The Week in Stats: The decline of Real Madrid and Manchester United

This week we look at the numbers behind the declining fortunes of Real Madrid and Manchester United.

Giant missteps

A five-game rolling average is simply the mean average of a club’s figures in a certain metric over their past five matches.

Looking at these numbers for a side’s expected goals for and against gives us a very good gauge of how a team’s performances are improving or waning over the course of a season, or even from year to year.

Here we’ll use them to assess the fortunes of two giants of the European game: Real Madrid and Manchester United.

Starting with Manchester United, there are some obvious takeaways. Firstly, it’s very easy to see why the club dismissed both Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho.

Secondly, for all the hype and headlines, United are now pretty much back where they were when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer first took over.

In addition, those two big spikes in United’s xG performances — at the start of Mourinho’s second season in 2017-18 and then again following Solskjaer’s appointment — both came when they had a run of games against lesser sides.

For Mourinho, it was West Ham, Swansea, Leicester, Stoke, Everton, Southampton and Palace. For Solskjaer, it was Cardiff, Huddersfield, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton, Burnley, Leicester and Fulham, plus a win over Tottenham with a lowly 0.96 xG.

Moving on to Real Madrid, Rafa Benitez was perhaps a little unlucky not to have been given more time, but then such are the pitfalls of choosing to work for Florentino Perez.

After a hugely impressive title-winning campaign under Zinedine Zidane in 2016-17, the writing already seemed to be on the wall towards the end of the following season, which saw Madrid finish 17 points behind champions Barcelona as Zidane’s first spell in charge reached its conclusion.

Julen Lopetegui started well before flat-lining, which led to him being sacked after only 10 league games — well worth disrupting Spain’s World Cup preparations for. Santiago Solari flat-lined at first, improved and then was dismissed, and things haven’t gotten any better since Zidane’s return.

Pride of place

Having looked last week at where on the pitch the leading scorers in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A are taking their shots from, this week we’ll turn to where on the goal-frame these players are placing those scoring attempts.

Starting with the Premier League, one surprise – to me at least – is just how seldom any of them are finding the top corner of the goal.

Jamie Vardy has taken the most shots that are so wayward they don’t even fit on the map — five in total, three of which were close to the corner flag. In contrast, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang hasn’t had any.

There are some striking contrasts in shooting style here. Although Vardy, Sergio Aguero and Sadio Mane are all right-footed, Vardy seems to have a preference to shoot to his left and Aguero tends to go to his right, while Mane is more unpredictable.

Over in La Liga, the shot placements of both Luis Suarez and in particular Lionel Messi are impressive, not that it did either of them much good against Liverpool on Tuesday, of course.

This again undermines the reputation that Suarez gained during his time in England as a wayward, reckless shooter. It also suggests that despite the Uruguayan clearly now being past his peak, he still isn’t going to be an easy player for Barca to replace. Similarly, the form of 31-year-old Karim Benzema has been one of the few bright spots in an awful season for Real Madrid.