Leicester’s strange tackle / foul / yellow figures change as they slip down the league

By Tony Attwood

On 11 December 2019 the table looked like this…

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	16	15	1	0	40	14	26	46
2	Leicester City	16	12	2	2	39	10	29	38
3	Manchester City	16	10	2	4	44	19	25	32
4	Chelsea	16	9	2	5	31	24	7	29
5	Manchester United	16	6	6	4	25	19	6	24
6	Wolverhampton Wanderers	16	5	9	2	23	19	4	24
7	Tottenham Hotspur	16	6	5	5	30	23	7	23
8	Sheffield United	16	5	7	4	19	16	3	22
9	Arsenal	16	5	7	4	24	24	0	22

Now it looks like this

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	31	28	2	1	70	21	49	86
2	Manchester City	31	20	3	8	77	33	44	63
3	Leicester City	32	16	7	9	60	31	29	55
4	Chelsea	32	16	6	10	57	44	13	54
5	Manchester United	32	14	10	8	51	31	20	52
6	Wolverhampton Wanderers	32	13	13	6	45	34	11	52
7	Arsenal	32	11	13	8	47	41	6	46

It is an interesting moment because for most teams in the list they have now played exactly twice as many games as they had on 11 December.

One of the teams that has toppled down the most is Leicester City.  If they had carried on at their old rate they would have hit 72 points by now.  Instead they are merely on 55.  As it was, at the time we were 16 points behind.  Now we are nine points behind.  Still pretty awful from our perspective, but slightly less pretty awful than before.

Now what interests me in all this is that this decline has coincided with the publication of two articles in Untold.  On 6 February this year we published “How a club can commit the most fouls, but get the fewest yellow cards” with a follow up article on 26 February “What is the relationship between fouls, tackles and yellow cards?”

Those articles found that Leicester had a foul given against them every 2.08 tackles.  Other clubs got a foul against them after far fewer tackles.  In Arsenal’s case 1.61 tackles led to a foul being given.  But the most curious thing was that Leicester had to commit nearly twice as many fouls as other clubs to get a yellow card.  9.48 fouls for every card in their care compared with Arsenal on 4.32.  (And as the charts show, Arsenal in these figures were fairly mainstream; it was Leicester that was the outlier).

In short as those two articles showed, Leicester had either invented a new form of football, or else they were being treated much more leniently by referees than any other club.

And although they were indeed eight points behind Liverpool, they were still challenging, at the very least for second place.

Leicester’s decline has been dramatic since 11 December and that decline has been enhanced since our article was published – although I am not trying to suggest that our article caused a change (although there is a slight possibility that someone somewhere noticed it).

Since 6 February Leicester’s record in the league is played seven, won one, drawn three, lost three.  Overall it is an extraordinarily rapid decline.  Here are their league results since February.

14 Feb 2020	Wolverhampton Wanderers v Leicester City	D	0-0	Premier League
22 Feb 2020	Leicester City v Manchester City	L	0-1	Premier League
28 Feb 2020	Norwich City v Leicester City	L	1-0	Premier League
09 Mar 2020	Leicester City v Aston Villa	W	4-0	Premier League
20 Jun 2020	Watford v Leicester City	D	1-1	Premier League
23 Jun 2020	Leicester City v Brighton and Hove Albion	D	0-0	Premier League
01 Jul 2020	Everton v Leicester City	L	2-1	Premier League

At the same time Leicester’s figures in terms of tackles and fouls have declined – they are getting more fouls given against them per tackle and more yellow cards per foul than before.  Over the whole season the decline is modest, but over recent games it is very noticeable.

It might of course be that our little articles on the subject alerted referees to the utterly extraordinary nature of Leicester’s figures, or it might be that PGMO itself wondered how Leicester needed to commit more than twice as many fouls to get a yellow as many other teams.  It would be nice to think that PGMO looks at charts like these just as we do.

Since their win on 22 January against a poor West Ham side, Leicester have played eight Premier League games and won just one of them – against an ever poorer Aston Villa. During  that same period they have also managed to get knocked out of the FA Cup, League Cup and the FL Trophy.

Whatever it was behind their extraordinary figures that we highlighted, showing that they were committing twice as many fouls as Arsenal to get a yellow card, it seems to be having a far smaller impact now.   The only frustrating thing is that for half the season they were getting away with it.

What is particularly interesting is that when we did the first analysis it was just possible that Leicester had somehow brought together a team full of players who were twice as good at tackling as those of any other club and that even when they did commit a foul, the fouls were so minor that they rarely merited a yellow card.

That seemed unlikely at the time, and now seems much more unlikely given that they are starting to get more fouls given against them, and more yellow cards.

But what is most interesting is that this change has coincided with a decline in their performance.  True, they are still third in the league but they are slipping fast, and if this slippage continues they will not finish in a Champions League spot.

Maybe our little article did alert the PGMO to the fact that we were watching them.  Maybe they were aware anyway.  But either way it does suggest that a) Leicester were using the fact that they were getting so rarely punished for their tackles as a central plank in their approach to football, and b) once that was spotted and removed, their form declined rapidly.

And so maybe, just maybe, our occasional meanders into the backwaters of football statistics (which it must be remembered no one else published – for no one else brought together tackles, fouls and yellow figures all into one set of charts) might, perhaps, maybe, just maybe, cause PGMO to show a little more interest.

You never know.  Stranger things have happened.  Not often, but sometimes.

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