Individual forecasts: Historic player data
One of the issues of the new forecast model is deciding which kind of shots to use to forecast player success: all of them, only those in the box or only those on target. Those on target have the best correlation to goals scored, however, there is a slight concern with limiting ourselves to that data alone. Consider the below example: Robin van Persie: Appearances 10, Total Shots 55, 10 Shots On Target, 3 Goals If we only look at his shots on target we see that he is averaging just one a game, with 30% of them hitting the back of the net. The issue is that he has historically hit the target at a much better rate than 10/55 (18%), having a success rate more in the 44% range. We therefore need to adjust for the fact that we believe 24 of his next 55 shots (44%) will hit the target and thus his expected goals will be higher. We have some issue about how to generate this historic rate, especially with regards to what data to use, but for now I'm happy to look at such data for pl...