What Can Four Seasons of Basic NWSL Stats Tell Us?
With the help of several NWSL fans, we turned the PDF stats into a Google Sheet in order to explore how players and the league has progressed.
When it comes to NWSL stats, we have the bare minimum to work with [unless you use WoSo Stats] but with four seasons done, I think it is time to track some progress. One of my favorite sportswriters is Benjamin Morris (FiveThirtyEight) and his piece Lionel Messi Is Impossible is a fantastic example of a model we can replicate for the NWSL. In order to follow along, please check out the interactive graphics here. Not all graphics presented here are up to date in the interactive but will be in due time.
Scoring
We do not have the extent of data Morris has to illustrate the incredible levels Messi and Ronaldo reach in terms of goals and assists. However, we can still pick out some of our most active players.
If we focus on goals first — Morris has a criteria of at least 1 shot per game and a requirement of 50+ games. We can definitely abide by the first condition but for the second condition, I changed the requirement to at least 25 games. One of the biggest standouts is Jess McDonald — she is the 2nd most efficient shooter and takes the 7th most shots on goal.
We can really illustrate some of the best in the game by simply looking at Goals vs Shot Attempts under the same criteria. Jess McDonald does not take as many shots as Carli Lloyd, but has converted most non-PK goals.
Timing
Timing is everything— how often to these great goal scorers get called offside and thus lose a possible opportunity to score? Again, Jess McDonald is in a league of her own compared some of the bigger scorers.
While we are on the subject of time, I was curious to see when teams tend to peak and score goals. For instance, a majority of Portland and Orlando’s goals this year came after 50 minutes. Meanwhile, Seattle and Houston are relatively even. There are certain players I highlighted based on this year’s MVP nominations. For Chicago — you can see Christen Press’s goals; for Houston — Kealia Ohai’s goals and assists; for Portland — Tobin Heath’s record breaking assists (four to Allie Long); and for Western New York — Lynn Williams’ goals and assists. Penalty kicks and own goals are not included.
For more detail, you can see the top 25 goal scorers for this year and their timing for the goals. What is fun — Edmonds scored a majority of her goals for Orlando in the last ten minutes.
Assists
This is probably my favorite visual from Ben’s original article, entitled Dishing It vs Taking It, in order to identify which players score not only score a lot of goals but also play a secondary role in making them possible. Jess McDonald, Sam Kerr, Allie Long, Christen Press, and Christine Sinclair were identified as deadly sorcerers and of these, McDonald plays the biggest role in assists. In the conversation, do you dish as much as you take, Megan Rapinoe is a standout but also has played half the amount of time as McDonald. One big outlier of the original standouts — Christen Press — who has a great number of goals in her name but has not played as big of a role in assisting others. However, this is when limitations of NWSL stats will hopefully be overcome by the advanced stats data collection. An assist is a secondary role but often times it is another player who has the vision to get the ball to the secondary player. Just another thing to think about! One last note, Alex Morgan may not have as many goals per game but she does a good job having a role in the goal scoring.
One piece of information the basic NWSL stats do provide are crosses and corner kicks, which made me think a few things — of the players with at least one assist, who plays a big role in crosses and corners? The darker color pertains to higher assists per game. There are certain players have a great foot and can do both — Megan Rapinoe, Christine Nairn, Heather O’Reilly and Tobin Heath. An interesting note: Jess McDonald probably does not take corner kicks but has the same number of crosses per game as the later three in the group I just named.
The last thing I want to note about assists — who had the biggest partnerships in the 2016 NWSL Regular Season? With at least 3 goals or more, the biggest standouts for me is Tobin Heath’s partnership with three other players and Williams’ having two partners — McDonald and Doniak. In a sense, if you are a top team, it is probably better that your goal scorer has multiple partnerships rather than you have three partnerships dependent on one person to provide the ball at their feet (or head). If you would like to help disect play by play from the NWSL website for the other three seasons, please tweet me!
Aggression
Who is the most aggressive player in the league? Those who commit a lot more fouls than receive are highlighted below and for some, I doubt there are any surprises. I know many would probably ask about Jess Fishlock, Shea Groom, or Tobin Heath but these players get fouled as much as they foul others. It is not as extreme as you think now that we have the comparison.
From the NWSL to USWNT…
There are some players who actively thank the league for giving them a chance to grow such that they get called up into the USWNT camp. I put Crystal Dunn and Allie Long two players as examples of this statement. The rest are recent call ups with the exception of Jessica McDonald, a player I have mentioned multiple times at this point. The number here is total goals and assists. Not all players will have incredible stats if they are defenders but perhaps just focus on the known goal scorers. I am absolutely excited by the possibility of Lynn Williams and Kealia Ohai sharing a front line with Christen Press and perhaps, Crystal Dunn and Tobin Heath in midfield. However, I still have to wonder what Jessica McDonald has to do in order to get noticed.
The following data was transferred from PDF to Google Docs by multiple fans. Thank you so much to those people who made my life easier so I could bring you all of these visualizations. Please like and share this article, and follow this publication! Cheers. — NT
