WAC: Are they suffering a European hangover?

After finishing last season in third position, which included a secure spot in the Europa League group stage, Wolfsberger AC suffered a bit of a slow start to the new season. They lost four out of five at the beginning of the term and spent most of this fall below the magic line, i.e. in the lower half of the table. During the last couple they seem however to have turned their fortunes; they only lost one league game since the start of November, winning five out of seven (including an away game against the ruling champion). Similarly, the expected goals table tells a story of a team that will most likely finish in the upper half of the table (they have played one game less, which is why they could jump to fifth already next week). The prospects of competing for international honours again are there.

 

Next month, they also have another European challenge. They play Tottenham in the round of last sixteen, an encounter that they most likely will not win. Moreover, the question is whether this tie will further affect their domestic performances. Given that they already had a small squad last season, the additional workload might do them more damage than they wished for. The question is therefore if the (most likely) two games will affect their domestic performances this spring season.

 

To answer the question, I divided the eleven games they have played so far this season into two sub-groups: European games (red in the graph) are those within three to four days after a Europa League fixture. Free Weeks (blue bars) on the other hand are games in which they had had no midweek games (domestic cup games have been played on weekends this season so far). The sample size is quite small (five European games and six Free Weeks) and I did not control for quality of opposition (which might affect the data disproportionately). Results are therefore to be taken with a pinch of salt and will give us only a general idea but given that additional workload is commonly used as a reason or excuse for poor domestic performances, there should be at least something to it.

 

The data shows that there are actually small differences in their performances, but not the way you would expect. Their points per game tally is basically unchanged, whether they have played European or not. They both won and lost two of their games after midweek fixtures, but they proportion of wins and losses is also the same after free weeks (three to three). 

 

In terms of underlying performances, they tended to play better after European nights, scoring around 0.33 xG (one goal every three games) more and conceding 0.4 less than when they could use the whole week for preparing their game. In those more challenging weeks, they created more footed shots and more from through balls, two more effective ways to score goals. Meanwhile, after long training weeks they were significantly better during set-pieces and counters.

The thing with European games with them so far has been that they struggled on both ends of the pitch to get the goals they deserved. This led them to having an actual (non-penalty) goal difference of 0, while creating a positive expected one (+.22). Heavy legs seem to influence their ability to convert their own chances and prevent the opposition from scoring theirs. On the other hand, they massively overperform in free weeks, converting an expected goal difference of -.42 (a rather poor number) into an actual one of +.16. 

 

Of course, additional games sum up and do not only influence the games in the immediate aftermath. Preparing for more game time by strengthening and broadening their squad is not a bad idea. Their results have however been ok after playing in Europe, with the only outlier being their heaviest defeat so far this season (1:4 at Wattens) after their trip to Moscow. So, rather than fearing the negative impact of European football in the future, they should worry about rather mediocre performances when they don't play in UEFA competitions.

St. Pölten: Are they a real deal?

Although they slipped out of the top six because of a 3:0 defeat against Sturm Graz in the last game before the winter break and in spite of only winning one of their last six matches (losing 8:2 against Salzburg on the way), St. Pölten are still a candidate for the upper play-offs. They spent the best part of the current season so far in the upper half of the table and are also the seventh-best team in the league in terms of xG-difference, so the chances to reach one of the first six spots still exist. This season is a massive upgrade compared to last one, where they finished the regular season as last. They are now only one win away of bettering their total points tally of last year's regular season. Last year, they were the second-worst team in the xG-difference table during the first 22 matchdays and the worst team of the lower Play-Offs.

How have they managed to improve and compete for a spot in the upper final round? Their upward trend is mostly down to higher attacking output. Last season, they created the fewest expected goals in both the regular season and the lower Play-Offs. They are now the sixth best shooting team of the league, only around one expected goal behind WSG Wattens in fifth place. Defensively, there are more worrying signs. With almost 23 expected goals conceded in twelve games, they are in the lower third of league teams in this category.

