Footnotes
Essays on football, data, and the things that connect them.
Availability Is the Best Ability
Across six European leagues and ten seasons, injury burden predicts league performance. But the first injury is more expensive than it looks.
Set Pieces
The Enclosure
Take-on success has fallen from 51.8% to 37.9% in four seasons. The common is enclosed.
The Stink
Fixed positions, rehearsed timing, collective over individual. The structural return of the dead ball goal.
The Wonder
Forty-two thousand corners. The engineering underneath the set piece revolution, pipe by pipe.
The Price of the Premier League
The Premier League generates more prediction market volume than Major League Baseball. What the prices tell you, and what they hide.
The Comfortable Save
Almost 40% of outside-box shots land at a height where goalkeepers save 82% of them. A visual guide to the goal mouth's hidden geography.
The Harrying
Weather, distance, latitude. Twelve seasons of Premier League data, 4,451 matches. Why the north is the hardest place in England to come and win. And the one winter it didn't matter.