Community Submissions

Charting Opta Statistics With Bubbles & Radars

Readers who are familiar with any of my previous output on this site may be aware that I like taking a visual approach to the numbers side of the game. Such an approach helps to make the ‘story’ stand out at a glance in a way that the tables of numbers in the members area can’t achieve.

Without wanting to open up long-standing arguments over whether a focus on statistics brings anything meaningful to Fantasy Football, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that for most Fantasy managers, the holy grail is to find attack-minded players who can both score and assist, preferably who no one else has noticed and who come at a cheap price.

The tables in the members area will certainly flag up players who score well on the threat and creativity metrics, but (with apologies to Doosra and his tables), I sometimes struggle with the tabular format of the data, and I like to apply factors like Fantasy Premier League (FPL) price or ownership to help identify the cheap differentials.

This brings me on to bubble and radar charts, a couple of formats I’ve been playing with to visualise the members data and help sift the Fantasy gold from the plethora of two-pointers.

Analysis like this always works best with a large sample size of data. With only four Gameweeks of this season gone, we certainly don’t have enough data to draw confident conclusions; only an idiot would look at the numbers and attempt to pull out any meaningful analysis.

So… I’m now going to look at the numbers and try and pull out some meaningful analysis.

72 Comments Post a Comment
  1. J0E
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • Has Moderation Rights
    • 14 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Thanks so much for writing this. Lots to digest and love those graphics.

    1. Prøphet
      • 8 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      This is amazing work. Cheers!

    2. Woy of the Wovers
      • 13 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      It is a very well presented article. Great work.

    • 10 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Turd, this is incredible work. Hats of man.

  2. Margarido
    • 11 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Amazing stuff
    Great work there Sir The3rd

  3. Demí
    • 13 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    So so good. Fantastic work as ever 3rdTurd. That should be September's article winner wrapped up.

  4. Piggs Boson
    • 12 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    I've been calling for charts in the member's section for a while.

    Great work 3rdTurd.

  5. pompeyfan
    • 14 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    This is a seriously great article.

  6. FPL P0ker PlAyer
    • 9 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Absolutely boss! Visually, the bubbles idea works better for me than the radar, but looking forward to seeing these throughout the season.

  7. Lanley Staurel
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 13 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Fancy a job? Great work. Exellent bubble chart.

  8. Jose's Magic Omelette
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Nice graphics.

  9. Boris Bodega
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 8 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Great read, thanks. Can't find Lukaku's bubble though, am I going blind?

    1. The3rdTurd
      • 13 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      He's hidden behind Barkley but it's not clear from just the screenshot. Have a look at the Tableau link, use the filters and he should become visible.

  10. Pepin - RIP Absinthe
    • 13 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    This is amazing, as always.

  11. Jose's Magic Omelette
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Sako firmly on my radar after this game against City.

    1. Pepin - RIP Absinthe
      • 13 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      Mata on mine.

  12. PurpleCobras
    • 9 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Excellent article. Good man yerself

  13. Pepin - RIP Absinthe
    • 13 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Quick question - is the set of data behind the charts in the link automatically updated? I.e., if I bookmark your link and I go to it next week, will the charts be automatically refreshed with this weekend's match data or is that a painful manual process?

    1. djenzio
      • 9 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      I too would like to know this

    2. The3rdTurd
      • 13 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      It's not automatic, but nor is it particularly painful to update. Yes, the aim is that it will reflect the latest stats and I'll probably do a weekly update once all the games in the gameweek are finished.

  14. Piggs Boson
    • 12 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    'Shots in the box' & 'shots on target' are great axis for the bubble chart. You can see who gets lots of shots and who are accurate with those shots.

    https://public.tableau.com/views/FPL2015-16playerthreatcreativity1/Bubblecharts?%3AshowVizHome=no#1

    1. Jose's Magic Omelette
      • 10 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      Good point, it suggests to me that Pedro, Sanchez, Giroud and Pelle in particular are due more goals if they can up their accuracy.

      1. Piggs Boson
        • 12 Years
        8 years, 8 months ago

        Pedro and Sanchez get a lot of blocked shots. That's usually not a good sign.

        Giroud and Pelle just seem to be donkeys. They maintain that level of inaccuracy every season...

