How Good is the ‘Muur van Mokum’

How Good is the ‘Muur van Mokum’

10/03/2015

Recently various news articles appeared about ‘De Muur van Mokum”, about the defense of Ajax. Amongst other things these articles referred to the record of the longest serie (7) home matches in the Eredivisie that Ajax had clean sheets. How good is the defense really if we compare it to the past couple of seasons?

With respect to statistics thre is a saying: “There are 3 types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” It is therefore always a good idea to look with some sceptism when someone uses statistics to prove a point. In this specific situations you might wonder whether this series of 7 Eredivisie homegames with clean sheets is a good comparison. It is the case that 4 of these matches were played in the previous season (in which next to Joël Veltman Niklas Moisander, Ricardo van Rhijn and Nick Viergever played frequently) and that only 3 of the so far 14 played official matches this season were home games in the Eredivisie. We do not think this record says a lot about the quality of the current Ajax defense. Instead we have done a comparison with the first 14 matches of the previous seasons, made a comparison with matches against the same opponents, and made a comparison with matches against opponents that had the same position in the end ranking as the opponents in this season have in the current standing. These comparisons are also not ideal, but are a better method than the earlier mentioned record to give a validation about the current Ajax defense.

First the comparison with the first 14 matches from the previous seasons.

Season Goals for Goals against Goaldifference
2015-16 28 10 +18
2014-15 29 17 +12
2013-14 31 23 +8
2012-13 27 25 +2
2011-12 29 19 +10
2010-11 32 16 +16
This indicates the defense has significantly less goals against compared to the first part of the previous seasons. There is still not much that can be concluded, for example in the previous seasons often Ajax already had played against an opponent like Barcelona or Real Madrid at this stage. Besides that, the average position of the Eredivisie opponents Ajax played against so far this season is between 12 and 13, and although we did not check this for each season, the opponents Ajax met at the start of the season might have been ranked better in the previous seasons.

Another way of looking at this is to check how Ajax did against the same opponents it has met so far in the previous seasons. We have only looked at the 7 Eredivisie matches Ajax has played so far for this cimparison, as Ajax typically does not often play against the same European or Dutch Cup opponents. Even the Eredivisie opponents Ajax met this seasons it did not play against each of the 5 previous seasons, as some of the opponents were not playing in the Eredivisie one or more of the seasons. In such cases we have considered the results against a similarly placed opponents instead of the below comparison.
Seasons Goals for Goals against Goaldifference
2015-16 18 2 +16
2014-15 14 5 +9
2013-14 20 1 +19
2012-13 21 6 +15
2011-12 16 11 +5
2010-11 13 6 +7
The current season is in this comparison not the best season, but in the current season Ajax did have significantly less goals against than on average in the past 5 seasons. Drawback of this comparison is that 7 matches is only a small set, one extreme results has a large influence on the total results. Possibly it would have been better to look at the number of cleansheet as opposed to the number of goals against. Besides it could very well be that some of the opponents this season were significantly stronger in some of the previous seasons, or weaker.

To remove this last effect we compare the results with matches of the past 5 seasons against opponents that had the same ranking in the final standing of the Eredivisie as the opponents so far this season had in the current ranking. This could be a good method to compare how Ajax did in the previous seasons against opponents of similar strength.
Season Goals for Goals against Goaldifference
2015-16 18 2 +16
2014-15 15 3 +12
2013-14 16 7 +9
2012-13 21 5 +16
2011-12 18 3 +15
2010-11 10 8 +2
In the current season Ajax had the least goals againt, but there were only two seasons with only one more goal against. Drawback of this comparison is that the number of opponents we consider is quite small.

By the way, Co Adriaanse could say that it is “Final Score Journalism” by claiming the current defense is so good. If you look at the matches you see quite some mistakes, and you could wonder whether the small amount of goals against is not saying as much about the quality of the opponents in the Eredivisie as it is about the Ajax defense. Especially in situations in which for example Joël Veltman or Jairo Riedewald pass the ball to an opponent it is in our eyes strange to use this to praise the corrective capabilities of the defense instead of emphasizing this could have easily let to a goal against better opposition.

Although we can conclude that this young and inexperienced defense has easily held its own against the weaker teams in the Eredivisie, in our eyes there is no basis to conclude this defense is better than the defense of the previous seasons yet. For this, with all due respect, the quality of the opposition that has been met in the Eredivisie has not been strong enough, while the quality of a defense can best be measured against stronger opposition. This month will be interesting. With a home match against the current number 4, Ajax angstgegner, PSV, away matches againt the current number 2 Heracles and number 6 Vitesse, the Dutch Cup classic against Feyenoord and the EL away game against Fenerbahce the Ajax defense will be tested enough.
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