Jon Walter's 2012/13 season journey

Yesterday, I asked how many kilometres did Jon Walters travel to away games in 2012/13, taking Britannia Stadium as the origin point, and the away stadium in each game as the destination (taking his home address as the origin point would be a little weird!)
Using Google Maps, you can get the distance in the route between two points on a map, so using the away team's stadium as the destination in each case, you can read off the value and then total it up for the season.

Date	Competition	Home Team	Result	Away Team	Location	Distance(km)
18-Aug-12	Premier League	Reading	1-1	Stoke City	Madejski Stadium	252
01-Sep-12	Premier League	Wigan	2-2	Stoke City	DW Stadium	83.2
22-Sep-12	Premier League	Chelsea	1-0	Stoke City	Stamford Bridge	268
07-Oct-12	Premier League	Liverpool	0-0	Stoke City	Anfield	95.8
20-Oct-12	Premier League	Manchester United	4-2	Stoke City	Old Trafford	81
03-Nov-12	Premier League	Norwich	1-0	Stoke City	Carrow Road	320
19-Nov-12	Premier League	West Ham United	1-1	Stoke City	Upton Park	269
01-Dec-12	Premier League	West Bromwich Albion	0-1	Stoke City	The Hawthorns	63.5
08-Dec-12	Premier League	Aston Villa	0-0	Stoke City	Villa Park	70.3
22-Dec-12	Premier League	Tottenham	0-0	Stoke City	White Hart Lane	253
01-Jan-13	Premier League	Manchester City	3-0	Stoke City	Etihad Stadium	80.7
05-Jan-13	FA Cup	Crystal Palace	0-0	Stoke City	Selhurst Park	281
19-Jan-13	Premier League	Swansea	3-1	Stoke City	Liberty Stadium	307
02-Feb-13	Premier League	Arsenal	1-0	Stoke City	Emirates Stadium	249
23-Feb-13	Premier League	Fulham	1-0	Stoke City	Craven Cottage	267
10-Mar-13	Premier League	Newcastle Utd	2-1	Stoke City	St James' Park	316
30-Mar-13	Premier League	Everton	1-0	Stoke City	Goodison Park	97.1
20-Apr-13	Premier League	QPR	0-2	Stoke City	Loftus Road	260
06-May-13	Premier League	Sunderland	1-1	Stoke City	Stadium of Light	312
19-May-13	Premier League	Southampton	1-1	Stoke City	St Mary's Stadium	297
Total						4222.6

To put 4,200 km into context, the distance between Dublin and Praia, capital of Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa is 4500km!

Click the links for each stadium to see the journey taken from the Britannia for that game

Summer Trivia Question 1

With the close season upon us and nothing of note happening in the transfer market, I've been examining the data collected over the past season to see what, if any, interesting stats I could come up with. I'll be blogging the results over the next few weeks, but I'll pose each one as a question to my readers before revealing all.

First question is this: Taking the Britannia stadium as your starting point, how many km did Jon Walters travel in total to away games in 2012/13?
To makes things easier, here's the list of all Jon Walters' games: http://irish-abroad.appspot.com/PlayerDetails?playerID=32939
Google can be used to get the distance between two addresses, e.g. from https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Britannia+Stadium,Stoke&daddr=Anfield+Stadium,+liverpool you can see that Britannia Stadium to Anfield is 95.3km

Send me the answer on twitter @irish_abroad on facebook at facebook.com/irishfootballstatistics or email me chatsoccer@gmail.com Tag your posts with #SummerTrivia and I'll post the answer tomorrow

Have fun!

The history of Ireland competitive victories over higher ranked opposition

In order to qualify for the World Cup in 2014, the Boys in Green will more than likely need to accomplish something not yet achieved under the current regime - defeat a higher ranked opposition in a competitive international*. At the time of writing, Trapattoni's men have fallen two places to 41st in FIFA's rankings, while opponents Sweden are ranked 27th in the world, a drop of three places from their previous ranking, and Austria are 76th after falling five places.

Looking at the history of internationals since the rankings system was first introduced in 1993, there are only six occasions when a superior ranked opposition fell to the Green Army

Date	Level			Rank			Rank
18 June 1994	World Cup Finals	Italy	0	4	Republic of Ireland	1	14
10 September 1997	World Cup Qualifier	Lithuania	1	42	Republic of Ireland	2	55
5 September 1998	European Cup Qualifier	Republic of Ireland	2	48	Croatia	0	4
1 September 1999	European Cup Qualifier	Republic of Ireland	2	38	Yugoslavia	1	22
1 September 2001	World Cup Qualifier	Republic of Ireland	1	25	Holland	0	10
28 March 2007	European Cup Qualifier	Republic of Ireland	1	51	Slovakia	0	37

Previous managers Jack Charlton, Mick McCarthy and Steve Staunton all claimed the scalp of higher ranked opposition. Charlton's solitary win was arguably the most high profile, the 1-0 win over Italy in Giants Stadium during the group stages of World Cup '94. Although it has to be remembered that rankings were introduced towards the end of his tenure. McCarthy has four of the six wins, including the only away win in Lithuania (Charlton's win over Italy was at a neutral ground), with the memorable 1-0 victory over Holland with ten men the outstanding result. Steve Staunton's win in Croke Park over Slovakia, who were ranked 15 places ahead of the Dundalk man's side, completes the short history. Brian Kerr failed to defeat an opponent ranked higher than his own side during his three year tenure.


An interesting statistic of the wins is that four of the six wins all came in September, and three of those in odd-numbered years which hopefully be a positive omen for the coming game against Sweden.

* Giovanni Trapattoni's side did manage to beat France in 90 minutes in the infamous World Cup Play Off in 2009. At the time, Ireland were ranked 34 to France's 9th ranked side. The result is recorded as a draw after extra time on fifa.com, so is not included in the list.

FIFA World Cup 2014 UEFA Qualifying Group C Permutations and Combinations

Following the conclusion of the 2012/13 season, qualifying group C remains open, with Germany looking likely to win the group, with only goal difference separating the following three sides. Having compiled permutation and combination tables for previous qualifying groups, I've compiled the same for this group.

First, some assumptions

1. Germany win all four remaining qualifiers:
• 6 September 2013 - Germany v Austria
• 10 September 2013 - Faroe Islands v Germany
• 11 October 2013 - Germany v Republic of Ireland
• 15 October 2013 - Sweden v Germany
2. All teams win remaining games against group minnows:
• 10 September 2013 - Kazakhstan v Sweden
• 15 October 2013 - Faroe Islands v Austria
• 15 October 2013 - Republic of Ireland v Kazakhstan

This results in the following table:

	P	Pts
Germany	10	28
Ireland	8	14
Sweden	8	14
Austria	8	14

The following fixtures remain

• 6 September 2013 - Republic of Ireland v Sweden
• 10 September 2013 - Austria v Republic of Ireland
• 11 October 2013 - Sweden v Austria

The combinations of the possible results from those fixtures are

		Sweden beat Austria	Sweden draw with Austria	Sweden lose to Austria
Ireland beat Sweden	Austria beat Ireland	Ireland 17 points Sweden 17 points Austria 17 points	Austria 18 points Ireland 17 points Sweden 15 points	Austria 20 points Ireland 17 points Sweden 14 points
	Austria draw with Ireland	Ireland 18 points Sweden 17 points Austria 15 points	Ireland 18 points Austria 16 points Sweden 15 points	Ireland 18 points Austria 18 points Sweden 14 points
	Austria lose to Ireland	Ireland 20 points Sweden 17 points Austria 14 points	Ireland 20 points Sweden 15 points Austria 15 points	Ireland 20 points Austria 17 points Sweden 14 points
Ireland draw with Sweden	Austria beat Ireland	Sweden 18 points Austria 17 points Ireland 15 points	Austria 18 points Sweden 16 points Ireland 15 points	Austria 20 points Ireland 15 points Sweden 15 points
	Austria draw with Ireland	Sweden 18 points Ireland 16 points Austria 15 points	Ireland 16 points Sweden 16 points Austria 16 points	Austria 18 points Ireland 16 points Sweden 15 points
	Austria lose to Ireland	Ireland 18 points Sweden 18 points Austria 14 points	Ireland 18 points Sweden 16 points Austria 15 points	Ireland 18 points Austria 17 points Sweden 15 points
Ireland lose to Sweden	Austria beat Ireland	Sweden 20 points Austria 17 points Ireland 14 points	Sweden 18 points Austria 18 points Ireland 14 points	Austria 20 points Sweden 17 points Ireland 14 points
	Austria draw with Ireland	Sweden 20 points Ireland 15 points Austria 15 points	Sweden 18 points Austria 16 points Ireland 15 points	Austria 18 points Sweden 17 points Ireland 15 points
	Austria lose to Ireland	Sweden 20 points Ireland 17 points Austria 14 points	Sweden 18 points Ireland 17 points Austria 15 points	Ireland 17 points Sweden 17 points Austria 17 points

I've marked the possibilities where Ireland finish second in the group in green for clarity.
Note that in cases where Ireland finish level with one or more teams, I've marked the group with yellow. The final group placings will be dependant on goal difference.

The first conclusion is that beating Sweden will give us the best chance of finishing second, and losing to the Swedes will almost certainly result in failure to reach the play offs. Four points from the two games would seem to all but guarantee a play off spot, assuming all other results finish as expected in the list above.