        1. Camp No No
          • 10 Years
          8 years, 8 months ago

          The first part is true, the percentages of Sanchez's and Pedro's shots being blocked are anomalous. However, there may be a reason to it, such as poor shooting locations, although Sanchez has got many excellent chances so far. Pedro has exceptionally high unblocked shots accuracy, I doubt he'll keep that up.

          Anyway, shots on target is not as telling as we'd hope. It matters a lot where the shot hits if it hits the target, as we have seen with Sanchez's several shots straight at the GK. There are stable differences in conversion rates between players who hit the target as often, and even so that players who have lower accuracy still are able to keep a better conversion rate, because their shots are more difficult for GK's to catch. This is something you have to watch out for.

          By the way, Giroud's career shot accuracy fine, and I don't see what you mean about him keeping similarly bad accuracy for long stints since his this season unblocked shots accuracy is a quite nice 58%, compare, for example, to Sanchez's 50%.

    2. Camp No No
      • 10 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      And yet another statistical tool proposing us the GAG attack.

  15. Jose's Magic Omelette
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Would be great to have inclusion of GK's with save & CS data in the database.

  16. Rödallegabomb ᴿᴮ
    • 11 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Outstanding article! Really really appreciate all your work, this site needs more posters like yourself.

  17. Hooky
    • 9 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Amazing work. This should win Community submission of the year (if there is such a title!).

  18. Sune
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 8 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Amazing!

  19. Kings of Lyon ★
    • 13 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Greta work again! Using tableau to visualise these stats is certainly something im on board with

  20. Ludo
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Wonderful work, as ever!

  21. Margarido
    • 11 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Those radar graphs are letal.

    Time to loose Lukaku… 🙂

  22. Dinamo Drachma
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Sick work dude! I just compared Sanchez-Aguero on the radar chart and came up with some interesting conclusions

  23. Beavis
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 12 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Wow!

  24. Bedknobs and Boomsticks
    • 14 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Cracking article

  25. SGTMacaroni
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Wow! that interactive bubble chart is incredible. So much respect for this!

  26. Forget Special, I am the ON…
    • 12 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Good job on Tableo

    I work in SAP in BI with Design studio and would like to prepare a similar Report using Design studio.
    Could some one please help me in showing/suggesting how & from can I get Opta data ?

    Thanks

  27. Barry Woj
    • 11 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    This is awesome, thank you! I've wanted to see things like this linked to FPL for ages. Visualising the data with charts and graphs is so much better than reading tables of numbers.

    Do you release content anywhere else online? These kinds of graphics pop up all the time in the "analytics community" online (Statsbomb etc.), but never with a nod towards FPL! Also, have you ever done anything with Expected Goals?

    1. The3rdTurd
      • 13 Years
      8 years, 8 months ago

      Funny you should mention Statsbomb - that's the 'other source' I was referring to in the introduction to the radar charts. There was a link to that site in the original version of the article but it seems to have got lost during the editing process. In the interests of transparency this is where it was supposed to link to:

      http://statsbomb.com/?s=radar+charts

      I would certainly look at expected goals stats if I could, but as I don't have access to a good datasource that's not really possible. And no, I don't currently publish anything elsewhere.

      1. Barry Woj
        • 11 Years
        8 years, 8 months ago

        Oh I wasn't trying to call you out, I was just interested to see if you were part of that community publishing football research. The article was in keeping with the quality of much of the stuff I've read. Yeah I thought it might have been Statsbomb! Ted Knutson worked wonders with his radars before he got his FC Midtjylland job.

        Fair enough, it seems like a pretty labour intensive metric to calculate even if you have the data. I think it could be very nice stat for FPL though... Anyway keep up the good work!

        1. The3rdTurd
          • 13 Years
          8 years, 8 months ago

          I wouldn't consider myself part of that community, although I do read and enjoy their output. I suspect the likes of Ted Knutson et al would look down their noses at using their models for something as lowly as FPL, but I do agree that xG would be very useful for FPL and it's a shame it's not a metric that is easily available.

  28. meerlight
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 12 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Look at the priddy graphics...

    Nice work 3T

  29. ItOnlyTook9Years
    • 8 Years
    8 years, 8 months ago

    Fantastic stuff, great effort!

    I agree that the tables are sometimes difficult to take in unless you have time to analyse them, data visualisation is a hugely powerful tool and this is a great example of it.

    The data comes alive!