We want to hear what you think about us?

At Statzpack we value the views and opinions of the soccer coach.  If you have a spare 2-3 minutes and can answer 10 questions, we’d really appreciate it.  Many thanks.

Take me to the Survey  > 
 

Our App (beta) is now available to use on Android devices, and can be downloaded free of cost in the Android market.  It’s a work in progress , but it will soon have the equivalent functions as our iOS Apple  Apps, and the updates will keep coming up until November.  So you may find some glitches – and if you do, let us know.  Download the Statzpack Android App.

If you want to know which devices will run our App, you can check the lists here (there are 383 in total).  Check this list for compatible Android phones and compatible tablets here.  Or the alternative approach, is to open Android Market on your device, search for Statzpack, and if our App is found it will work no problem at all.

Once complete we will be releasing an iPad native App, plus a web App that can be used on any Windows PC.

In latter 2010 Statzpack commissioned the Sports Academy at the University of Ulster to carry out a joint research project with the NSCAA (National Soccer Coaches Association of America).  The research focussed on the use and value of collecting stats in soccer coaching to the membership of the largest coaching organisation in the world.  The research was led by Dr Michael Hanlon. 

Key Findings

Some of the key summary findings are as follows:

• The project surveyed the 30,000 soccer coach membership base of the NSCAA
• 1007 US soccer coaches from the Youth, High-school and College levels completed the questionnaire.
• 61% of those surveyed stated that the recording, analysing and using of team or player statistics was of significant-major importance on player development
• Almost 75% of those coaches recording stats rely on pen and paper
• In general older coaches have a more favourable view on collecting stats.
• The most commonly tracked game features were goals and assists, shots on/off target, corner kicks, cards and goalkeeper actions

Soccer Teamwork Read More

The heart breaker for the soccer coach, and sometimes the game maker.  If you look at the stats for the English Premier League over the past 10 years you can see a marked upward trend in the number of penalties  awarded, with 2001-2 only seeing 39 awarded, to the 101 awarded in the past season.  And no wonder it can be such an important moment in a game, as around 80% of penalties (in that league at least) result in a goal.  Last year it was Arsenal who gave away a whopping 9 penalties, though not an uncommon tally over the past decade, there has only been one team to concede 10, which was Blackburn Rovers in 2006-7.  Five years previous they conceded or won zero penalties. Times have changed. 

What do the stats look like?

Which club is more likely to concede a penalty? Well if past history is an indicator of future behaviour (and we know it is not…but bear with us) then Aston Villa are a safe bet. Looking at those teams currently in the EPL who have played there for the past 11 years.  They have managed to give away 55 penalties, an average of 5.5 per season.  And which team does the analysis show that manages to be awarded the most penalties?  Manchester United I hear you cry – most of them in the last 2 minutes at Old Trafford, right?  Wrong.  It’s Arsenal, who have accumulated 56 penalties, converting 46 of them since the beginning of the 2001 season. Check out all the stats here, at this wonderful website myfootballfacts.com. Including the fact that Matt Le Tissier in his career at Southampton scored 48 times from 49 spot kicks. All in the top flight of English football.  Awesome.    

A penalty kick may be awarded when a defending player commits a foul punishable by a direct free kick against an opponent or a handball, within the penalty area (“the box” or “18 yard box”).  

Read More

Right now we are working on the App part of system so it will work on both Android and Windows Mobile devices. That means you will no longer need an Apple device to track your performances and record your player stats.  

Interested in using Statzpack to track your records with your Android or Windows mobile phone or tablet?  Then email us at newapp@statzpack.com.  

I wanted to share an article I came across that details who must be the grandaddy of soccer analysis, Charles Reep.  As we use modern technology to help coaches and players improve their game, we are certainly not new to the task of recording stats.   Reep started to carry out match analysis in 1950 (long before many of us were born) and centrally believed that most goals were produced within 3-5 passes/moves.

“Not all revolutionaries are fondly remembered. Barney Ronay examines the controversial legacy of Charles Reep, football’s first tactical statistician.  Published in June 2003 in When Saturday Comes - which in itself is a fantastic journal for all things soccer related (be warned – visit that site and prepare to see an hour of your day leave you…)

Soccer Analyst

Wing Commander Charles Reep has been called many things. Twenty years ago the Times dubbed him “The Human Computer of the Fabled Fifties”; an obituary described him more simply as “a football ana­lyst”; while a slightly empurpled Brian Glanville once declared him a member of FA coaching director Char­les Hughes’s “band of believers and acolytes”, the arch­angel of “a fanatical credo, a pseudo-religion”.

Few figures in English football history have attract­ed as much vitriol or as much ideological zeal. The loth­ario of the long ball, Reep has remained unfathomably seductive to a roll-call of many of the most influential coaching figures in post-war domestic football. He is the national game’s deep dark secret; we know he’s bad for us, but we just can’t help ourselves.” 

Read the full article here.