Lack of goals is not the fault of the data: players pass more and shoot less | Pep Guardiola

ILast season, only 11.5% of the goals scored in the Premier League The percentage of goals scored from outside the box is the lowest Opta has recorded since the Premiership split from the Football League in 1992. This is not an isolated case – there have been fluctuations, but the general trend over the past two decades has been a decline in the proportion of goals scored from long range. Which raises the obvious question of why. Is this the clearest evidence of the impact of data on football?

Its exact impact on how top-level football is actually played is difficult to measure, not least because clubs are keen to obscure any advantage they gain from analytics in order to preserve their competitive edge.

Tactical analyst Michael Cox made the intriguing argument in The Athletic last week that, with one or two specific exceptions, data has not actually had as much of an impact on how the game is actually played as is often claimed.

The proportion of shots taken from distance has fallen by around a quarter in the Premier League over the past decade, so it may be true that players now have some awareness of the xG of shots from certain positions and modulate their behaviour accordingly, but there are other details in the long-range goals data that seem telling.

Firstly, 143 goals were scored from outside the box last season, compared to 145 the season before and 144 the season before that. In the two seasons before that, there were 122 and 125. In absolute terms, the number of goals from long range is not decreasing, but goals from inside the box are increasing. This may be an indication of greater efficiency, but it also suggests that the picture is more complex than the ratio alone suggests.

Long-range goals peaked in 2006–07 (highest proportion: 20.2%) and 2007–08 (highest figure: 191) and began to decline in 2008, which is regarded as a landmark tactical year. Prior to 2008, there was only one season in which goals per game in the Champions League knockout stages averaged more than three; after that, the average would not fall below three again until 2020–21. 2008 was also the year in which Pep Guardiola He took over as technical director of Barcelona.

Guardiola is the most influential manager of modern times. He has had a direct influence on two top Premier League club managers, Mikel Arteta and Enzo Maresca, and is at the forefront of a philosophical movement that began at Ajax in the late 1960s and which counts at least half a dozen other Premier League managers among its members.

But there is also an indirect influence. If you watch a non-professional league game, you will see that goal kicks are taken short and plays are built up from the back. Talented left-footed children of above-average height, whatever their position, are being converted into central defenders because there is a huge shortage of left-footed centre-backs, who are desperately needed by teams that want to play from the back.

That's where the picture starts to get blurred. Could Guardiola achieve all that? Do managers in the eighth and ninth tier of English football really see themselves as mini-Peps? And if Guardiola is the reason for the change, how did it happen so quickly? How could he have such an influence in his first season as manager? That's not to say Guardiola isn't influential; he is, hugely so. His success validates his methods, and there are certainly managers in lower divisions who have been inspired by him and his methods.

But there is also a question of environment. Guardiola did not work in a vacuum. When he became coach of Barcelona, ​​the conditions were conducive to his style of football being successful. The pitches, balls and equipment were of a level that allowed for technical and closed football, so rondo to be transplanted from the training ground to the pitch, while changes to the offside law expanded the effective playing area and a crackdown on bullying tackles made it harder for teams to intimidate smaller, technically gifted players.

Guardiola made the most of it and perhaps crystallised in the minds of many what possession football could achieve in such conditions; had he not existed, the game might not have taken the direction it did, but equally the era of attrition, of Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez, of Greece winning the Euros, was coming to an end.

There has been a revolution in pitch preparation, especially at the lower levels: hybrid surfaces perform more accurately for much longer. Whatever your intention or how devout your faith in a philosophy, you cannot play rondo over a bumpy crust or a mud bath.

That is perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from statistics on long-range goals: there are always multiple causes; nothing is simple. Long-range shots in general have become less frequent since the mid-1960s, while the number of shots needed for each goal has decreased. Teams are passing more and shooting less.

All of this is consistent with the environmental factors that Guardiola benefited from. When pitches and equipment were poor, it made sense to move the ball forward quickly. When brutal tackles were part of the game, it made sense not to linger in possession. If a chance to shoot presented itself, it was often worth taking it; playing two or three more passes to work into a better position makes no sense if possession can be lost through a mistake on the turf or a wild tackle.

But there are other factors. If the opponents are sitting in a low block on the edge of their own box, it may be worth trying to advance to 25 yards, if only because playing through the block to create a higher xG chance is very difficult.

Fewer long-range shots may be a sign of better defensive lines. And nothing is permanent: 16.3% of goals at Euro 2024 were scored from outside the box and, before this weekend in the Premier League, from an admittedly low sample of three games, that had risen to 14.5%.

Data, awareness of what is effective, is probably making a difference to the timing of players' shots, but at the same time it is reflecting the way they play, and that is conditioned by countless factors, environmental and philosophical. Few relationships in football are unidirectional, and almost everything is connected.