Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Carroll

I see that Andy Carroll popped up with another late goal again over the weekend. I say “another” late goal, because it did strike me that, although he rarely scores, when he does so, he seems to score late on in a game.

This caught my attention for some reason, and I started to wonder exactly when he does tend to score within a game.

Now, I do realise that looking at these kind of correlations is normally an exercise in futility. At best they will only catch a passing trend and at worse they can provide a wholly false picture on which to base some losing actions… nonetheless, I thought I’d take a look anyway.

Of course, our Mr. Carroll’s goal tally has steadily dwindled over the past three years, so we also have a lack of decent data to play with (especially this year), but just for fun let’s look at the stats:

• In the 2009-10 season, Andy Carroll scored 17 goals. His average scoring time in that season was 45.88 minutes, with 53% of his goals coming in the second-half.
• In the 20010-11 season, he scored 13 goals. His average scoring time was 52.46 minutes, with 61.5% of those goals coming in the second-half.
• In the current season, our man has only scored 8 goals. The average scoring time is 68.75 minutes, with a huge 87.5% of those goals coming in the second-half. The only other goal he scored that wasn’t in the second-half, was scored at half-time.

As I say, this is all just whimsy on my part, and I don’t think these stats are going to really get us anywhere, but it does show that Carroll doesn’t really get going until the second-half of games (and often not even then). Over the course of the last three seasons, he’s steadily been scoring later and later. Maybe if you’re looking at betting on him in the goalscorer market, perhaps you should lay him as the first goalscorer as generally he won’t score before the hour.

Putting Carroll to one side, it could be interesting to see the average scoring time for all strikers in the EPL. We’d have to consider if players are substituted or not, but it may be that some players are generally better in certain sections of a game, perhaps they are fast starters or slow burners?

Something to think about for the future maybe.

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As I've been a little remiss lately in posting, I thought I'd give an overall P/L for the current month. Unfortunately it's showing a negative value - with some unusually large gaffs on my part (please see the Celtic game from yesterday below!) which I don't believe I've regaled you with (may do later). However, it's all largely unimpressive this month. I do still hope to get into profit at some stage, thus continuing my trend of continued profit - but we'll just have to see how it pans out for the rest of the month.


Football: -£323.14 | Tote: |  Total P&L:  -£323.14 

 

Football Showing 1 - 20 of 66 markets

Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Football / Arsenal v Wigan : Correct Score 16-Apr-12 20:00  16-Apr-12 22:01  90.45
Football / Arsenal v Wigan : Over/Under 4.5 Goals 16-Apr-12 20:00  16-Apr-12 22:01  11.50
Football / Dynamo Dresden v Fortuna Dusseldorf : Correct Score 16-Apr-12 19:15  16-Apr-12 21:06  50.51
Football / Arsenal v Wigan : Over/Under 2.5 goals 16-Apr-12 20:00  16-Apr-12 20:24  0.00
Football / Barclays Premier League : Winner 2011/12 13-Aug-11 15:00  16-Apr-12 10:31  15.95
Football / Tottenham v Chelsea : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 18:00  15-Apr-12 19:41  12.60
Football / Tottenham v Chelsea : Over/Under 3.5 Goals 15-Apr-12 18:00  15-Apr-12 19:36  0.00
Football / Tottenham v Chelsea : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 15-Apr-12 18:00  15-Apr-12 19:09  -192.10
Football / Man Utd v Aston Villa : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 16:00  15-Apr-12 17:56  33.20
Football / St Etienne v Brest : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 16:00  15-Apr-12 17:51  50.51
Football / Syrianska FC v AIK : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 14:00  15-Apr-12 15:53  49.56
Football / Celtic v Hearts : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 12:45  15-Apr-12 14:43  -345.00
Football / Celtic v Hearts : Over/Under 2.5 goals 15-Apr-12 12:45  15-Apr-12 14:40  3.36
Football / Celta Vigo v Deportivo : Correct Score 15-Apr-12 11:00  15-Apr-12 12:51  50.46
Football / B Munich v Mainz : Correct Score 14-Apr-12 17:30  14-Apr-12 19:23  30.80
Football / B Munich v Mainz : Over/Under 2.5 goals 14-Apr-12 17:30  14-Apr-12 19:21  14.51
Football / B Munich v Mainz : Over/Under 1.5 Goals 14-Apr-12 17:30  14-Apr-12 19:21  9.02
Football / Leeds v Peterborough : Match Odds 14-Apr-12 15:00  14-Apr-12 16:56  9.52
Football / Burnley v Coventry : Match Odds 14-Apr-12 15:00  14-Apr-12 16:55  9.52
Football / Liverpool v Everton : Correct Score 14-Apr-12 12:30  14-Apr-12 14:26  46.29

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