Possessions and Shots: An MLS Case Study

It is TFS's belief that the style a team plays does not particularly matter (all due respect to Barcelona lovers).  What really matters is, when you have possession, do you create chances and score goals?  When your opponent has possession, do you stop them from creating chances and scoring goals? 

At this point in the MLS season we have enough data to run some more meaningful analysis.  This post is meant to test the TFS hypothesis that shots and possessions should be positively correlated and that there is no benefit to being a more deliberate or more direct team. 

As can be seen from the results below, there is some support for this hypothesis. There is a positive correlation between shots and possessions, though of course it is not perfect.  I sorted teams by Possessions Per Game (PPG) in order to demonstrate that efficiency (measured by shots per possession) shows no correlation with the style a team plays (as measured by PPG).  Also notice that the residuals from the best fit line created are the same as TFS's Shots per Possession (AG) ratings. In short, efficiency is paramount.