They have been maximising quality over quantity. As the plot shows, they are taking the best shots on average of all the teams in the league, with a total shot number of a relegation threatened team (third lowest of the league). Their average shot has in turn a probability to go in of more than 14%, way above the second-best team in this list (SV Ried, 12.6%) and almost 2.5 percentage points better than league average (11.6%). In defensive terms, they are not quite as good in this sense, conceding shots that are only slightly worse (11.4%) than the average team.

Their improvement in offensive terms can largely be attributed to better shot locations. They take more than 71% of their shots from inside the box, the largest share of the league, almost completely renouncing long-way shots. This strategy not only increases the chances of the single shot to go in the net, it also has the advantage of giving the opposition less opportunities to exploit possession changes that are the result of balls saved or blocked because they were taken from poor positions.

In terms of game situations, they create the highest amount of expected goals from counter situations. Bearing in mind that shots from counter situations are also more likely to go in than comparable shots from non-counters, this seems like a legit strategy to create attacking danger. They are rather poor from set-pieces (8th best team) and from long balls (11th), which could both be powerful circumstances for outsiders like them. On the other hand, they are the second-best team of the league for xG created from through-balls (after Wolfsberg and unlike another team of their region), which are another excellent way to create high-quality shots.

If they manage to become a bit more solid defensively and keep on exploiting successful offensive strategies, there chances to reach the upper Play-Off (which would mean no danger of relegation and the chance to compete for European games) are not to be neglected.

Hartberg: Are they defying common wisdom?

After narrowly surviving in their first year and making it for the first time in their history to a European competition in the second one, TSV Hartberg are back to pushing above their weight this season. They sit comfortably in mid-table (currently 8th), with less points distance to the upper Play-Offs than to the relegation zone. Head coach Markus Schopp has been doing a decent job since taking over in 2018 and doesn't seem to stop.

Their underlying numbers do however tell a slightly different story. They are actually the second-worst team of the league xG-wise. The strange thing about their season is that they do not actually overperform their xG-difference. They are on -.75 actual goal difference per game from -0.65 non-penalty expected goals. 

So what causes their overperformance in terms of points? One reason might be penalties, which are usually excluded due to not being a really repetitive skill. It is however not the reason for their good points tally. So far, they had one for them (in a game they draw 1:1) and one against (in a 7:1 defeat), hence penalties explain one single point in the table.

The answer lies more in the way they score goals under specific circumstances. They obviously score (expected and actual) goals of higher value than an average team. The graph shows the relationship between xG-difference and points per game since the start of the 2016/17 season at team level. Points are coloured according to tier (regular season or Play-Offs), they grey area is the 95% confidence interval. We can see that points are largely a function of xG-difference. There are some outliers, out of which many will be down to luck or random variation.

As we have seen, this is not the case for Hartberg (blue dots in the diagram). They perform about as well as you would expect them given their underlying performances. However, they seem to have found to way to beat these expectations by keeping games tight, with rather few goals both scored and conceded. That is when they excel. Around 60% of their games since their promotion in 2018/19 were tight games, i.e. games in which both teams either scored the same amount of goals or one team exactly one more than the opponent. They won half of their points in those games, a far higher percentage than other teams with a similar amount of tight games.

Their special strength in comparison to their direct rivals are games in which exactly one goal is scored. They win 1.36 points on average in those games, considerably more than comparable teams such as Admira (1.0), Altach (0.67) and WSG Tirol (0.6). Only St. Pölten nearly reach this same level (1.33).

When goals galore, they are however doomed. They have lost seven games in the two and a half season in which their opponent scored at least five goals, while they themselves have yet to score that many goals in a single game in the upper league.

 

Ried: how do they compare to other recently promoted teams?

In spite of sitting relatively comfortably in tenth position (out of twelve teams), with three points separating them from the sole relegation spot and five between them and the upper play-offs, SV Ried decided to sack their head coach Gerald Baumgartner after one half of the regular season. Although there was no immediate relegation threat, there were some reasons to be concerned, given that they had the second-worst defense in the league and had just previously lost a home game 1:4 to a not very great contender. 

But how evaluate their situation? They still sit tenth in the expected goal difference table, although things are very congested between the teams in spots eight and eleven, so a lot of things can still happen. It might make more sense to compare their performances to other teams in their maiden season after promotion. I included only those of the 2018/19 season onwards, given that the current league format was introduced this very year.

