[Post-Match Thoughts] A Win is a Win is a Win (Sailors 3 Tanjong Pagar 0)

Once again, Chin Heng takes over the writing of this article, and he lends his unique statistical analytical mind to the page. Enjoy!

This was a match where most fans were fully expecting a stat-padding exercise, especially important since we were ahead of Tampines only on goal difference going into this gameweek, but it turned out to be anything but.

I predicted a 9-0 win and had a few lines about dead jaguars and jaguar meat already written for this article before the game. The jaguar jokes will have to wait.

Easy Opponents?

First, why were so many fans expecting a comfortable win? Well, we were up against statistically the worst team in the league (yes, I am aware they are currently 7^th on the table, but hear me out).

Coming into the game, Tanjong Pagar had scored just 6 goals (tied lowest in the league with Albirex).

Tanjong Pagar also had the worst quality of chances created in the league, with their efforts averaging just 0.10xG per shot (the other 8 teams in the league are averaging between 0.13-0.19xG per shot). This implies that they have been struggling to create quality chances, and in their first few games we indeed saw them taking shots from the halfway line with virtually no chance of scoring.

Additionally, they had also conceded 18.4 shots per game on average (vs 10-17.8 per game for other teams), again the worst in the league, indicating that opposing teams generally do not find difficulties in creating chances against them.

By carrying out Monte Carlo Simulations using shot and xG data, Tanjong Pagar had an expected points of 3.63 from the first 5 games (actual points – 4), which puts them at the bottom of my simulated league table.

An Improved Jaguars Side

However, on Sunday night we saw that Tanjong Pagar were not as abysmal as they were in the first few games of the season, and I think credit must be given to them for trying to play football despite coming up against vastly superior opposition. They were not afraid to push players forward in attack, and were willing to play their way out from the back even though the Sailors’ pressing meant that they lost possession near their own box quite a few times during the game.

Shodai Nishikawa and Salif Cisse provided the main offensive threats and looked lively throughout the game. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Tanjong Pagar’s performances started picking up at around the same time Shodai Nishikawa rejoined the team. Despite missing the first 2 games of the season, he has been involved in half of all the goals that Tanjong Pagar has scored so far.

We Never Really Got Going

On the other hand, Sailors never quite got going, not from a lack of effort, but things were somehow just not clicking. There were misplaced passes causing attacking moves to break down, crosses not beating the first man, good runs not being met with the right pass, and we never got any momentum as a result.

The overall attacking performance was not a good one – Lennart Thy was making all sorts of runs behind the defence all night but never got the right service, Maxime wasn’t his usual unplayable self and was stopped by a Tanjong Pagar defender one-on-one on a few occasions.

Some Positives

There were still a few positives to take from the game, as I was happy to see Adam Swandi coming in for the injured Bart to get his first start since gameweek 1. He has put in some good performances from his limited minutes off the bench so far this season, and against the Jaguars he once again put in a good shift and was rewarded with a fantastic goal as well.

Our defence also proved to be solid – they did not have that much to do but were reliable when called upon, restricting Tanjong Pagar to half-chances most of the time.

The last positive is simply that Maxime on a bad day still gave us 1 goal, 1 assist, and a free kick that hit the crossbar. Not his best game yet it allowed us to grind out a result.  

The Stat Pad

I thought it would be interesting to try something new – an entire section of the article delving deeper into statistics of both teams, to examine if the underlying numbers support our own observations from watching the game.

From the match statistics, there does not seem to be much differentiating the two sides, with both teams having a similar number of shots and similar possession percentages, suggesting a close game that could have gone either way.

However, we know that possession is only one aspect of the game. Having the ball is one thing, but what you do with the ball is what matters. Also, not all shots are made equal – a shot from outside the box into a crowded penalty area is not the same as a shot from six-yards out into an open goal.

To examine things a little deeper, we have to look at the xG timeline of the match to see how the chances unfolded as the game developed. We can see that this was a tight affair with minimal quality chances, with the best chance of the game being a 0.21xG blocked effort from Lennart Thy during a 23^rd minute corner. Salif Cisse had the highest cumulative xG for an individual player, accumulating 0.54 xG over 5 chances in the game.

Sailors and Tanjong Pagar amassed just 1.11xG and 0.86xG respectively, but from the chart it is apparent that Sailors were just about the better team for most of the game. The Sailors had an unproductive 2^nd half, and a good spell by Tanjong Pagar in the middle of the 2^nd half narrowed the xG gap but the Jaguars fortunately had nothing to show for it eventually.

With the data on quality of shots that occurred throughout the game, we then carry out a Monte Carlo Simulation of the entire match, randomly simulating whether each shot had been scored based on its xG value. The end result is that Sailors only came away with the win 41.9% of the time, further supporting our earlier observations that we were not at our best and were perhaps lucky to walk away with all 3 points.

[Editor’s note: Do of course consider the other point of view that if the Sailors actually felt they were under any threat of losing the game at all, perhaps they might have been a little more forceful in attack – which would influence the xG value of both teams. My feeling was that the Sailors rested on their laurels somewhat after being up by an early goal. What do you guys think? Get involved in the comments section and in our SFT Telegram chat!]

Conclusion

It is not often that one is disappointed with a win where your team was in the lead for 88 minutes, with a clean sheet to boot as well. As the match commentator rightfully described on stream, for Sailors, it is not just about winning anymore, but performing at a good level and playing good football every week.

While a singular scrappy performance in a long season shouldn’t be a cause for major concern, we do have two very tough games coming up next against Balestier and Tampines, and a similar performance may well put our undefeated start to the season at risk.

I’m sure the team will be working hard in training to find some consistency in match performances, and I am looking forward to a goal-fest in our next match against Balestier.

See you at the next game!

Written by Tan Chin Heng

Edited by Eddy Hirono

 

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