Shouldn't These Super-Stars Be Achieving Better Percentages ?

[Canary42]

When perusing the "statistics" of Premier League football matches I am surprised at how low the percentage of shots on target is.

Surely such highly-paid professionals should be regularly getting 90-100% on target. Many of the matches achieve figures more synonymous with Local Park football.

Take yesterday's match between Bournemouth and Manchester City :-
Bournemouth 1 of 5 on target
Manchester 5 of 17 shots on target

Or last weekend's match between leaders Chelsea and Burnley
Burnley 4 out of 7 on target (a bit better)
Chelsea 2 out of 13 on target

I'm not knocking just these 4 teams, these results are not untypical of almost every Premier League game/club.

[fiction-factory]

There's no point in aiming at the keeper. I played as a striker for many years with some success and I always aimed for close to the post. I scored plenty but my efforts often whistled just wide or over. Two of Man City's efforts hit the woodwork last night- presumably these were classed as off target - yes they were but are no worse than a gentle pass to the keeper

[fiction-factory]

Maybe some on here have never played much football

[Zacs-Master]

There are these players called.....defenders. You might have noticed that a lot of shots that should be on target are sent wide / over the bar by these players. They also get paid quite a lot.

[douglas9401]

"Maybe some on here have never played much football"

You may be right, us mere mortals just soldier on with our humdrum lives without constantly failing to do what we're paid for.

'It's so unfair' whined a cosseted, delusional idol of the masses.

[Buenchico]

Hmmm.

I'm looking at this question from the point of view of a former maths teacher who used to run (generally very successful) school football teams. Our motto was always "Attack! Attack! Attack!"

Why is that relevant here? Well that's where the maths comes in!

Team A might have a fantastic 'on target' figure of 4 out of 5, However if they're a defensive side and only get 5 shots at goal in an entire match that means that they only get 4 'on target' shots

Team B, on the other hand, only has a 2 out of 5 'on target' record but, because they're an attacking side, they get 30 shots at goal during a match. So they get 12 'on target' shots.

So which is the better side then?

[Jackdaw33]

To my mind the only shot 'on target' is one that ends up in a goal.

[Buenchico]

I've got to agree with that, JD33, although the converse isn't always true. I've seen plenty of goals scored that were never 'on target shots'; they were simply poor crosses which happened to end up in the back of the net ;-)