Archive for February 2008
Mariners face Jets in Grand Final
Since the start of the A-League the two teams have faced each other 13 times with Mariners winning three times and the Jets five times and remaining five matches being draws of which one was goalless.
So the chances of the Grand Final being goalless are quite slim by the look of things.
But its interesting to note that the Jets have only failed to score against the Mariners three times whilst the Mariners have failed to score against the Jets five times.
The match is being played in a neutral venue, the Sydney Football Stadium, and the Mariners would have hosted it normally(after winning the major semi) but they have only managed to beat the Jets twice at home and lost once.
It would seem like in this case home advantage would have favoured the Jets more with the Jets winning four times at home and then losing and drawing just once.
So a summary of the matches between the two teams is as follows:
| Mariners | Jets | |
|---|---|---|
| Home wins | 2 | 4 |
| Away wins | 1 | 1 |
| Total wins | 3 | 5 |
| Goals scored | 14 | 14 |
| Biggest winning margin | 4-1 | 3-1, 2-0 |
So the two teams have scored an equal number of goals against each other and so lets see who would have scored more
after Sunday's match.
delicious
digg
Goals record for 2008 Afcon
The previous record was 93 goals scored in the 1998 edition hosted by Burkina Faso and in the previous tournament in 2006 in Egypt the number of goals scored was 73 and this was far much less than this year.
Of these 99 goals, 45 were scored in the first half with 54 scored in the second. Its not surprising though that more goals were scored in the second half because that tends to be the trend in football.
Just like in 2006, the top scorer was Cameroon's Samuel E'too with five goals.
The table below shows how much each team contributed to the 99 goals tally and it also shows how many goals were scored in each half.
| Team | Matches | First Half | Second Half | Total Goals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ivory Coast | 6 | 6 | 10 | 16 | |
| Egypt | 6 | 8 | 7 | 15 | |
| Cameroon | 6 | 7 | 7 | 14 | |
| Ghana | 6 | 5 | 6 | 11 | |
| Morocco | 3 | 4 | 3 | 7 | |
| Tunisia | 4 | 5 | 2 | 7 | |
| Angola | 4 | 2 | 3 | 5 | |
| Guinea | 4 | 1 | 4 | 5 | |
| Zambia | 3 | 1 | 4 | 5 | |
| Senegal | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
| Nigeria | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| South Africa | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Namibia | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Benin | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
| Mali | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
| Sudan | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
So despite finishing fourth, Ivory Coast were the top scoring team with 16 goals and as noted in an earlier post, Sudan finished the tournament goalless.
The question is: will 2010 Angola go past the 100 goal mark?
Draws rule round 25
Before last week the highest number of draws in a round had been four and this occurred eight times including the previous two rounds prior to round 25.
Ironically the team that has drawn more than any other team so far Liverpool actually won last weekend in their home match against Sunderland.
Typically they are many draws at the start of the season as teams adjust and new player try to gel but as the season wears on the number of draws decreases as teams try to win and get maximum points.
However, this season was a bit different with four draws in a round only achieved in the seventh round. It would be interesting to see how the draws graph looks like at the end of the season.
Below is the table showing how many times a number of draws occurred per round so far:
| Num of draws | Num of Rounds |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 |
| 1 | 4 |
| 2 | 6 |
| 3 | 5 |
| 4 | 8 |
| 5 | 1 |
Basically every round of the English Premiership has had a draw so far and four is the most popular number of draws per round. Lest see what the number will be at the end of the season.
Sudan goalless, pointless in Nations Cup
One standout statistic is that Sudan is the only team that failed to score a single goal. Only two teams Sudan and Benin came out of the tournament pointless.
The low scoring teams were Mali, Benin with just one goal and then Nigeria and Namibia with two and with South Africa scoring three goals.
The highest scoring group was group A where 19 goals were scored and the top three teams in that group Ghana, Guinea and Morocco scored 17 goals. This was closely followed by group C with 18 goals.
The lowest scoring group was group was Group B with 12 goals where one team Ivory Coast scored 8 and the other three teams combined could only get four past the goalkeeper.
The team that scored the highest number of goals was Ivory Coast in Group B and its interesting to see that it came from the group with the lowest number of goals. Second position was a three way tie with Morocco, Egypt and Cameroon all scoring seven.
This brings us to the number of goals scored in the group phase and its 63. In the last tournament in Egypt the total goals scored in the group phase was 54.
At the end of the tournament I will re-visit this goals issue and compare to the 2006 tournament.
