Introduction

After 240 games, Mamelodi Sundowns were crowned the champions for the 2017/2018 season. The previous season had a number of interesting outcomes. This analysis will focus mainly on the 2017/2018 season by looking at the number of final score outcomes (draws, home-wins, away-wins), frequencies of final scores, and average goals scored by week days. In some cases, comparisons to other seasons will be made. Finally, we will see the number of points collected by each team for games played at home and away.

This is a follow-up to three previous analyses, I did focusing on the Premier Soccer League (PSL) results since the 2002/2003. The first of my analysis is available here PSL Analysis from 2002 to Current Season. The second An Analysis of PSL Draws and the third PSL Games Ending in Draws - Updated analyses focused on the matches ending in draws.

A Look at the 2017/2018 Season

We are first going to take a look at the breakdown of the outcomes from the 240 matches played in 2017/2018. The chart below shows the breakdown of wins at home and away, and also matches that ended in draws. In this chart, I have also included the months that contributed the most number of home-wins, away-wins and draws. As you can see, the month of April had the highest number of home wins (19) and also the highest number of draws (15), while January had the highest number of away wins (13) in the season. The month of November has an honor of having a record for the most draws (12) in a week, more information about this is available here PSL Games Ending in Draws - Updated.

How does the 2017/2018 season’s result outcomes (Home-Wins, Draws, Away-Wins) compare to the other seasons since the 2002/2003? From the chart below, the 2017/2018 season seems to be on-par with some of worse seasons in terms of home-wins, away-wins and draws, like the 2005/2006 and 2009/2010 seasons. The number of home-wins is on a decline while the number of draws is on an up. These two outcomes have been on this path since 2014/2015, respectively. The away-wins was on an increase compare to the 2016/2017 season. Looking at the chart, it is clear that home advantage (Home-Wins) seems to be an important element in our soccer. I will look into this later on here.

The numbers within each bar in the chart shows the number of goals scored in each of the result outcomes. If you had to add up all the goals scored per season, you will realise that the 2017/2018 season has the worst season in terms of goals scored since the 2002/2003 season. There were 490 goals scored.

Frequency of Final Scores

Let’s turn our attention to the frequency of the final score results. The idea here is to look at all type of final scores, by splitting the frequency by the result outcomes. The chart indicates that the 1-1 was the most common score line in the 2017/2018 season. The chart also highlights the teams with the most draws for the result outcomes of 0-0 and 1-1, and the draw with the most goals scored. Kaizer Chiefs was involved in 8 matches which ended in draws with the final scores of 0-0, which was the highest, while Chippa United had 8 matches which were draws ending with 1-1, which was the highest. Finally, Chippa United and Platinum Stars were involved in a match with the highest goals for a draw. The match ended in 3-3.

Let’s turn to the occurrence of the most common final scores by week-days (the day of the week in which the matches were played). The chart shows that most of the matches were played on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Now let’s look at the percentage split of the 240 matches amongst the result outcomes.

The chart below compares the 16 seasons since 2002/2003, in terms of percentage of matches won by home teams, drawn or won by away teams. You can see that the 2017/2018 season has the third lowest percentage (37.08%) for Home-Wins. Also has the second highest percentage (36.25%) for Draws.

How does the above chart looks, when compared across all the seasons combined? The chart below shows this. This means out of the 3840 matches played since 2002/2003, 40.86% (1569 matches) of which were won by teams playing at home, while 30.57% (1174 matches) were drawn, and finally, 28.57% (1097 matches) were won by away teams. This also confirms that home advantage plays an important part in the PSL league. In the process, there were 4120 goals scored on the matches won by home teams, 1908 goals were scored on the matches that were drawn. Finally, 2769 goals were scored on the matches won by away teams.

Now let’s look at the trend line to see how the league has been doing over the past 16 years based on the result outcomes. As you can see, there’s been a fairly sizable drop in win percentage for Home-Win (2002/2003 - 43.33% to 2017/2018 - 37.08%) and Away-Win (2002/2003 - 35% to 2017/2018 - 26.67%) result outcome, while the Draw (2002/2003 - 21.67% to 2017/2018 - 36.25%) outcome has seen an increase.

The chart above confirms that the number of home-wins is on a decline while the number of draws is on an up and that this trend started in 2014/2015. The away-wins is also on a decline.

Goals

We are aware of all the most common score-lines and their occurrence in the PSL for the 2007/2018 season. Now it’s time to turn our attention to the goals. The total number of goals scored in the 2017/2018 season was 490 from 240 games. This gives us an average rate of 2.042 goals per game.

