Bundesliga weekend roundup

Rounding up all of the weekend Bundesliga action, for 11/1/2014.


Schalke 1 - 0 Augsburg

Schalke wins ugly at home on a 36th minute goal by Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. Augsburg dominated possession and took the majority of shots, but were unable to generate any good chances, taking mostly long shots outside of the box. Schaalke's victory may be a pyrrhic one, as wunderkind Julian Draxler went down with a hamstring injury in the first minute.

Mainz 1 - 2 Werder Bremen

Werder Bremen picks up their first win of the season on the back of a brace by Franco Di Santo. Shinji Okazaki opened the scoring for Mainz in the 2nd minute, only to concede right before and after the halftime break. Di Santo, by the way, is quietly having a decent season this year, with seven goals eleven appearances this season, on pace to smash his previous single season record of seven goals in 32 appearances back in 10/11 for Wigan.

Hannover 1 - 0 Eintracht Frankfurt

Eintracht defender Alexander Madlung scores the only goal for the match... unfortunately, it was for the wrong side. Neither side was able to put much together in a match to forget. In particular, Frankfurt couldn't get out their own way, committing 20 fouls to Hannover's 13, and conceding 10 corners to Hannover's 4. With their third loss in a row Frankfurt continue their descent down the table.

Hamburg 1 - 0 Bayer Leverkusen

Hamburg pulled out a rare win in a very chippy match against Bayer. The two sides combined for more than 50 fouls in the match, When I play Football Manager Handheld, for whatever reason I can always count on Bayer keeper Bernd Leno to commit a stupid foul, concede a penalty, and get sent off, only for the AI to put a striker in goal. This is a long way of saying that Leno committed a dumb tackle in the box, conceding a penalty for the only goal of the match.

Stuttgart 0 - 4 Wolfsburg

Wolfsburg stifles relegation fodder Stuttgart, making the most of their chances. This marks Wolfsburg's fifth straight win, currently tied for second place and only four points behind Bayern for first. With Schalke and Dortmund not looking like their normal selves, Wolfsburg is fighting with Monchengladbach for a Champions League spot.

Bayern Munich 2 - 1 Borussia Dortmund

Truly a loss that stabs at the heart of your resident blogger. Dortmund went ahead early on a Marco Reus sizzler but were unable to keep Arjen Robben and former BVB forward Robert Lewandowski out of the net. Mats Hummels went off early for Dortmund with a right foot injury. Though Bayern dominated the game, one bright spot was the play of Roman Weidenfeller, without whom things would likely have been much worse. Bayern maintain their lead at the top of the Bundesliga, while Dortmund continues to make my report card posts look foolish as they slip to 17th in the league.

Monchengladbach 3 - 1 Hoffenheim

In a matchup between two of this Bundesliga season's biggest surprises, Gladbach took a ho-hum victory over Hoffenheim, taking a 2-1 lead in the 31st minute and never looking back. Gladbach left winger Patrick Herrman tripled his goal tally for the season with a brace. A few more matches like this and Herrmann may start drawing some attention for the national side.

Cologne 0 - 1 Freiburg

Not too much to say here. Cologne dominated possession but neither side was particularly clinical in finishing. Cologne maintain mid-table status, while Freiburg takes their first win of the season.

Paderborn 3 - 1 Hertha Berlin 

Early season surprise Paderborn cruise to a win. Hertha played a sloppy, overly-aggressive game, conceding almost twice as many fouls as Paderborn and often in dangerous places. Currently at 7th place, Paderborn is only one point off a spot in Europe. I can imagine a club like Tottenham visiting tiny little Paderborn in the Europa league, overly confident, getting their pants blown off, and I can't stop smiling.

14/15 Quarter-season report, part 2

So, given that Dortmund isn’t doing very well so far, what are some of the causes of their troubles? In this post I’m going to dive a little more deeply into some of the underlying numbers to see if we can figure out areas of concern.

Factor 1: Bad luck

As badly as things have been going, the good news is that I’d attribute a lot of the side’s problems to bad luck. Let’s start with Total Shots Ratio. This Grantland link is a great explainer for the concept: http://grantland.com/the-triangle/what-is-total-shots-ratio-and-how-can-it-improve-your-understanding-of-soccer/. The short version: in football, teams that take a lot of shots (and prevent their opponents from taking a lot of shots) tend to have the most success. This can be summed up by a team’s Total Shots Ratio (TSR), which is calculated by taking the number a shots a team has taken and dividing it by the number of shots taken plus the number of shots the team concedes. The result is the percentage of the shots taken by the team in their matches. This value strongly correlates with match success; teams that take many more shots than their opponents naturally have more goal-scoring opportunities. Generally speaking, we would expect a team that underperforms their TSR to regress to the mean and improve over time, while a team that overperforms their TSR to regress to the mean and decline.

I've got a couple of tables here. The first is the actual Bundesliga tables through nine matches.

A few surprises here. Bayern at this point is by far the best side in the Bundesliga, and Wolfsburg and Leverkusen are perennial contenders for places in Europe. On the other hand, mid-table sides like Gladbach and Hannover are fighting for spots in the Champion’s League. Schalke and Dortmund are having disastrous seasons to this point.

Now, let’s have another look at the table, using each team’s TSR instead of points

Our understanding of the table is a lot different with this version. Only Bayern and Augsburg have the same rank in both tables. The biggest over-performer is Mainz, currently in 6^th while their TSR suggests that they should be in 16^th. As poorly as Schalke has performed this year, TSR suggests that they would be even worse, if not for good luck.

Most of the other sides are within five or so places of their TSR rank, and the difference is likely due to the relatively small nine game sample. The only club that has dramatically underperformed it’s TSR is Dortmund, currently in 15^th place, with a TSR that is tied for second. A TSR of .67 suggests that Dortmund is taking around two thirds of the total shots in their Bundesliga matches. In fact, they are tenth in the top five European leagues in shots allowed per game, and sixth in shots taken; they are one of only three clubs to place in the top ten in both metrics (the others being Bayern, and Juventus, currently in first place in Serie A).

Though the domestic season has gone very poorly to this point, the a big factor has to be a poor run of luck. Judging by TSR, Dortmund are dominating their matches; the shots just aren't quite hitting the back of the net so far. Simple regression to the mean would suggest that clubs like Mainz and Hannover are going to fall back to the pack, while Dortmund should expect to rebound.

2014/15 Quarter-season report card, part 1

Because we just passed match day 9 (of 34) in the Bundesliga, and we’re halfway through the group stages in the Champions League, I thought a good place to start things here at Professor Dortmund would be to do a series of posts reviewing the season to this point. We’ll start today with an overall report on where the team is, and a look at the factors that have most influenced the team to this point. The next few posts will be about the contributions of some of the individual players on the team, starting with the newer arrivals, and continuing with the old hands.