This Week in Stats: Is Manchester United’s away form sorted?

Manchester United’s away woes might not be over yet, West Brom will be staying up with Alan Pardew and are Tottenham suffering a mini-crisis?

Manchester United scored three goals in the first half of a league match for the first team since last November. This result wasn’t exactly on the cards, though. United’s away form had been poor for a couple of months.

It wasn’t just that they had only won one of their last four, their attack had been virtually non-existent. Two of the games were at Liverpool and Chelsea, but the Red Devils only averaged 0.8 expected goals across those four matches.

Having scored four at Vicarage Road, they must’ve got their attacking form back on track, right? Apparently not; FiveThirtyEight deemed their efforts worth just 1.2 expected goals.

What was remarkable here was all three of their goals in the first period were from outside the box. There were some fine strikes among them, but they obviously weren’t high percentage chances.

United had only scored two league goals from outside the box in their first 13 league games this season. Indeed, ahead of this round of fixtures only three other teams had scored more than three non-penalty box goals in total. It would be wrong to assume such goals can be repeated too often.

With Arsenal away up next, Jose Mourinho will be concerned his side nearly threw this result away (before Jesse Lingard sealed it late on). The Gunners are in blistering form at home too.

The obvious assumption is Mourinho will park the United bus on the pitch, and while it’s a fine plan in principle, their dry attack may not be able to save them if they do concede.

West Brom will stay up with Alan Pardew in charge

The Baggies have only featured in this column once this season. That was after they won their first two games; they haven’t won one since. It’s no wonder their manager was fired. Tony Pulis’ brand of soccer is hard to watch at the best of times. When the results are poor too, there’s really no reason to keep employing him.

Pulis’ problem is he reduces games to as little actual soccer as possible. Time wasting and set pieces are his twin calling cards. He knows that by doing this, the random factors will go for him often enough to keep a team up. The problem with random factors is they can go against you all too easily.

Alan Pardew has been announced as West Brom’s new manager. He will be taking over a team who have drawn their last two matches. As they had lost the preceding four, the Baggies appear to have stopped the rot.

On the balance of play, though, they should’ve lost at Spurs, and they threw away a two goal lead against Newcastle. They also only had 13 shots across the two games, when Newcastle had 14 on Tuesday. Considering the Magpies had lost their previous four league matches, it was a massive missed opportunity.

West Brom may only be two points above the relegation zone, but history suggests they will stay up. As the below graph illustrates, Pardew is a master of starting well before seeing his teams sink like a stone.

In the risk averse Premier League, where staying up is everything, it’s easy to see Pardew as an attractive choice. His style of soccer will be more entertaining than Pulis’ too. His management history suggests the West Brom crowd will soon be restless again, though.

Next: The Premier League enters managerial twilight zone

Are Tottenham in a rut?

Tottenham suffered a 2-1 defeat at Leicester on Tuesday, and their form is not good at the moment. Since beating Liverpool 4-1 to put themselves joint-second alongside Manchester United, Spurs have won just once in the league. Worse than that, they are starting to lose regularly too.

It’s far too soon to be writing Tottenham off for the season, though, as their underlying performances have still been very good lately. Take the Leicester match; Spurs’ chances were worth 2.9 expected goals whereas the home side only mustered 0.8.

In fact, Watford and United scored six goals from a total of 2.5 xG, so Mauricio Pochettino’s team should really have scored more than once. Tottenham’s issue is that the gods of finishing are not currently on their side. What can you do when an opposition striker pulls something like this out of thin air?

https://twitter.com/NBCSportsSoccer/status/935599558821900289

Tottenham had five clear-cut chances at Leicester, which is a remarkable tally. An away team only had at least that many 16 times in the last two full seasons in the Premier League. It happens in just two percent of matches.

In the 12 games where a traveling team had exactly five clear-cut chances, those sides averaged 3.1 goals. As this column has recently noted with regards to West Ham, taking your best chances when they come along is vital too.

Spurs missed two golden opportunities when the score was 0-1, one at 0-2, and another two after Harry Kane had pulled a goal back. Their team is far from broken, but their key players are probably exhausted.

Spurs have three relatively kind fixtures next in the league, before they travel to Manchester City. Watford, Stoke and Brighton should all be wary, as Tottenham’s underlying numbers suggest they can win all three comfortably.