In case you missed it, I recently wrote about game states and score effects.
I was asked a few weeks ago which resources I use to look up, collect and present my stats, and I thought it would be a good idea to provide a list of the sites and programs I use. Something similar has already been done by Tom (@Worville), and you can look at his list here, there are a fair few similarities.
Expected Goals Dashboard
This brilliant resource was made by Paul Riley (@footballfactman). It allows you to look at each shot on target taken by a player this season, as well as the outcome and the shot’s xG value. You can easily find teams’ xG data, and there are goodies in the form of Google Documents which have both goalkeepers’ and outfield players’ xG data at the bottom of the page. Regularly updated, it’s an absolute treasure trove of information, and my only minor qualm with it is that it doesn’t include all shots, only shots on target. His Tableau profile includes links to an ‘Expected Assists’ dashboard and last year’s xG dashboard. If you want to do some historical research, Paul also has some xG data from the 10/11 season onwards here.
Advanced Statistics Page
Michael Caley, godfather of expected goals on Twitter, has a couple of pages covering teams’ attacking and defensive statistics. The linked page (here) contains information on the type of attacks PL sides prefer, the number of attacks they attempt, as well as xG information for each team. If European football is more your thing, a similar page can be found here for La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A.
Pitch Tracker
Want to track any type of event manually on a football pitch? John Murdoch’s pitch tracker was set up to help capture shot location, but you could use it with pretty much anything, from tackles to crosses.
Expected Goals Calculator
A nice simple xG calculator can be found here from Ben (@Torvaney), something which is sure to be updated and improved. Watch this space.
Expected Goals Simulator
Danny Page wrote this a while ago on expected goals. His xG simulator calculates the probability of a result occurring based on the xG value of the shots that occurred in the game.
Shots, PDO and everything else
Expected goals data can be difficult impossible to find at times, so often we humble analytics folk without access to it must use shot data. Luckily for us, there’s a tonne of data available. ObjectiveFooty (site here) has everything you’ll need on PDO, shot ratios, score effects, whilst FootyInTheClouds (site here) has plenty of shot data too, as well as individual player shot data in terms of their contribution to the team. Furthermore, FootyInTheClouds has a cool feature which allows you to look at a side’s rolling PDO and its elements, as well as other metrics, as shown below:
If you’re looking for shot data over a long period of time, this site is perfect for you. Clicking on any country in the ‘Odds and Results’ section on the page’s right hand side will take you to a page of spreadsheets with shot data from every league game in that country over recent seasons (Premier League shot data goes back to the 2000/2001 season) and in several tiers of that country’s domestic football.
Findng Other People’s Work
This is not as difficult as you’d imagine. Tom has made a bot (@FanalyticsBlogs) which automatically tweets the newest pieces as soon as they’re published, so you can find all the most recent articles concerning analytics.
Programs
Currently, I have still not progressed beyond the computer-based purgatory that is Microsoft Excel (and Tableau). Excel is okay, and you can, with a little care and devotion, make okay-looking data visualisations. Tableau is a pretty cool free program, perhaps a little difficult to get the hang of, but perfect for interactive data visualisations.
A level up in terms of complexity are coding programs such as R and Python, and whilst I haven’t learned how to use either so far, it’s definitely something I want to look at.
Saving Articles
I used to bookmark an article that I’d enjoyed reading, but this led to an absolute mess in my bookmarks. Instead, I now have a Word document with different sections in which I put the relevant articles, keeping them all in once place where I can refer back to them if I ever need to look up any specific statistic or theory, and it’s something I’d encourage you to do as well if you enjoy reading/saving articles.
Thanks for reading, I hope you find this helpful. If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me @OneShortCorner.
The rest of my ‘Analytics for Beginners’ series can be found here:
One Short Corner 
Hi.
I’m very interested in your blog and your thoughts on statistical analysis.
I blog very regularly about Brentford at bfctalk.wordpress.com and wrote a book about last season at the cub called “Ahead of the Game.”
Given that Brentford are the poster child for mathematical modelling and the use of statistics throughout their recruitment process I wonder if you might be interested in providing either a critique on the club’s approach in this area or a more general introductory article on the rationale behind this new way of thinking which would be credited and used in my new book on the club “Growing Pains” coming out in June?
I hope you do not mind this direct approach and I would be more than happy to discuss it with you if you contact me at grevillewaterman@googlemail.com
Many thanks.