 

This leaves us with three other teams as benchmark: Hartberg, Wacker Innsbruck (both promoted for the 2018/19 season) and WSG Tirol (debuting in 2019/20). Innsbruck and WSG finished their first season in last position, although the latter did not have to go down due to another team being administrated. This shows how hard survival in the first league in Austria has become, reflecting the growing gap between the divisions. Unlike in earlier times, promoted teams do not tend to compete for European spots, but rather struggle to stay up.

The simple comparison shows that Ried is in general the worst of the four teams. They are conceding almost 0.6 expected goals per game more than they create, way less than their counterparts. The issue is not so much their offensive side: they score 1.29 xG per game, which is in line (Hartberg 1.27, WSG Tirol 1.37, Wacker Innsbruck 1.32). Their problems lie predominately at the back, with almost two xG conceded per game, around 0.15 per game more than the second-worst team. 

 

Their defensive issues are backed up by actual goals numbers. They have conceded 2.3 goals per game so far, around 0.25 more than the second-worst team. These differences add up to a total of around six expected goals over the course of a full season, which is quite worrying given that none of the other teams finished high in the actual table.

 

One might argue that the comparison is a bit unfair due to the small sample size it is based on for the current season; hence it could be biased because of schedule effects. The fact is however that Ried's schedule has so far been rather easy. Of the five remaining home games, only two are against teams from the upper half of the table. On the other hand, they have to play three of the four best teams of the table away from home during the remainder of the regular season. Results will therefore not improve significantly.

There is however some strength in this team. They have created the best xG-difference from set-pieces (a total of 1.63) and perform quite well after long balls (second-best, with an xG-difference of 0.7). They could do better after counter attacks and through balls. 

This leads us to questions of style. Their style so far this season has been overtly reactive, with the lowest share of ball possession (~40%), pass percentage (69%) and of passes played short (77%) of the subsample. They also play the second lowest share of their passes in the opponent half (33%) and cross the ball second-most (around five crosses per 100 total passes). 

It is ok to start the season more cautiously and not try to dominate every game from the start. But in order to be competitive, some improvement is non-negotiable. As this blog entry has shown, the three areas where they need to work on the most are defensive stability, a more active style of play and their game in possession. They already have a new head coach. Miron Muslic coached second-tier side Floridsdorfer AC since summer. They had the second-worst defence of the league.

Austria: how do they try to score goals?

Seventh, fourth, seventh, and now tenth. After finishing second (and losing more than one third of their games on the way) in 2016/17, Austria Vienna are in what you may describe as a permanent crisis. They are definitely performing below expectations, given that they are the last club to win the league not named Red Bull Salzburg and also the record champion since the competition was installed in its current format in the 1970s.

The club, formerly known for technical and offensive football, is struggling especially at the high end of the pitch. During the current season, they have scored only one goal per game, down from 1.5 during last year's regular season and on par with the worst team of the league. Their last win (and only second in total) dates back to early October. This happens in spite of reinstalling their messiah, Peter Stöger, the last one who coached them to champions honours, as head coach this summer.

The difficulty is that their performances are just that. Although they can argue that they have been a bit unlucky (only nine goals from 15 xG), there are only three teams in the league that created even less. They are playing like a below average team and deserve the position they occupy in the table.

The shot zones map underlines their weaknesses. They create less expected goals than an average team does from any area in the box and just outside of it. Their chance creation in the zone around the penalty spot is especially poor. This is not the map of a team that competes for European competitions or even more, but rather one that needs to make sure they don't finish in a lower league the following year.

The question is if there is at least anything positive about their offensive performances this year. A strength they could rely on to score more goals during the remainder of this season. By crunching the numbers concerning their expected goals and comparing them to the other teams of the league, we can detect any possible strengths.

Unfortunately, they are not leading the league in any category, and only in one they are among the top third of teams. They are below average both before (8th best team of the league) and after the break (10th). They are somehow better after crosses (7th) than after non-crosses (10th) as well as after set-pieces (6th) than from open play (9th), but nothing to be too optimistic about.

