Buckley vs Healy a defensive discussion

One thing to realise about stats, is that no matter what story they are telling you, a player, team or manager, must also pass your “eye test”, if it doesn’t look and feel right to you, then no stat should ever supersede your gut instinct. I think it is fair to say that for most City supporters, Liam Buckley’s first seven games, have definitely passed that eye-test, but what do the numbers say?

Firstly, I promise, I will try not to bore you for the next few minutes and I will keep it as light as possible, all numbers are taken from Opta via the SofaScore website, the data available now is light years ahead of where it was, so credit to the FAI for doing a deal with Opta, which now allows nerds like me to fill Excel spreadsheets with all kinds of numbers and most would say, absolute waffle.

I always feel like six games is a good number in which to have a clear indication of how things are going for any given side. In Liam Buckley's first seven games the focus has obviously been on defensive stability and a switch to a back five has certainly helped in this manner, under Colin Healy we were conceding at a rate of 2.15 goals per game (GPG), this has dropped by a full goal a game under Buckley to 1.14 GPG, which would put us right on the league average of 1.16 GPG, when UCD are excluded, (1.29 when they are included). $hel$ (0.70), Derry (0.76), Shams (0.86) and Bohs (0.90) are all going at under 1 GPG, so that does show that there is still very much room for improvement, but that 1.14 GPG is very much mid table form, which would undoubtably in the current circumstances satisfy any able minded City supporter.

The biggest underlying change to those numbers comes from the number of Shots on Target (SOT) that we allow to become goals, shots on target to goal conversion rate (SOTGCR), which under Colin Healy was running at 49%, so it was even money if a SOT would end up as a goal, has now dropped to 27% under Buckley. Why is this? Well, this is where it gets a little murky, but it is safe to say that we are clearly giving up fewer quality chances (unfortunately I don’t have Xg numbers) and the conversion rate is down because of the difficulty of those chances. We concede more shots per game (SPG) under Buckley 13.71, then we did under Healy 12.00, and the SOT conceded figures are similar, 4.38 under Healy and 4.29 under Buckley, so therefore it must be the quality of those SOT conceded, and keepers not jumping out of the way, that is the difference is the reduction of the GPG rate.

Under Healy our keepers averaged 2.31 Saves Per Game including 9 in the away game at Shams, this jumps to 3.14 under Buckley including 6 away at Dundalk and five at home to both Bohs and Sligo. We have conceded 8 goals in 7 games under Buckley from 30 SOT, if you apply Healy’s metrics. 49% (SOTGCR) to Buckleys numbers (an inexact science, I know), we find that we would have conceded 14.7 goals in those 8 games. No matter how one views the numbers , its hard to get away from the idea, that Colin Healy suffered a fair amount of bad luck with the performance of his keepers. 

Colin Healy was undoubtedly unlucky with the performance of his keepers in several games but looking back now, defensively we never passed the eye-test. The application of Matt Healy as a second sitting number 6, in front of a back five has undoubtedly alleviated some of the issues we were having under Healy and this current version of Cork City would for most, pass said eye test, no matter what the numbers are showing.

The question is have we sacrificed ourselves offensively to garner more defensive stability? I will endeavour to find out in part two, when we look at what the numbers say about us as an attacking force.