There has always been great debate as to which rotation strategy is the best. Some prefer home and away rotation, whilst others argue fixture rotation is better with a closer look at the quality of the opposition. I thought I’d put that to the test. What I’ve done is look back over the past three seasons, total up all the clean sheets and then see where clean sheets are more commonly kept. Over the past three seasons there has been a total of 638 clean sheets.Â
Home and Away Rotation
13/14
Home: 137 (59.05%)
Away: 95 (40.95%)
Total: 232
12/13
Home: 116 (58%)
Away: 84 (42%)
Total: 200
11/12
Home: 125 (60.68%)
Away: 81 (39.32%)
Total: 206
This analysis shows that 59.25% of clean sheets over the past three season were kept at home. This percentage surprised me, as I thought it would have been around 65% at a minimum, not below 60%. In only one season, 11/12, did the percentage of home clean sheets go over 60%, and that was only just. For me, the percentage of clean sheets being kept at home and away is far too close.
FIXTURE ROTATION
For this I looked at the teams who finished 11th-17th the season before and the promoted sides. For example, when looking into the 13/14 season, I looked at the 12/13 league table. The teams finishing 11th-17th were Norwich, Fulham, Stoke, Southampton, Aston Villa, Newcastle and Sunderland, and the three promoted teams were Cardiff, Hull and Palace. These were the teams we’d look at to pit our defenders against last season when using fixture rotation. So, for each of the previous three seasons, I looked into how many games each of those teams failed to score, thus, giving the opposition defender a clean sheet.
13/14
Total: 145 (62.5%)
Away from home: 83 (56.55%)
12/13
Total: 127 (63.5%)
Away from home: 72 (56.69%)
11/12
Total: 114 (55.34%)
Away from home: 62 (54.39%)
Out of the 638 clean sheets kept over the past three seasons, 386 were kept against promoted teams and the teams who finished 11th-17th the season before, that’s 60.50% of clean sheets, again this isn’t that great of a difference. When comparing these bottom teams failing to score home and away the difference in percentages isn’t that great either.
Summary
The difference between the two rotation strategies is only 1.25%, not much at all, with fixture rotation being more effective. But personally, I think neither option is a great choice. Picking three defenders from three defensively sound teams and playing them each week, only benching them against the likes of Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool away, would be more beneficial in my opinion.
9 years, 8 months ago
Good analysis. Cheers for submitting.