You know the feeling. You are following the live ticker of your least favorite team (which also may be a few points above yours in the table).
The finally seem to be dropping a few points against a team from the bottom. The match is already in injury time. You refresh the page faster than it can load. Then of course... they score a late winner. They always somehow do. Am I just making that up? Is it Fergie-time or Bayerndusel (for the Bundesliga followers)?
Let's check which team has the most luck (or relentless spirit):
Our analysis is based on a database similar to the below which shows us for every match in the season the end result and information on each goal.
We will start by counting goals scored after minute 85 by each Premier League team during the season 2016/17. The threshold of minute 85 is arbitrary but think after that point in time I'll start talking about bloody luck and those again.
Looking at the above plot, we can see that the two north London clubs Arsenal and Tottenham scored the most late goals with 13, followed by Everton with 12. Stoke and Middlesborough make up the bottom two with only one goal scored after the 85th minute.
What stand out is that the six teams with the most late goals all ended up in the Top 7 of the league. Of course, if you score more goals in general you tend to also score more often in the last minutes of a match. So we should normalize the number of late goals by the total number of goals scored.
We now see that Everton makes the top of the list with scoring almost 20% of their goals after the 85th minute. If we assume a generous injury time of five minutes, this time only represents around 10.5% of total match time.
But what actually really matters is if these goals were late equalizers or winners. Nobody really cares if you score the 5-0 or the 1-4 in the last minutes. To judge the spirit (luck) we need to look at net points gained after minute 85. 'Net' means that we will subtract points lost in the last minutes as well.
This changes things quite a bit again, with Arsenal making the top with 9 net points gained late. This represents three completely turned matches or four late winners + one late equalizer. While Arsenal did not win the league it wasn't for their spirit or luck (for the Tottenham fans).
The finally seem to be dropping a few points against a team from the bottom. The match is already in injury time. You refresh the page faster than it can load. Then of course... they score a late winner. They always somehow do. Am I just making that up? Is it Fergie-time or Bayerndusel (for the Bundesliga followers)?
Let's check which team has the most luck (or relentless spirit):
Our analysis is based on a database similar to the below which shows us for every match in the season the end result and information on each goal.
We will start by counting goals scored after minute 85 by each Premier League team during the season 2016/17. The threshold of minute 85 is arbitrary but think after that point in time I'll start talking about bloody luck and those again.
Looking at the above plot, we can see that the two north London clubs Arsenal and Tottenham scored the most late goals with 13, followed by Everton with 12. Stoke and Middlesborough make up the bottom two with only one goal scored after the 85th minute.
What stand out is that the six teams with the most late goals all ended up in the Top 7 of the league. Of course, if you score more goals in general you tend to also score more often in the last minutes of a match. So we should normalize the number of late goals by the total number of goals scored.
We now see that Everton makes the top of the list with scoring almost 20% of their goals after the 85th minute. If we assume a generous injury time of five minutes, this time only represents around 10.5% of total match time.
But what actually really matters is if these goals were late equalizers or winners. Nobody really cares if you score the 5-0 or the 1-4 in the last minutes. To judge the spirit (luck) we need to look at net points gained after minute 85. 'Net' means that we will subtract points lost in the last minutes as well.
This changes things quite a bit again, with Arsenal making the top with 9 net points gained late. This represents three completely turned matches or four late winners + one late equalizer. While Arsenal did not win the league it wasn't for their spirit or luck (for the Tottenham fans).
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