Time to continue my ongoing tour of Europe now as I work out which teams are the most efficient when it comes to shots vs goals, yesterday it was the turn of La Liga and now we move across the English channel and stop to look at where we stand in Ligue 1 after the first 12 weeks of the season.

Once again thanks to whoscored.com for all the necessary data.

Here is the Ligue 1 table after 12 weeks while also working out the amount of total shots taken.

And here is how those 20 clubs are now ranked in terms of shot efficiency (as always smallest to largest)

What I might do now is then list the 20 teams in order of shots on goal taken this season, just to give us some greater posterity. I guess you can never have too much data

Here we can have a greater level of compare and contrast as just because a team has the most shots on goal does not necessarily mean it is the most efficient. Here is the important part though the graph that ranks the 20 Ligue 1 teams in order of efficiency.

To be honest the fact that PSG sit top of the rankings will come as no real surprise to anyone, they need just 4.8 shots on goal before finding the opposition’s net which is actually the same as Valencia who top the La Liga rankings after 11 weeks of the season.

One thing you will notice is that Marseille have had the most efforts on goal in Ligue 1 but are only ranked fourth in the efficiency charts (more on this in a moment) while spare a thought for Metz who are not only bottom of the table in the division but also in terms of shot efficiency.

Now that tells some of the story and because it is the first week that we have looked at the French data there’s not too much to pick the bones out of here but that will develop over time, that said the variance to league position graph is very interesting.

As before the higher numbers mean a positive difference to league position with the opposite when you see a negative number, now what grabbed my attention the most is the fact that the top four teams in the league are also the four top teams in terms of efficiency as they all have 0 values here.

That is something we have not seen in either England or Spain as of yet but what is more staggering is the variance at both ends of the scale. Angers and Troyes have the highest positive variance in all of the three countries that I have mapped so far. They are 12 places higher in terms of efficiency than their league placing.

And because there are so many teams on 0 it means there are going to be wilder swings elsewhere, this is reflected by the fact that Nantes, Caen and Montpeillier are comprehensively worse off than their league placing would suggest at present.

Also there is a relatively even split in terms of the categories of variance in Ligue 1 that being:

7 Positive
6 Neutral
7 Negative

I don’t think that is a trend we have seen elsewhere and could well be something to keep an eye on across the leagues.

Next week I will also add in a table of the difference week on week in terms of shot efficiency rankings, so we can have a clear grasp of the movers and shakers. The rest of the week I will compiling data from Germany and Italy, so make sure you keep an eye out for those.

Also going forward I’ll be able to add an average line to the graph so that we can look at which teams shot efficiency is either below or above average, we could also look at mapping shots on goal and the average of that also, to be honest as the project expands new ideas come into play so there is plenty of scope for new ideas as the season unfolds.

I hope this was of interest to you and if you have any football data work available then please contact me at realfootballmanwordpress@gmail.com as I am always looking to undertake additional projects to the ones I already have. Thanks, Dan.