What the stats say about Mike Dodds’ two stints as Sunderland head coach this season

Here is what the stats say about Mike Dodds' two spells in charge of Sunderland this season, so far, the interim head coach has taken charge of seven games over his two spells.

Dodds is currently in his second spell at the helm of Sunderland this season. During his first stint Dodds took charge of three games winning two and losing one but since taking interim charge of the club after the exit of Micheal Beale, he has lost all four games. Here, we look at the in-depth stats to see what has changed in Dodds’ two stints this season.

Back in December in the three games he oversaw Sunderland averaged 1.14 xG per game, while currently over the past four games the Black Cats have only managed an xG of 0.77, a difference of 0.37 xG per game for Dodds.

Perhap the reason for this is that Sunderland are not creating enough chances or getting players in the box, as back in December the Black Cats averaged two big chances per game whereas currently, they are only averaging half of that with one per game.

Sunderland are also only getting in the opposition box around half as much, with their touches in the opposition box dropping from 33.3 per game to 18 per game. As well as not creating or scoring enough, Sunderland also are facing a lot more shots at the back on average. Sunderland have faced seven shots on target per game over their last four games, while in Dodds’ first spell, they only faced 2.66 shots on target per game.

Sunderland’s xG against doesn’t make for much better reading either, with the Black Cats having 2 xG against them per game in their run of four defeats under Dodds, whereas back in December they only had an xG of 0.75 against them under the same coach.

The xG metric also runs very close to the actual stats for Sunderland. In Dodds’ first spell the Black Cats had 1.14 xG and averaged one goal per game, while against they averaged 0.75 xG and conceded 0.66 per game. In Dodds’ current stint they have averaged 0.77 xG per game and scored 0.75 goals per game and conceded two goals per game, the exact number their xG against per game suggests.