Haverford/Rosemont

Turnovers

Haverford Hosts Rosemont, Wins The Lancaster Avenue Derby

Box score and story here.
A quick glimpse into the data-driven approach, and what a 5-0 win looks like:

What Am I Looking At?

This is a chart I kept during a dominant home game in which I simply marked on a diagram of the field where we lost the ball in the first 45 minutes.  Each "T" is a ball lost, and represents the first offensive touch taken by Rosemont (as opposed to where our player was when the ball was last touched by us).

What we see is that in 45 minutes we had only 2 turnovers in our half, and 18 of the 49 turnovers we gave up came in the rectangle at the top of the 18 yard area.  The majority of the rest were lost either to the GK's hands, or goal kicks.  

The staff felt the central forwards and our attacking central midfielder did not do a good enough job of holding the ball up, which is why we see so many turnovers at the top of the area.  Granted, it's a tough location on the field to keep the ball, as the defense is naturally at full battle stations and the spaces become much smaller in the final third.  But that's the job, and the boys who play there must do better.

At the end of the day, the diagram shows a balanced, dominant performance; 2 turnovers in our half, only 2 free kicks (and no corners on the night) conceded.  For our part, two of our five goals came from the ensuing chaos of a corner kick, so we felt good about making set pieces work in our favor.

This space will investigate this data set as regards other matches as the year goes along.