The Week in Stats: Hasenhuettl is the Alpine Tony Pulis

Why the Alpine Tony Pulis, Ralph Hasenhuettl, doesn’t deserve the plaudits he’s been receiving, plus a look at Manchester United’s penalties and more.

Hard-luck story

Christened the “Alpine Klopp” by British journalists who’d never actually seen one of his teams play prior to his arrival in England, Ralph Hasenhuettl has received plenty of praise for Southampton’s improved fortunes since his appointment. But does he deserve it?

On the face of things, he seems to. After all, Southampton had only managed a solitary league win this season in 14 league games prior to Mark Hughes’ sacking. Since then, Hasenhuettl has overseen four victories and a draw in his eight league matches.

But if we delve a little deeper, the picture looks very different. As we’ve already seen, expected points (xPts) is a very useful metric, especially because it’s a good predictor of future performances.

It tells us how many points a team’s performances would have earned them on average. We know that if a club is significantly over- or under-achieving in terms of xPts, they’re extremely likely to revert to the mean in the future.

This is how xPts metrics anticipated that Monaco, Manchester United, Burnley and Schalke were very unlikely to be able to maintain last season’s points returns. And expected points also correctly indicated that the likes of Arsenal and Werder Bremen would have difficulty keeping up their good starts to the current campaign.

Although Southampton were down in 18th in the real table at the time, if we look at the expected points table at the time Hughes was sacked, on Dec. 3, we can see that Southampton were 14th.

So although their performances hadn’t been great, they’d still been good enough for the club to be safely in mid-table rather than in the relegation zone. This means that even if Hughes hadn’t been fired, we would still have expected Southampton to move up the table to somewhere in the region of their actual current league position: 15th.

We saw something similar last season with Frank de Boer at Crystal Palace. The Dutch coach’s underlying numbers were strong, and a turnaround in Palace’s fortunes seemed close to inevitable. But de Boer was nonetheless dismissed, and — as with Hasenhuettl — his replacement Roy Hodgson ended up taking the credit for something that was almost certainly going to happen anyway.

But what if we more closely examine Southampton’s underlying numbers this season under Hughes and Hasenhuettl? After all, it’s still possible that the club’s performances have improved since the Austrian’s appointment.

For the record, Hasenhuettl was only in the stands at Wembley for Southampton’s defeat against Spurs, so the numbers above take the ensuing away loss to Cardiff as his first game in charge.

As you can see, although the Alpine Tony Pulis — more on that later — has managed to reduce Southampton’s average expected goals against (xGA) from 1.61 to 1.43, his tenure has also seen the side’s already under-performing attack go from creating a sub-par 1.29 xG per 90 to a pitiful 1.05.

This drop in xG for is greater than the reduction in xGA, meaning Southampton’s average expected goal difference per game has descended from a bad minus-0.328 under Hughes to an even worse minus-0.375 since Hasenhuettl took over. So their performances relative to those of their opponents have in fact become worse under the Austrian.

Meanwhile, the team’s expected points per match have been almost identical to Hughes’ time in charge, with the Welshman doing just slightly better at 1.14 xPts/game compared to Hasenhuettl’s 1.13.

In summary, then, Hasenhuettl has improved Southampton’s defense a little but has blunted their attack by an even bigger margin. They’re being outperformed by their opponents to a greater degree than before and their expected points numbers have flatlined.

Southampton’s improved league position appears to have far more to do with better luck than better management.

Before we move on, it’s worth quickly explaining why the idea of Hasenhuettl as some kind of hipster icon is preposterous. It would be far more accurate to say that he’s the Austrian Tony Pulis.

Hasenhuettl first arrived in the Bundesliga in the 2015-16 season as the coach of Ingolstadt. If we’re being very, very polite, then Hasenhuettl’s Ingolstadt could be described as functional. They were grimly effective.

The Bavarian side led the league in total aerial duels and inaccurate long passes. They had the second-lowest average pass success and the smallest proportion of goals from open play. Above all, they were reliant upon the set-pieces of their one player of note, Pascal Gross, now at Brighton. A league-high 33.3 percent of their goals came from such situations.

Hasenhuettl then moved to Leipzig in the summer of 2016. Leipzig could seem like lots of fun if you only ever saw their highlights, with counter-attacks spearheaded by Timo Werner and the individual skills of Naby Keita standing out. Watching them for the full 90 minutes was considerably less enjoyable, however.

In truth, Hasenhuettl hadn’t changed much at all — but the budget had. Going into their first season in the Bundesliga, Leipzig had had a higher net spend over the previous three years than any other club in Germany, including Dortmund and Bayern.

Not content with having one 6-foot-4 target man in the squad in Yussuf Poulsen, Hasenhuettl ensured that another was brought in in the form of Davie Selke. Leipzig went on win the third-highest number of aerial challenges in Europe’s top five leagues.

Hasenhuettl’s side also committed the eighth-largest amount of fouls in those five divisions. That “functional” approach hadn’t changed. And when he tried to adopt a less pragmatic style in Leipzig’s second Bundesliga season, the team’s form nosedived.

Spot check

The 27th-minute penalty converted by Paul Pogba against Brighton on Saturday was the seventh that Manchester United have been awarded in the Premier League this season. That’s more than any other side in Europe’s top four leagues.

The 2011-12 campaign was the last time that United ended a Premier League season with the highest number of spot kicks.

Crystal Palace’s Luka Milivojevic has the most league penalty goals this season with five, while Sergio Ramos, Cristiano Ronaldo, Eibar’s Charles and Andrea Belotti of Torino all have four apiece.

Milivojevic’s haul is due in no small part to Wilfried Zaha already having won four spot kicks for Palace — no player in those top four leagues has been awarded more penalties than him this season. Raheem Sterling won the most penalties in the Premier League last term with six.

Huddersfield, Burnley, Stuttgart and Bologna are the only sides yet to be awarded a spot kick in the league, although that’s probably due to the lack of time they spend in their opponents’ penalty area rather than any refereeing conspiracy.

The average number of penalties awarded to a team is just under three.

One for the ages

On Saturday Julian Speroni became the oldest Premier League player to take the field this season at 39 years, eight months and a day, although the Argentine didn’t exactly cover himself in glory for Liverpool’s third goal.

The second- and fourth-oldest players to make a Premier League appearance this season are also goalkeepers: Artur Boruc of Bournemouth and Arsenal’s soon-to-retire Petr Cech. Between them is the league’s oldest outfielder this term, Brighton’s 38-year-old right-back Bruno.

There appears to be something in the water on England’s south coast, because Brighton manager Chris Hughton also looks a good decade younger than his 60 years.

Speroni is but a spring chicken in comparison to Claudio Pizarro, however. Werder Bremen’s venerable Peruvian forward turned 40 in October but is still averaging a respectable goal every 192 minutes in the Bundesliga this season, in addition to supplying two assists.

Chievo striker Sergio Pellissier, also older than Speroni, is drinking from the same fountain of youth, having managed three goals and an assist in his 12 Serie A appearances so far.