Leicester City won the 2015-16 Premier League with 42.4% possession, the lowest of any English champion on record. They were second to last in the league in passing accuracy. They finished ten points clear.
The one attacking number where they ranked near the top was expected goals, which weights every shot by how likely it was to go in. They were second in England.
The stat everyone watched on the broadcast said mid-table. The stat almost nobody watched said champions.
That gap is the argument for how we build a portfolio, and it made me notice that our own slogan gets it slightly wrong. In soccer, a shot on goal and a shot on target are the same thing. Hockey too. Only business writing stretched “more shots on goal” to mean attempts of any kind, including the hopeless ones.
The sloppy version sounds like a defense of spraying capital at anything with a deck. The precise version is harder. Get the ball into a position where the shot has a real chance, then do that as many times as your organization can without lowering the quality of any single attempt.
New piece on why volume only works with the second half of that sentence, and what would prove us wrong.
https://www.teamignite.vc/blog/shots-on-target