muirinhoBrain Traysers All of the stuff
Great post, and really interesting. Just wondering though - how do they determine accuracy for crosses?
i.e., if Barrow totally overhits a cross which sails over everybody and gets picked up by winger/full-back the other side - does that count as accurate because it went to one of our players? Conversely, if an inch perfect cross comes in, that skims between goalie and defence, but the striker doesn't stick their foot out and put it in the net - is that an accurate cross or an inaccurate one?
I guess I'm trying to determine if inaccurate crosses is definitely the fault of the player putting them in, or could be at least partially the fault of poor strikers.
I've had a further look - since WhoScored don't split passes into completed/not completed I think its fair to assume an 'accurate' cross (/pass etc) is defined as one received by a team mate.
So yes - a reduction in crossing accuracy could be down to lack of support in the box, or poor deliveries. The obvious issue with this statistic is you could over hit crosses to the other wing, never causing any goal threat, and I believe they would count as accurate.
One interesting related numerical coincidence is that despite not crossing the ball as much this season we scored 9 headed goals in each season. The impact of having fewer crosses this season seems to be visible at the next level when we compare the players playing the target man role. Yann managed 6 last season, and JDB only 2 this year (Yann also managed 2 this season in limited minutes).
For completeness on the aerial threat point, 12 (25%) of our goals this season came from set pieces +3 pens scored (I believe these crosses don't count in the stats above), down from 22 (32%) last season +7 pens scored. I assume all the penalty rebounds we scored last season count as 'set piece' goals.