions for how the rest of the season will pan out. All of the stats below are included in the ‘go compare’ tab of the FFW Stats dashboard (top three in gold, bottom three in red) for your perusal and interaction.
So, are PSG going to stay top? Yes. They are five points clear already, they shoot more than anyone else, restrict their opponents most, and are solidly efficient all over the park. Not surprising given their financial power and squad – these things may be connected – but it looks like PSG’s toughest tests this season will be a) the Champions League and b) dealing with everyone moaning about how they should be that good given their financial power etc and so on.
They arguably look stronger now than they did last year, when Marseille were top on shooting metrics, Monaco had the best defence, and Lyon were strong in all areas. This season, defensive and attacking efficiency seem to be two distinct ‘special moves’ – Lille the most defensively solid but bottom of the conversion table, which has Nice top by some distance but not great on the defensive side of things. Nobody looks as balanced as PSG right now.
As a side-note, it is interesting to see how Claude Puel’s team are lighting things up a bit, with 20 goals to PSG’s 19, and either a game in hand or 2 more goals depending on how you treat the abandoned match against Nantes. Despite their impressive conversion stats, they are inconsistent, not scoring from 16 shots against Guingamp; scoring 4 from 8 against Saint-Etienne. With Alassane Plea ruled out for several months, whether they can keep up this level of attacking enthusiasm will be mostly dependent on FFW favourite Valere Germain and the old conundrum, ‘is Hatem Ben Arfa sustainable?’, an existential question in the nature of ‘Whither Neasden?’ and why UEFA think that a period running from Thursday to Tuesday constitutes ‘a week’. Opinion is divided at FFW Towers, but I really, really hope he does, if only because it’s great fun to watch. Back to more serious matters.
Sitting behind PSG on the podium with 18 points are Angers, newly promoted after 21 years away, and Caen, promoted last season when they finished 13th. So, can these surprising names last the distance?
Only two years ago, a newly-promoted side came second, but Angers don’t have a billionaire backer and haven’t just spunked €170m in the transfer window. Their current approach is more akin to the Monaco of last season than the free-wheeling attack of the season before – tight and tidy in defence, while doing enough in attack to take advantage where they can. Their pass completion is poor but that is probably connected to a lot of their touches being defenders just trying to get the ball to safety.
The note of caution here is that they have had a relatively comfortable start, a chance to bank valuable points, which they have managed impressively. Looking forward, they have a very tricky run of fixtures in December and January. Even if their defensive solidity continues, against bigger opponents wins seem less likely, so while that would keep them safe, they will almost certainly drop down the table.
Caen have taken the opposite approach, shooting at will but a little haphazardly, with an average defence, and dead last on pass completion, which has shades of Metz last season. They are the only team yet to draw a game, characterising their all-or-nothing approach; it can be great to watch, but you do suspect it is unsustainable.
Moving down a two-point step to the chasing pack, things look rather more familiar, with Rennes, Saint-Etienne and Lyon hovering. SRFC’s super start of four straight wins after an opening loss to Bastia means their numbers still look OK but they stalled going into the international break, with four straight draws – not terrible, for sure, but including against two of the bottom three – and now Paul-Georges Ntep is injured. ASSE and OL both have the same basic problem, chance conversion, with Lyon particularly struggling here in the absence of Nabil Fekir and the recent spiritual ennui of Alexandre Lacazette. However, a penalty in the cauldron that was the Olympico and a goal against Reims should see him perk up, in which case you’d expect to see them in the top three by Christmas.
At the other end, the bottom three are currently Montpellier and Troyes on 4 points, and Gazelec Ajaccio on 3, with a four-point gap between them and Marseille and Toulouse. At this point last season, the bottom three were Lens, Bastia and Guingamp, and only RCL went down (Evian were 15th and Metz were 9th); however they were on 8, 7 and 6 and with less of a gap to overhaul.
Newly promoted sides will tend to get involved in relegation battles, and going straight back down is pretty common – Dijon in 2011/12, Troyes in 2012/13 as well as Lens and Metz last season. It’s not a given – all three stayed up in 2013/14 although it looked a bit dicey for Guingamp for a while – but both Troyes and Gazelec are still looking for their first wins, and are struggling both to create and convert chances.
The Corsican team will be particularly gutted with their fortunes, conceding a last-minute equaliser against Rennes, and dropping two points against Toulouse through an own goal. They were the promotion shock of last season, and now top-flight football looks to be a step too far. Troyes maybe have a bit more grit, with their own injury-time equaliser in the 3-3 draw against Nice when they had played for an hour with ten men, and more composure on the ball, but a lot depends on whether Corentin Jean – still only 20 – can start scoring consistently after getting ten in Ligue 2 last season.
Montpellier’s issue is a worrying combination of having problems in several areas, including shooting, converting, stopping, saving, failing to hold on to a two-goal lead (Monaco), letting in injury-time winners (Monaco, Caen), and various other things that mean a lot of hopes are being pinned on the return of Morgan Sanson from injury in the hope that he can knit things back together. A theoretically do-able list of upcoming fixtures – Bordeaux, Bastia, Lorient, Toulouse, Nantes – finishes with the team who look most likely to get themselves into trouble if one of the current bottom three escapes. But all of them will be absolutely crucial to Montpellier’s chances of staying up. Not impossible, but a very big ask of a team that is yet to have a striker score a goal and has already used three goalkeepers.
Overall, if you ignore PSG and just let them get on with it, it’s shaping up to be a very interesting season. The historically big fish currently swimming in surprisingly deep positions (Monaco 10th, Bordeaux 14th, Marseille 16th) all have the complication of the Europa League to deal with, which could compromise their ability to recover to their ‘natural’ position, and there are some entertaining teams (Reims, Nice) looking to take advantage of that. Bastia will continue to be obdurately stubborn, Toulouse will continue to be plain confusing, Lille will continue to make Big Boss swear copiously… Roll on the restart!
Note: Broadly speaking, the metrics used fall into two camps – enthusiasm / effort, and efficiency. In the first, the number of shots taken (SPG) and faced (SPG v) represents how busy a team is in attack and defence, which can be summed up by the total shots ratio (TSR), the percentage of shots in a game that each team takes. In the second, the conversion rate and save rate show how well they take their chances and deal with chances against them, and this can be summed up by the PDO (the sum of the two), so teams that are strong in different areas can be compared.
The FFW Stats Dashboard uses data from Football-Data.co.uk with pass completion per WhoScored. The quadrant approach is based on that used by Ben Mayhew of Experimental 3-6-1, and the dashboard is built using Bime Analytics.