28.12.2015

What happened at Veikkausliiga 2015?



  Stuff like this chart below from is my mates blog 1907shots and I explain them here a bit. There is a lot more of them at his website, but unfortunately in Finnish only. If you want to make up your own charts and data everything from the season can be found at the match centre.




In short what the chart tells you is that SJK, RoPS and HJK were both the "best" and the "luckiest" this season followed by Lahti and Inter by a large margin. The unluckiest of all was MIFK, and the worst were KTP and Ilves. The final standings accept this theory rather well, and the biggest loser in terms of luck was Jaro who got relegated directly. They still had their chances of survival until the last round where they needed to win over SJK who needed to win to win the title!  However not scoring is not only unlucky, it is also a feature and lack of class and even if it was hard to see in that particular match which team was the champion    on the pitch during the game it was easy to see after the final whistle from the scoreboard.

Top-3 were the only clubs that you could think of winning the title, and as they were really close in terms of final points there is a lot of room for speculation.

It was a very poor season for a random and neutral spectator. Poor quality and slow football from the start from most of the clubs. No risks were taken and in case someone got a lead they in general were happy to try to defend that. The number one reason for this is that there are too many matches in a short period of time and tiredness and lack of spare feet takes over. Of course as there is very little money available it means that there not that many quality footballers either, and for example Ilves were honest in their semi-professional approach and their players worked full-time outside of football! Some handicap there!

There were a few good things too and the best of them was that there was a real derby in Helsinki too as HIFK had won the promotion the earlier season after dramatic events, and all those derbies were, and will be sold out also in the future.

SJK were ranked as 2nd at odds around 10 before the season. Big budget, large quality squad but the only foreseeable scenario for them winning title was that HJK should fail big time -as they did. SJK were strong in the defense but boring and cautious in the attack, and performancewise they were a big disappointment!

HJK failed miserably in their pre-season training which led to massive injury crisis during the season and at "best"  in August they had about a dozen players sidelined. In fact between Aug 5th and Sept 27th HJK played 12 competitive matches out of which they won once, Lahti 1-0 in early Aug. The new signings also failed except Tanaka, and their European campaign was a mess despite being very close to qualify at least to Europa League for a few moments. To get kicked out at extra time after gk mistakes was just the icing of the cake. Still they should had won the title,but losing to SJK a few rounds before the last round in an even match was the deciding moment. HJK's "top" signing of the season Mike Havenaar appeared as the worst signing ever as he was not interested and was all the time in a wrong role in a wrong team. Not all his fault I guess and he is doing ok back in his native Holland. He was best used as a mascot and a compagnion and interpreter to the real top man Atomu Tanaka.

RoPS started the league with 3 consecutive losses as the manager experiment with new defensing formation which was no success, and they kind of lost the title already in April despite being the most solid of the league for big parts of the season. In my papers they were the moral winners and also enjoyed the services of leagues best player Mostagh Yaghoubi. Below is the start of the season for RoPS with also the league cup final loss and cup loss of 7-3 to Inter!


Sat04/04/15LECRoPS0 - 2HJKView eventsMore info
Sun12/04/15VEIRoPS1 - 3HJKView eventsMore info
Thu16/04/15SUCInter Turku7 - 3RoPSView eventsMore info
Sun19/04/15VEISJK1 - 0RoPSView eventsMore info
Thu23/04/15VEIRoPS0 - 4Inter Turku



At the bottom fight one could argue that if Jaro 's top player and scorer Emet would had been fit they would survived easily, but he was not. KTP deserved to go down, and they were thrashed in the play-offs in the hands of PK-35.

#TeamMPWDLFADPLast 5 matchesH2H
13318695022+2860WWWLW
23317884429+1559WWLWW
333161074530+1558WWWWD
4331310104535+1049LLWLW
533121293836+248LDDWW
6331112103036-645WLWLL
7Previous rank: 8331013104242+043WWDLW
8Previous rank: 933117153248-1640WLLLL
9Previous rank: 733911133240-838LLWLD
103389163643-733LDWLL
1133711152744-1732LDWDD
1233611162743-1629LDLLD

Champions League qualifiers
UEFA Europa League
Relegation Play-off
Relegation


There is a plenty of time to discuss what might happen 2016. A lot will change, HJK will be totally new. League cup to kick off in January.

Terms used in this article:

PDO – 
PDO is the sum of a teams shooting percentage (goals/shots on target) and its save percentage (saves/shots on target against). It treats each shot as having an equal chance of being scored – regardless of location, the shooter, or the identity or position of the ‘keeper and any defenders. Despite this obvious shortcoming it regresses heavily towards the mean – meaning that it has a large luck component. In fact, over the course of a Premiership season, the distance a teams PDO is from 1000 is ~60% luck.
SoTR – Shots on Target Ratio


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