football data and tactics | markstats.club | bsky.app/markstats.club | @markstatsbot | donations ko-fi.com/markstats
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Individual match pages are live on markstats.club
For every match across all 5 top leagues you can now see: a cumulative xG timeline and head-to-head metrics (xG, xT, field tilt, buildup completion, high turnovers & more). Still completely free
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New feature on markstats.club: Individual team pages!
Click any team name in the league table to see its ranking across all supported metrics. Switch between seasons to explore how each team’s profile has changed
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A third of Man United’s Premier League xG this season came in a single half - the second half against Ipswich. Take those 45 minutes out, and they drop from 1st (!) to 8th in xG difference
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markstats retweeted
Been a while since I've seen both teams sit this passively in the midblock in the PL.
Fulham have been more impressive in possession which has allowed them to have more of the ball in the 2nd half.
A midblock is fine, but the intensity is not there from either side.
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Man United have Rashford, Cunha and Tielemans in the first two lines of the press. Seriously, what intensity are you expecting from this group? Fulham keep beating the press with ease, they just haven’t punished United yet
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markstats retweeted
Man City 5 : 3 Sunderland
▪ xG: 2.78 - 2.84
▪ xThreat: 1.86 - 1.69
▪ Possession: 55.2% - 44.8%
▪ Field Tilt: 63.4% - 36.6%
▪ Def Action Height: 49.9 - 48.5
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You can keep mocking this graph for its color scale, but then watch Atletico-Real Madrid and try not to notice the difference in the speed of play in possession and how much time and space players are given on the ball.
And these are two of the top three teams in the league
Teams in the Premier League, compared to other big 5 leagues:
🔹 Defend more compact
🔹 Defend more narrow
🔹 Mark tighter
🔹 Press harder
(Compactness measured as the avg distance of each outfield player to the centroid - see screenshot)
You can pick a thousand different metrics that support this
📊 @footovision 25/26 data
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It’s even worse than I thought. Arsenal lost possession in the “danger zone” 41 times, and five of those losses led to a Brighton shot
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According to markstats.club Brighton are one of the most effective high-pressing PL teams after GW4
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Too many “space eaters” and not enough “half-turn receivers” in this Arsenal midfield
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Oh no. Another team won with 36% possession. “The tactical landscape has shifted” they’ll tell you.
What happened while it was 0-0? We don’t ask that question here
Spurs 2 : 3 Aston Villa
▪ xG: 1.52 - 1.59
▪ xThreat: 1.64 - 0.85
▪ Possession: 63.6% - 36.4%
▪ Field Tilt: 81.7% - 18.3%
▪ Def Action Height: 50.4 - 39.7
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“We are truly entering a low-possession era.”
They point to individual match outcomes and Hull City’s current position in the table. But they ignore sample size...
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...This season, the correlation between possession % and points after four games is r = 0.21.
In 2014/15, it was 0.23 after the same number of games - and “suddenly” jumped to 0.83 by the end of the season.
Four games is not a sample...
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I need to check the data, but I suspect the causality might be reversed here. It’s not that having less possession gives you a higher chance of winning. It’s that you tend to have less possession when you’re already winning the game
Correlation with more teams winning with less possession? A more transitional, chaos game is more beneficial than control with a lower gap in quality between teams? @Jon_Mackenzie
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