With 490 goals scored in the 2017/2018 season, let’s see on which day of the week were these goals scored. The chart shows that the highest number of goals were scored on matches that were played on Saturdays. The match that was played on Monday was an anomaly as only one match was played on the day throughout the year. This chart is ranked from the lowest to the highest number of goals scored.

Let’s see how the goals scored on week days look like when we look at them by result outcomes. The chart below illustrates this. The numbers at the bottom of the chart show the number of matches played.

The table below shows a tabular view of the number of goals scored per week day for the 2017/2018 season. The table also provides an average goals scored per day.

Now, let’s see how all the seasons since 2002/2003 look like when looking at the week day goals by result outcomes.

The table below shows a tabular view of the number of goals scored overall since 2002/2003 by week day. The table also provides an average goals scored per day.

Let’s look at the total number of goals scored in each season since 2002/2003. The chart below show this. You can see that the 2010/2011 season has the highest number of goals scored (602) since the league was reduced to 16 teams.

It is interesting to see that this season has the lowest goals scored in a season since the league went to 16 teams. This is worst than the 2009/2010 season. The common element between these two seasons; both were before the FIFA World Cups! In the 2009/2010 season, SuperSport United won the league having scored 51 goals and Jomo Cosmos was relegated having scored 21 goals. The 2010/2011 season, was won by Orlando Pirates with 41 goals scored and Mpumalanga Black Aces got relegated with 19 goals scored. The previous season, Mamelodi Sundowns won the league having scored 49 goals scored and Ajax Cape Town got relegated with 21 goals scored.

Let’s compare and see which seasons are above the avarage of 2.291 goals per game. Out of the 16 seasons since 2002/2003, there has been 8 seasons were the average goals scored by season was above the overall average of 2.291.

Team Performance

On this section, we are going to look at the number of points won by each team from matches played at home and away. This includes points from draws. We will also do a matrix chart that shows the outcomes from these matches. Finally, I will show a chart that illustrate where some of the teams have ended in each season since 2002/2003.

The chart below shows each team’s performance at home and away. The chart is ranked in a descending order from the lowest combined points to highest. This is similar to the final league standing but in reverse.

The numbers in red highlights the number of games each team lost during the season. What the chart does not show you is the number of draws each team played. But we can get to this by doing some basic calculation. Let’s do some maths here: if you had to take the combined sum of points won by Mamelodi Sundowns, 34 (Away Points) + 26 (Home Points) = 60 points, take the number of games lost 6 and multiple it by 3 points, this will give you 18 points. Now let’s combine 60 + 18 = 78 points. In a given season, the total number of points a team can win is 90 points. To get to the number of draws, Mamelodi Sundowns had this season, you will need to substract 78 points from the expected total of 90 points, this will give you 12 points. Finally, you will need to divide this number by 2. So, Mamelodi Sundowns was involved in 6 games ending in draws.

How does the points won at home and away by Mamelodi Sundowns for the 2017/2018 season compare to other league champions since 2002/2003 season?

The chart below provides a look at the number of points won by the league champions since 2002/2003. Mamelodi Sundowns won the 2017/2018 league with having the lowest home points 26 points compared to the other seasons. Interestlying, Mamelodi Sundowns won it’s first home points of the season on their 10th games of the season when they beated Baroka FC, 4-0.

The chart below shows the final league positions for teams since 2002/2003, but it’s based on the teams that played in the 2017/2018 season. Interestly, only 7 teams that played in the 2002/2003 season, played in the 2017/2018 season.

Please note: Wits University was renamed to Bidvest Wits.

The chart below is the final one in this analysis. This shows a matrix chart. It is an excellent way of visualising the pairwise relationships among several variables, so here it will be good to see the outcomes from each games played in the 2017/2018 season. This chart is ranked similar to the final league standing. This chart helps you to see how a team performed against each other based on the standing of the league at the end of the season. The idea for this chart comes from one of James P. Curley’s analysis.

If you compare this chart with the above one, you will start to see where each team won their points and by which score outcomes.

I hope you enjoyed reading this analysis.

What’s Next

The final analysis on the PSL’s 2017/2018 season will provided a detailed analysis in terms of matches, goals and goal scorers for example.

Tool Used

This data analysis was done on RStudio (R version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)) and mainly using the rmarkdown package. Other R packages used in doing this analysis were: