Now that some of the advanced data set has been released by Manchester City's performance analysis department it's a good time to start delving in to the data to see what kind of analysis can be done. Although the advanced data set is only for one game-- Bolton vs. Manchester City from last season-- there is still A LOT of data to look at.

The advanced data contains (x,y) location information of every statistic that is kept. This is valuable information, as it obviously tells exactly where each event happened in the game. I was interested in how this information can be used, specifically to look at momentum and passing trends.

Previous Work

Some work has already been done in the soccer analytics community on trying to quantify and analyze momentum. The Analyse Football looked at momentum shifts from this same game, although in a different way. The Soccer by the Numbers blog looks at momentum in football in a much more general way.