Altach: are they declining?

When Alex Pastoor took over at Altach in March of 2019, things didn't look very bright for the team from Vorarlberg. They languished in penultimate position of the table and were in acute danger. Wacker Innsbruck, who were relegated in the end, were only one point behind them. The dutchman's take of control meant an immediate improvement of form. He took them to the second position of the lower tier of the play-offs, eight points ahead of the relegation spot. During the play-offs, the team managed to gather one more point (18) in ten games than in the 22 matches of the regular season, albeit against in general weaker opposition. In the following 2019/20 season, the team stabilized on a higher level, gaining six points more during the regular season than the year before. Then, football was stopped for some months, and after the restart the team was not the same as before. Although they did finish second again in the lower play-offs, they did so by collecting five points (i.e. half a point every game) less than the year before. They also scored almost 50% less goals, although they also improved defensively a bit. 

This year, their downward trend seems to continue. They are again in penultimate position, only one point ahead of the worst team of the league (sounds familiar?). Never in the last few years have they collected fewer points per game than this season (a mere 0.66). Their goal difference is the second worst in the league and no team has scored fewer. This leads to the question whether this trend is down to some more or less random fluctuation (as can happen in a short time of only twelve games), or are there real problems? And can we say that the fact that they score fewer goals is down to some offensive problems?

A look at the long-term trend of their xG-numbers show that they do have a worse regular season than in previous years (the current format was installed in 2018). After having performed at quite similar levels during the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons before the split at around -0.41 xG-difference per game, they are now down to -0.6. This difference might not seem big, but it adds up to around four goals in the course of twenty games. 

The graph shows the evolution of the total xG-difference since the start of the 2018/19 season (thick black line) and the mean difference for each sub-season (thinner blue line). Given that it is a cumulative sum, it is not very surprising to see some variability at the beginning, with the tendency stabilising after around ten games. We can see that there was an uplift after Pastoor took over, when the team reached their highest average xG-difference (0.42). 

The trend was however not sustainable, and the performances returned to the level of the 2018/19 regular season. Things did not get much better in the 2019/20 play-offs (after lockdown), when they performed around half as good as the year before. The downward trend carried on into the current season, as exposed above.

Their difficulties are still not so much down to problems in attack. In fact, they are creating more this year (1.23 xG per game) than in the two previous. The problem is that this offensive improvement is more than cancelled by some defensive struggles. They almost concede two xG per game (1.83), which may be less than their actual goal tally against but is so high that naturally more variation occurs.

Although they are clearly not the main relegation candidate this season, there are some worrying signs concerning results and performances. They need to improve defensively if they are to get back to where they have already been in past seasons.