Finally, it is important to remember that the worst placed second team, after results against the weakest team in the group are discarded, will not participate in the play offs. In qualifying for Euro 2012, the worst second played team was Turkey, who had 11 points after their results against Kazakhstan were discarded. Assuming Ireland win their final game against Kazakhstan, the Boys in Green will have six points removed to determine their final position in the second placed teams

Irish Abroad Player of the Season

After reviewing the appearance data for Irish players in the 2012/13 season, one name kept cropping up near, or at the top of all the compiled tables. Despite being a defender, the player of the season (I'm going to refer to him as POTS to save space and typing from here on) managed to outscore many leading lights, including Robbie Brady and James McCarthy. As well as that, his team never lost a game in which he scored, winning four and drawing one of the five games when he found the back of the net. The fact that none of these were from the penalty spot adds to the feat, in my opinion.
The POTS came third in the most wins table, behind Leeds' Paddy Kenny and Crystal Palace's Damien Delaney, who had the advantage of three extra end of season games in the play offs to increase his total.
Playing in the Championship means you play more games, so the POTS finished joint third in the draws table, starting 14 games that finished all square. Similar to this, he finished fifth in the starting losses table, starting 18 games that ended in a defeat, along with a midfield compatriot of his, but only four of these were at home. His team did finish midtable, so an improvement in the away results could see him playing his trade in the Premier League before long. I know this is a negative statistic, but I'm choosing to overlook it in favour of this final statistic.
The POTS started a massive 49 games across 2012/13, including all his club's cup games, and even more remarkably completed 90 minutes in each one. The nature of the defensive game means it is not unexpected to pick up an injury, or a suspension over the course of a season, but the POTS was only booked three times, and was never injured.
To top off this season, he made his senior international debut for his country, and will make his first start later today against Georgia.
The Irish Abroad Player of the Season for 2012/13 is Derby County's club captain Richard Keogh, and you can follow him on twitter @keogh_6

Irish Abroad appearance statistics for 2012/13

Appearance statistics for May 2013: http://irish-abroad.appspot.com/MonthlyStats?month=14
20 wins for promoted defender Damien Delaney meant the Crystal Palace defender started the most wins in the 2012/13 season
North of Hadrian's Wall, Aaron Doran started the most draws, with 18 games finishing all square for the Inverness winger
Relegated pair James McCarthy and Kevin Doyle started the most losses, both players finishing on the losing side 20 times this season
Derby County club captain Richard Keogh started a massive 49 games this season, and even more remarkably completed 90 minutes in each one!
Nottingham Forest's Andy Reid was substituted more than any other Irish player in 2012/13, the midfielder was withdrawn from the action in 23 of his 43 starts
Conversely, striker Alan Lee was introduced from the bench more than his compatriots, coming on 21 times in total, as early as the 54th minute and as late as the 90th minute more than once!
Unsurprisingly, goalkeepers dominate the list of players who were unused substitutes, with Conrad Logan topping the table after remaining on the bench 53 times for Leicester this season. Shane Duffy holds the dubious honour of being the outfield player who remained unused the most, the Everton defender was kept from the action 28 times by his manager
Robbie Keane's 20 goals across 2012/13 for LA Galaxy ensure he tops the scoring charts, while defender Richard Keogh outscored quite a few players after finding the back of the net five times for Derby. The MLS champions went on to win 11 of the 15 games in which the Ireland captain won, only losing twice. Strangely, every one of Keith Andrews' four goals came from the penalty spot, including two in one game! Honourable mention for Yeovil Town's Paddy Madden, who scored 22 goals, and broke the club record for scoring in consecutive games after scoring 11 goals in eights games between the first of January and the 23rd of February
Defender Jim Goodwin managed to amass a booking in almost half the games he started, collecting 14 yellow cars in his 35 starts.

Irish Abroad player statistics for May 2013

Appearance statistics for May 2013: http://irish-abroad.appspot.com/MonthlyStats?month=5
With the season winding down, it only took three wins for Alan Maybury, Damien Delaney and Owen Garvan to top the most wins table. Garvan was also substituted more than any other Irish player in May. The Crystal Palace player hasn't completed 90 minutes since recovering from injury, the last time being December 2012
Along with three wins being enough to top that table, three draws were enough for Aberdeen's Joe Shaugnessey to start the most games that ended all square
Darren O'Dea started four losses for Toronto, two more losses than any other player
With the league run in, and the FA Cup final, James McCarthy started the most games in May, five, and completed 90 minutes in each of them
In Greece, Liam Lawrence was introduced from the bench three times, twice more than any other player
As usual, goalkeepers make up the majority of unused substitutes, with Brian Murphy, Keiren Westwood, Stephen Henderson, Shay Given and Conrad Logan all remaining on the bench for three games. They are joined in the May table by Reading's Alex Pearce who also didn't see action in May
A hat trick for Robbie Keane meant he tops the goalscoring charts in May with four strikes, and the most penalties - with two coming the same game. Anthony Stokes scored the most goals, finding the back of the net three times for Celtic. Neither LA Galaxy nor Celtic lost when either player scored, with the MLS side winning in both games in which Robbie Keane scored
Patrick Cregg's two bookings were enough to earn him the dubious honour of most bookings, one more than any other player shown the yellow card in May