Members Area Preview Movie

Yesterday we launched sign-ups for Membership for the new season and I mentioned that we had a movie on the way, offering a preview of our current content. The movie is done and clocks in at almost 20 minutes and involves listening to me wittering on enthusiastically about statistics so, to cut to the chase, I’ve picked out some of the highlights…

The New Stats (1 min 55 secs)
Having invested in new data from Opta, we’re now able to offer almost limitless statistics from Premier League matches. We can create stats for every event and plot its location on the pitch. With this information we’ve already provided new stats in our tables that record touches and passes received in pitch areas such as the final third and the penalty box. These additions enable you to assess factors such as a full-back’s tendency to get forward, how much a midfielder is getting into the box, how much service a striker is getting etc. There’s a whole array of new stats and if we’ve missed any you need, just let us know.

Goal Involvement (6 mins in)
A nice new stat – while you may have heard stuff like “Robin Van Persie was responsible for 50% of Arsenal’s goals”, such stats are generated from a players goals scored as a percentage of his team’s total goals. With our goal involvement statistic, we’ve gone a stage further. For a player to be “involved” he either has to score or assist. However, he can only contribute when he’s on the pitch, therefore, what we do with our stat is examine his assists and goals during his time on the pitch, as a percentage of his teams goals during that time. In this way we can get a true stat on his influence on his team’s attacking output.

As an example, based on last season’s data, Jermain Defoe has a goal involvement of 50% – which means that, during the time he was on the pitch, he either assisted or scored 50% of Tottenham’s goals scored in that time.

The New Filters (7 mins 15 secs)
Our powerful filters allow you to slice our statistics by Gameweek, a range of Gameweeks and now home and away matches. Now you can fully assess a players performance home and away and soon our compare tool will make this even easier. We’ve also introduced new “Last X Matches” filters. These work differently to the Gameweek filters. For example, if you select “last four matches” the data will be sliced to retrieve the last four matches for every player, regardless of the Gameweek in which this data falls. In this way it levels the playing field and offers a true comparison of players across a series of matches.

The Match Dashboard (14 mins 10 secs)
A brand new screen, offering a full statistical view of every match played. This filters out the team and player stats so you can immediately assess the key performers in each of our statistic areas – including a clear view on the ICT Influence scores, which uses similar factors as the EA Player Performance Index which governs the Fantasy Premier League Bonus points.

The First Stat Maps (13 mins 15 secs)
We’ve launched with average position maps for each match and average position maps by Gameweek for every player. With the new data, we’re now able to plot the location of every touch, every kick and every shot that takes place in a Premier League match. We’ve started using this data to plot the average position of every player (based on their touches), in every match. More stat maps and charts are on the way – expect the usual – heatmaps, passing maps, shot maps etc. These will be available for players, matches and you’ll be able to overlay Gameweeks or a range of Gameweeks. We’re also building a compare tool to help with your analysis of players and teams.

More to come (17 mins 10 secs)
I talk about some of the plans in the movie and I plan to make regular posts keeping you up to date with work in progress and previewing new features. Next week Ed will be giving the Members Dashboard some love – improving this to offer a full statistical view of a given Gameweek and the season as a whole. More on that next week. Here’s the movie for those who want a glimpse of what’s offer today. Use this link if the movie is not showing below for you.

For full details on Membership, including a guide to how to sign up, click here.

members relaunch June from Mark on Vimeo.