A common refrain from coaches, players and fans is, regardless of the result, “we were the better team”. If you want to test the validity of that statement, you can use this set of statistics to do so.
Here’s How it Works
For each game your team plays, you will assess if they had more of the following than their opponents:
- Shots: Pretty basic, out shooting your opponent indicates attacking intent at the most basic level, trying to score
- Shots on Target: What’s better than a shot? One that finds the target! Shots on target are either goals, saves or clearances off the goal line, more of these, typically leads to more goals
- Shots inside opponent’s penalty area: Shots from outside the area provide tons of entertainment, when they go in, but they often don’t, simply put, closer is better
- Passes in opponents half: More of the ball can be good but moving the ball into the opponents half and keeping it there, more than your half is even better
- Corners: Maybe not the best chance creation method but it is a measure of taking the game to the opponent if these start to pile up
- xG: Winning the xG battle requires attacking intent but also effective defending
- xG from Open Play: All goals are worth the same but they’re not all created equally, goals scored and chances created from open play usually require some creativity and cohesion from your team
Scoring
For every stat your team wins, you get three points, if you tie the opponent in a stat category, you get one point and if you lose the category you get zero points.
All in all, your team can earn up to 24 points per game. Each game produces a win-tie-loss record across all eight stats, points and a points percentage. You can track these metrics all season to see how your team is doing. It’s called the Attacking and Entertainment Record(AER).
You can also track how your team does in each category all season long.
The link below will take you to a sheet for the 2024 New England Revolution, the AER tab has all of the above setup. The 2023 vs 2024 tab will compare six of these stats in 2024 to how the Revs did in 2023.
Better Team Tracker 