Wednesday 4 February 2015

Bundesliga Week 19: Klopp and Dortmund still can't win

So with the Bundesliga winter break over its back to the action and Borussia Dortmund are still nailed to the bottom of the table after losing at home to Augsburg.
Just rubbing that bit of salt into the wounds for Dortmund fans is Bayern's dominant position atop the table.


Position Team Played Won Drawn Lost Goals For Goals Against Goal Difference Points
1 Bayern Munich 19 14 4 1 43 9 34 46
2 Wolfsburg 19 11 5 3 38 19 19 38
3 Borussia M.Gladbach 19 9 6 4 27 16 11 33
4 Augsburg 19 11 0 8 26 22 4 33
5 Bayer Leverkusen 19 8 8 3 29 20 9 32
6 Schalke 04 19 9 4 6 30 22 8 31
7 Hoffenheim 19 7 5 7 31 30 1 26
8 Hannover 96 19 7 4 8 22 28 -6 25
9 Eintracht Frankfurt 19 6 6 7 36 39 -3 24
10 FC Cologne 19 6 5 8 19 23 -4 23
11 Werder Bremen 19 6 5 8 30 40 -10 23
12 Mainz 05 19 4 10 5 25 24 1 22
13 Hamburger SV 19 5 5 9 12 21 -9 20
14 Paderborn 19 4 7 8 21 34 -13 19
15 Freiburg 19 3 9 7 21 27 -6 18
16 VfB Stuttgart 19 4 6 9 20 33 -13 18
17 Hertha Berlin 19 5 3 11 24 38 -14 18
18 Borussia Dortmund 19 4 4 11 18 27 -9 16


I had a quick look at Dortmund's situation back in week 13 and at the time it was a case of a dominant shots team being hammered by a nightmare inducing PDO score. And the PDO problems were at both ends of the pitch - both their shooting and save percentage were around 10 points lower than the league average.
PDO is an interesting tool as it helps spot trends that are not necessarily within the team's control and is often used as a proxy for luck - 100 being the average, below = bad luck, above = good luck.
And, certainly over a large enough sample size (and in ice hockey where its been most effectively used) it regresses towards 100 over time.

Let's have a look at Dortmund's (and the rest of the leagues') stats now.


Position Team Shots for Shots vs Corsi/TSR Shots on Target for Shots on target vs SoT share Sh% Sv% PDO
4 Augsburg 249 257 0.492 87 85 0.508 29.75 74.03 103.77
5 Bayer Leverkusen 321 156 0.673 99 66 0.601 29.35 69.51 98.86
1 Bayern Munich 348 125 0.735 139 49 0.739 31.00 81.60 112.60
18 Borussia Dortmund 314 173 0.645 99 71 0.583 18.22 61.81 80.03
3 Borussia M.Gladbach 232 295 0.440 97 98 0.498 27.86 83.62 111.49
9 Eintracht Frankfurt 258 257 0.502 116 109 0.515 31.06 64.32 95.38
10 FC Cologne 179 268 0.400 68 86 0.444 27.78 73.16 100.94
15 Freiburg 203 283 0.418 84 109 0.435 25.12 75.16 100.28
13 Hamburger SV 228 257 0.471 63 93 0.402 19.14 77.47 96.61
8 Hannover 96 215 264 0.448 82 89 0.479 26.93 68.47 95.40
17 Hertha Berlin 169 249 0.405 61 97 0.386 39.47 60.78 100.26
7 Hoffenheim 270 266 0.504 95 91 0.511 32.63 66.96 99.59
12 Mainz 05 243 270 0.474 82 98 0.454 30.60 75.54 106.13
14 Paderborn 262 274 0.489 80 101 0.443 26.32 66.17 92.48
6 Schalke 04 217 298 0.421 97 94 0.507 30.96 76.65 107.61
16 VfB Stuttgart 224 276 0.449 72 100 0.421 27.70 66.83 94.54
11 Werder Bremen 230 270 0.460 99 95 0.510 30.36 57.94 88.30
2 Wolfsburg 295 219 0.574 120 80 0.600 31.75 76.19 107.94

Amazingly, Dortmund's "luck" appears to have got worse since week 13, not better.
As you'll see below, I actually had to extend my graph below its normal PDO low point to accommodate them.
(And apologies for stretching the graph in the other direction, but I thought I really should put Bayern on it this time around.)
But perhaps what is most interesting about Dortmund's situation, is they've become MORE dominant at getting shots on target since week 13. The overall shots share score (Corsi/TSR) is basically unchanged, but the SoT share has gone up by 0.03 (or 3% points). That's a really big improvement over such a short space of time and shows just how damning this PDO run is.




It is possible that some of Jurgen Klopp's tactics are playing into this problem (this is a harder state to test), but Dortmund certainly appear snake-bitten defensively, as WhoScored suggested:


I wouldn't go so far as to say calls for Klopp to go are complete madness, but from this initial analysis, it certainly seems a horrible run of misfortune at both ends of the pitch.

Usually when I have to extend for both Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund it would be for the same positive reason, in this case it is anything but.

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