By the Numbers: 17 – 18 September Weekend

Game week 8 was the joint-second lowest goal-scoring week of the 2022/23 DSTV Premiership so far. With 12 goals in total, only week 1 (10) was lower while 12 goals also occurred during game week 5. With Royal AM & Cape Town City FC in continental action during the weekend, only a couple of teams had fixtures scheduled in the DSTV Premiership. In By The Numbers, we examine the finer details of the gameweek, shining a light on key numbers from the action.

Goals

Lamontville Golden Arrows started the game week off with a thrilling 4-0 thrashing of Swallows FC. Despite scoring a third of the game week’s goals, no other team could replicate their fortune. In the last 5 seasons, DSTV Premiership teams had at this stage already combined together to score at least 20 goals in a single game week. After 8 game weeks, we are still waiting for that to happen – teams came closest in game week 2 with 19 goals in a single game week.

Sundowns Go Top

The champions put in another solid performance but struggled to put the ball past AmaZulu FC goalkeeper Veli Mothwa for 90 minutes. Marco Allende came to Sundown’s rescue in the dying minutes of the match to snatch all three points. This has happened in consecutive matches for Sundowns and something which the coaches alluded to in the post-match press conference

Sundowns

17 shots – the second highest total of shots taken this 2022/23 season.

2.3 xG – the second highest total of xG accumulated this 2022/23 season.

9 – the highest number of chances in games this season.

AmaZulu FC Are In A Hole

AmaZulu are in a rut – there are no two ways about it. The club started their season off in flying colours taking 10 points from their opening four games. Despite their impressive start, we did previously note that they were ‘running before they could walk’ (graphic below). Their 10 points effectively should really have only been approximately 3 points – if you took into consideration on-field performances of how they were creating and conceding chances in front of goal. In simpler terms, whilst their results were impressive, the underlying performances were not worthy of the results they were coming away with and that has now caught them hard. Post their first four games, they have only managed to add one point (and one goal) to the league tally and sit 6th on the log table.

Confils – Caleb Bimenyimana To The Rescue For Chiefs

SuperSport United had the early chances to put the game away yet Gavin Hunt’s troops could not hit the target – something they have struggled with all season long. For the home side, it took a few opportunities by the time new singing Bimenyimana was on the same wave length as his team-mates. His first two goals for AmaKhosi came shortly before being substituted but it was not the most cleanest of starts to his Kaizer Chief career. Onwards and upwards for coach, club, and striker.

Kaizer Chiefs

56% – the second highest possession count in games this season

15 – the second highest shot count taken in games this season

2.2 – (including 0.75 xG for the penalty) the highest accumulated xG for Kaizer Chiefs for the season

37 – the highest number of attacks coming down the left-hand side in the DSTV Premiership this season (52 attacks happening in the MTN 8 Quarter-Final vs Stellenbosch in late August)

SuperSport United Struggling For Perfomances

The results might not show it but Matsatsantsa have hit a dip in form of late. Their early season creative

abilities to create lots of high quality chances have somewhat faded away. In the early part of the season – in August (vs Chippa Utd, AmaZulu FC & TS Galaxy) they were creating but failing to score, whereas now in recent games, they were struggling to create chances at a similar rate yet scoring more often. It might simply be explained by ‘opposition strength’ than anything else and is certainly a factor that has a part to play in analysing the data. We will monitor this into next month.

Otherwise, SuperSport had plenty of chances within the first 10 minutes to put the game to bed against Chiefs which was repeatedly stated by their coach Gavin Hunt in his post-match press conference.

Nonetheless, they were able to lead Chiefs for a period of time with a beautifully taken left-footed strike through Grant Margeman.

SuperSport United

18 – entrances into the opposition box, more than Kaizer Chiefs and their second highest to date

14 – shots were taken third highest total in their season to date