Here’s your monthly look at the stats, courtesy of Tom Williams

October Stats Analysis

Here’s the stats update from last month (so doesn’t include the Wimbledon match), this month I’ve chosen to include a focus on three players of interest at the moment, two due to their absence.

As per usual, we’ll start with the basics. The basic trends have continued with City outshooting and outscoring our opponents, even if it’s not quite to the extent we’d all like. Our competitive edge with the Imps continuing to pick up more than our fair share of fouls and bookings.

However, as we all know, we’re still not really firing on all cylinders and have only added 5 goals to our total in October (although we did only let in 3). The charts above show that we’ve had only one goal assisted from the left flank, probably a reflection of the likes of Sam Habergham and Nathan Arnold not yet reaching their impressive levels of last season. My stats from last year record that Habergham (10 assists in the National League) and Arnold (8 assists in the National League) were vital creative sources. Habergham is yet to assist a goal this campaign and his injury and form troubles have often led to Eardley being deployed at left back, who has defended very impressively but is also yet to directly create a goal (although he came very close with a wonderful cross for Rhead against Crawley on his stronger right-side).

The recent lack of goals at both ends of the pitch is reflected by Josh Vickers’ position in the best position in terms of how frequently we concede when he’s on the field, but only above Stewart and Chapman in terms of how frequently we score. Although in recent weeks some have clamoured for Rheady’s return, the stats don’t represent us being more dangerous with him on the pitch. The team only score at a rate of a goal every 110 minutes with the big man in the side, although he has only appeared 42% of the time so this doesn’t necessarily write him off as a threat.

The first of the three players I want to focus on in this edition is a lad fast becoming a fans’ favourite (in my house at least), Harry Anderson. His injury came at an unfortunate time with him playing some great stuff and injecting some real excitement into the team with him direct style. With 3 goals scored and 2 created so far this term in just 908 minutes (meaning he’s either scoring or assisting every 182 minutes), he showed himself to be a real danger man for the Imps. Without him, we have lacked a cutting edge and sometimes looked devoid of an attacking spark, demonstrated by the fact that we’ve drawn as many times in 6 matches without him as in 13 with him.

Finally, for this analysis, I’m going to look at our goalkeepers. The stats show that, for now, there is a clear difference with Josh Vickers (pictured extreme top) having twice as many clean sheets and almost as many shots saved in considerably less game time. This means that he currently holds a far better record when it comes to both how often he concedes in terms of minutes and in terms of shots to deal with. These certainly shouldn’t be considered an end to the debate, stats aren’t everything and mine unfortunately have limits due to the amount of data I can gather. For these two alone I can think of two clear attributes that I’m currently unable to measure, Vickers’ ability to collect crosses and the additional weapon Farman’s long kicking offers.

I hope you enjoyed this update, apologies for it coming after the Wimbledon match, it’s been a busy week! Constructive feedback, especially on something you’d like me to look at or measure, is always appreciated. Thanks for reading!