I’m going to blog here for my first time regarding an amateur attempt at a ‘statistical outlook’ on Ipswich’s season. Given the fact that I'm quite verbose, I'll split this into a two parter – first the team, then the players (mainly attackers). This way they're split into more digestible chunks.

It’s been an interesting season for Ipswich this year. Opinions are divided on the way that Mick McCarthy and Terry Connor have approached their tactics this year, but it remains that, for the average fan it has been a good season. The main reason, for me, is a feeling of optimism from the stagnant years of mediocrity.

This topic has been bandied and talked about to great extent over the news comments, and the forums – so I'll cut to the chase. I began compiling stats earlier on this season but then figured that it was pointless since I have neither the time nor the patience to sit down every week and input various data points for each of our players.

But, as the season ended, I began to hash together what publicly available stats I could get hold of. This includes the likes of Squawka (awful), WhoScored, some TWTD, the ITFC stats page (awful), the Football League tables (average/not updated enough) and other sites such as Statbunker.

THIS IS A DISCLAIMER THAT THESE STATISTICS HAVE BEEN PULLED TOGETHER BY ME AND I MAY/PROBABLY HAVE MISSED A FEW THINGS.

Anyway; down to it. KBsSocks (tip of the hat) got the ball rolling with some excellent stats, which were, generally, well received. So, let’s get to it.

This year Ipswich used a 29 players, an (eventually) consistent back five of Gerken, Chambers, Berra, Smith and Cresswell, with Murphy and McGoldrick generally leading the line.

The midfield has changed and moved throughout the season. On my dataset, if you remove players who have played less than 500 minutes, you're left with ~20 players. This excluded players like Ebanks-Blake, Richardson, Hewitt and Graham. A smaller squad, but some kudos to the fitness team for keeping our boys in good condition.

Finishing in ninth position, the team achieved the goal (and general feeling amongst fans) that we would achieve a top 10 finish, flirting briefly with the play-offs. A graph I’ve pulled together (and one Gav has on the site) shows that Ipswich were somewhat consistent from around December onwards.

Goal times indicated that the Blues enjoyed a late goal, whilst conceding midway through the second half more times than not.

I tweeted a few things I’d shoved together earlier this week, and it was pointed out that Ipswich DID concede three penalties this year; one to Huddersfield, the other two to Leeds. Two were scored, and one was saved by Gerken. With only one red card to Cresswell (after the whistle), Ipswich’s disciplinary record also improved this season, along with goals conceded.

So let’s talk about goals. Ipswich ended the season with 60 – I put a table together with goals for and against and created a dummy for the ‘average’. My table, which included this data for all 24 teams, showed 60 was the mean goals scored this year.

So about par.

Conceded were 54, with 12 clean sheets and only 10 games of 46 where we failed to score. I think I read somewhere that Ipswich scored at least once in 91% of their home games this season. Excellent news. Anyway, both the average conceded (60) and number of clean sheets (12.7) kept by our dummy average were around the same as that for Ipswich. So perhaps an average season for an average Championship team.

For the league, I've put together a bubble graph which shows shots taken on the x-axis, shot accuracy on the y-axis (shots on target divided by total shots) and the bubble size being the amount of goals scored. Here, Ipswich had an accuracy of 32.6%, 12.4 shots per game and 9.5 shots per goal. The league average? 13 shots per game, and 10 shots per goal. I sense a pattern here.

In an ideal world, I'd like to have total passes, chances created etc as well – but I've not got any of the above so can't delve a bit deeper into this. I'll be following this blog with one on the players, with stats on the attackers and some description on the defenders.

Part two to follow…

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