The only category in which they somehow excel is xG after long passes, in which they are the fourth best team by now. To put this into context, they also try it quite often the direct way, playing long balls both absolutely (955 times so far) as relatively (23% of their passes are long) the second-most frequently of all clubs. Plus, this kind of football might not be the one preferred by their supporters and is also not the best one suited to some of their more gifted players such as Grünwald, Fitz or Sakaria.

The most baffling fact, however, is that they are still to create a single shot from a through ball this season. Through balls are in general a very effective way to generate high quality chances, hence the team lacking this quality shows the poor season they are having. Only fellow relegation contenders Hartberg and Altach have also failed to create something from through balls this season.

The issue is as much personal as it is structural. Last season's most dangerous players are by and large also this season's, but in general most of them on a lower level. There are some promising youngsters such as Aleksandar Jukic (20) and Patrick Wimmer (19), but they still rely too much on some players beyond their peak (Grünwald, Klein last season, Suttner this year) in terms of chance creation.

Plus, one of their most exciting younger players has hardly featured this year. Dominik Fitz has played less than 200 minutes this season, missing many games due to injury and suspension. He was easily their most creative player last season, setting up 7.5 expected goals for his teammates. On the way, he created more than two expected goals from through balls last season (no other more than one), was their best assister for shots both from crosses and non-crosses, and also both from open play and after set-pieces.

He did additionally also create danger from his own shots, being their second most effective player from non-crossed shots and their third most from open play and after short passes. His tally of four goals and eight assists almost perfectly matches his underlying performances, indicating how much his team has been missing him this year.

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.

Admira: How bad are their performances really?

Last in the real table, and also trailing in the expected goals ranking, with the worst defence (almost 25 xG conceded) and offence (only under ten xG created) of the league: the 2020/21 season of FC Admira Wacker Mödling can be described as suboptimal, at least. They are only one point behind their closest rival (Altach), but underlying performances are abysmal. Their expected goal difference of -1.25 almost doubles that of the second worst team (Hartberg) and is also way lower than their performances in recent years (between -0.31 and -0.61 since 2016/17). But how bad are they really in a historic comparison?

Going back in time (until the start of the 2016/17 season), we struggle to find comparable teams. The current Admira squad is by any means the worst team in this period. The second worst team (Wolfsberg during 2016/17) managed to survive with an xG-difference of almost -25 in 36 games. 

The comparison might be unfair, however. Given that there were only twelve games played this season, sample size issues and schedule effects might influence this seasons' data more than those of past, complete seasons. I try therefore to make a more just comparison. From the four seasons before the current one, I randomly draw 10.000 subsamples (12 games) of individual teams and compare their respective xG-difference to the numbers of this year's Admira. By sampling randomly and repeating this quite a few times (like 10.000), we are able to eliminate with high confidentiality singular effects that might influence the current season's data. The comparison is then more grounded.

The graph shows the distribution of the xG-differences of the simulation, plus a curve that indicates a normal distribution. The line shows that results are skewed, indication that some teams (usually Red Bull Salzburg) perform on an extraordinary level, causing a longer tail on the right side of the graph. However, this should us not bother us in this case.

The results of the simulation confirm that Admira's performances this season are really bad. Out of the 10.000 simulations, only 18 (way below one percent) where worse than the team so far. Interestingly, eleven of those where Hartberg last season, obviously a rather bad season xG wise. Admira themselves feature twice (both during the 2018/19 season, their worst one before the current) in this list.

Does this mean that they are doomed? Well, not necessarily. There is still a lot to play for (ten games before the league is split into two groups of six teams each, who will face each other twice). The point difference is slim (only one) and will be further reduced even if they remain in last position, given that points are halfed after the regular season. Furthermore, the results of the simulation itself give a glimmer of hope. Of the 18 worse cases, only two (FC Wacker Innsbruck 2018/19 and St. Pölten 2017/18) were from teams that ended their season in last position (St. Pölten were not relegated due to a change of the league structure). Teams can and do overperform, but there is also a lot of room for improvement for Admira after the winter break.