Believe it or not, I had this idea before Stan Collymore started his own brand in ‘goal scored by a cross’ alerts. I was wondering whether the stats community’s general disdain for crosses, built up as a reaction against the ‘chuck it in the mixer’ cliché, was a little unfair. That doesn’t mean ‘we’ think you should never cross, just that there can often be better options and maybe, y’know, we should be thinking about what we’re doing a bit on the ball.

Collymore in his tweets on the subject mentioned things like cut-backs, which stats guys (I use the term as a loose generalisation) like, but I particularly wanted to look at what I called ‘traditional crosses’. These would be balls into the box from wide areas, the kind of thing that generally comes to mind when people think of crosses.

The way I see it, crosses are statistically ineffective because they can often the result of frustration or boredom at not breaking down a defence. Whereas with most passes you weigh up the possibility of completing it, ‘traditional crosses’ are often basically thoughtless, purely hopeful that someone will get on the end of it. Continue reading →