Let's look at some Premier League data

Happy Thanksgiving! I was up late writing last night so I won’t make this long, but I took a quick spin through the early Premier League data for today’s article that’s nominally about a title race but is really just an excuse to make pretty vizzes.

Here’s my favorite:

One useful stat for summing up passing behaviour is something called ‘directness’, which is the progressive distance a pass travels toward the opponent’s goal divided by its total distance. A ball aimed straight for the box is maximally direct, while a sideways or backwards pass may have a directness of zero. …

Manchester City used to build aggressively in the left half-space when Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan played there, but this season they’re playing fewer passes in wide areas in the build-up. Liverpool’s red hotspot on the right flank has dissolved as Trent Alexander-Arnold has become more of a deep midfielder. Arsenal pass much less directly than they used to, especially on Declan Rice and Kai Havertz’s left side, while James Maddison’s arrival has helped Spurs move their passing game into the final third.

Some of this stuff took a while to code and I’m grateful to the brilliant and always helpful soccer geographer Ben Bellman for teaching me how to do some cool mapping tricks on a pitch. Make friends who are smarter than you, is my advice.

My family has decided to replace turkey with Franklin Barbecue brisket as our holiday tradition, so excuse me while I go eat myself into a three-day meat coma. Have a great weekend, everybody.