What do Goal Times Say About Your Squad?

[darthrodent]

When I play Football Manager I try to glean as much information as I can from the vast amounts of data I have at my fingertips. That endeavour can, at times, be difficult; difficult because it isn't always apparent what data and information relates to the many other facets of the game—this is not a complaint; I really enjoy the ambiguity of the Football Manager series.

There are many things I don't know about the game and as such I'm left with no alternative but to speculate and hypothesise. Case in point—Goal Times. I have two overarching questions:

1. What do the periods in which you score the most goals say about your team or the character of your team, if anything at all?

2. What do the periods in which you concede the most goals say about your team or the character of your team, if anything at all?

Could it be that the times you both concede and score say nothing at all? In other words, the line of reasoning goes something like this:

I score most of my goals between minutes 61 and 75; therefore I score most of my goals between minutes 61 and 75; a ridiculous tautology.

What I'm looking to do is to discover something—anything—about the character of my team. A more useful line of reasoning could be as follows:

I score most of my goals between minutes 76 and 90; therefore my team is very determined in nature.

Keeping in mind that many goals may be scored or conceded later on in a match due to a tactical change as a consequence of chasing the game, what does it say about one's team if (I'll use extremes in an attempt to avoid random goals):

1. It scores 90% of its goals between 1-15 minutes?

2. It concedes 90% of its goals between 1-15 minutes?

3. It scores 90% of its goals between 76-90 minutes?

4. It concedes 90% of its goals between 76-90 minutes?

Does anyone have any insight? Does anyone actually pay attention to this data? If so, what types of things do you change tactically, and what do you think this data says about your team's personality or character? On the other hand is it all just completely random?

[Auqakuh]

Typically teams that concede towards the end of either half are more defensive. Teams that concede in the middle of either half are more attacking. Teams that concede at the beginning of either half are relegation candidates.

Reasoning: a defensive team takes time to break down. Half time provides a rallying point and a small boost in fitness and concentration/motivation (assuming a half-decent manager), and so conceding immediately after half-time is unlikely. Conceding at the start of the match is also unlikely due to the conservative nature of the side; it will take even intelligent players time to break down the defensive setup. This only applies over a whole season, though, not individual matches, where random chance is going to be far more noticeable.

An attacking team, on the other hand, takes time to build to a good performance. Players need more time to settle into their opponents' rhythms, because the defence always sets the tone of the game, not the attack. Therefore they are much more likely to take quite a while to get the goal, because they are dependent on provoking mistakes or causing imbalance in their opponents' tactic. The downside to this is that in pursuing disruption of the opponent, disruption of one's own system is almost inevitable - this leads to the danger of the counter-attack, and means that the attackers on the defensive side, in theory, do not have to work half as hard to create half as many chances of higher quality.

This is largely borne out statistically in the real world, too. Counter-attacking (that is, defensive) teams tend to score in the middle of either half, while attacking sides tend to score towards the end of either half. Spain, in winning their first European Championship (a whole host of late goals, both in qualifying and in the tournament), are a great example of the latter. Real Madrid under Mourinho are the exemplary recent example of the former.

Secondarily, defensive teams will concede later because it typically takes more energy to defend than it does to attack - the attacking team can "let the ball do the work", whereas the defending team has only their own legs.

As to the final assertion - that conceding regularly at the start of play (soon after either kick-off) equates to being relegation candidates - the reasoning is very simple: if you're conceding as soon as you start, you're going to concede more goals simply because of the demotivational effect so early in a large proportion of matches.

Typically, though, this doesn't really play much of a role in how I approach the game. The goal is still the same, regardless of how you go about it (IE, defensively or offensively or, preferably, a mix of both): concede less than 1 goal per game and score more than 2 per game.

My current team, though, defies all of the above, because it is neither attacking nor defensive. We score more goals in the first 15 minutes than any other period; 26 out of 136 in the last 50 matches. But more interestingly, almost all of our goals come in the first hour; far fewer come in the last half an hour.

It breaks down like this:

1-15 minutes: scored 26, conceded 3

16-30 minutes: scored 24, conceded 4

31-45 minutes: scored 22, conceded 10

46-60 minutes: scored 24, conceded 7

61-75 minutes: scored 19, conceded 4

76-90 minutes: scored 19, conceded 4

90+ minutes: scored 1, conceded 3

As you can see, we score more in the first 60 minutes. Or put another way: we scored 50 goals in the first 30 minutes of those 50 fixtures, but only 39 in the last 30. The interesting thing?

Most of our games had, by my philosophy, the golden second goal wrapped up before half-time, and, when not then, in the 14 minutes following: 46 goals from 30-60 minutes.

Almost all of those first goals were counter-attacks (both from my viewing and from the fact that all of our counter-attacks are wing-based; goals created from the middle are invariably not counter-attacking goals, and the majority of our assists come from wide passes [not crosses]) or set-plays (again, almost never from crosses). Almost all of the second goals were from open play.

This actually supports my notion above; as a hybrid side placing equal emphasis on defence and attack (partly through domination of possession, but that's actually mostly just a side effect of good defence), most of our counter-attacking goals come early when an opponent over-commits. But our truly attacking goals only arrive later in the day, and, despite composing the majority, are arguably less important. That also, I think, supports the notion that conceding early in either half is massively more detrimental than at any other time.

Of course, scoring early in either half without scoring a second goal is also pretty dangerous, but at least that's usually worth a point...

[oneronaldo]

If my team keeps conceding late goals, it means two things. One, those ***** aren't fit enough, to the fitness boot camp they go. Two, they forgot that football matches last for 90 minutes and abit, turn the hairdryer on each and every single one of them.

If my team keeps conceding early goals (tbh, very rare), I'm gonna turn the hairdryer on each and every single one of those overpaid fools. I don't expect my team to come flying out of the blocks every single game, but conceding early is definite no. If its a clanger from anyone of my players, they can expect their number to held up by the fourth official. No exceptions even if they are my best player, too bad FM doesn't give me the option to throw him out of the stadium instead.

I don't really read much into these stats, I'm more focussed on whether my team is actually scoring rather than when they score it.

[HUNT3R]

To me, conceding late goals are about concentration. If you lack it, you concede late because your team switches off mentally.

That or you as a manager do not make the necessary changes to keep goals out late in games.

[Althaz]

I score most of my goals towards the end of each half with a very attacking setup. I also concede most of my goals towards the end of the game - probably because I play a very high-pressing style which tires my players out.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

Goals scored: 1-15minutes (22% 25/109 goals)

Goals conceded: 61-75mins (30% 7/23 goals)

That's March with Man Utd.

Media says I also score often at the start of the second half. I suppose I motivate them well.

second most goals scored is 61-75minutes for me at 22/107 goals.

But anyway I have a healthy stat distribution so I always score pretty much.