One thing I have looked at towards the end of the season is what I have defined as the Scoring Chance Index (or SCI). In essence this is a take on a measure in Ice Hockey that has been coined as ‘Neilson numbers' and a full background post on this can be found here.

The reason that I sought to look at this as an effective measure within football was the growing sense that possession and shots - the two universally accepted measures of a team's dominance within an individual match - do not necessarily paint the full picture.

I thought it worthwhile looking again at the Champions League final from last Saturday to see how the game broke down in this regard. We know that Bayern dominated the game in terms of shots (43-9), possession (56%-44%) and passing (87%-82%) but what I wanted to see was how this translated into ‘true' scoring chances - and who were the key players.

Below are the tables showing the numbers and as we can see, Bayern overwhelmingly dominated in this regard. Arjen Robben in particular was involved in thirteen of Bayern's scoring chances (but, crucially, missing the key penalty that may have handed Bayern victory) and Frank Ribery and Contento enjoying success down the Bayern left. Goalscorer Thomas Muller was also involved in an offensive sense and it was telling that not only Bayern outfield player was involved in defending a scoring chance with Manuel Neuer making just the one defence when saving from Kalou:

Chelsea have received plenty of credit for successfully adhering to their gameplan; defending deep and restricting the opportunity for Bayern to create, but this was not necessarily the case. Whilst their approach meant Chelsea rarely got in position to create (evidenced by the lack of + scores from an offensive perspective), this did not have the effect of stymieing Bayern in any way and the credit Chelsea should receive out of their victory is not in stopping Bayern' ability to create but in the performances of Gary Cahill, David Luiz and Ashley Cole in stopping Bayern's ability to score.