2024/25 mid-season review: AC Sparta Praha
Martin St. Louis — smart hockey player turned smart NHL head coach — put it succintly when his Montreal Canadiens struggled to gain footing earlier this season: he was not looking for a “band-aid solution” but a longterm, sustainable one. Soon enough, after overcoming a few more bumps, the Canadiens roared to their current record of 13-5-2. While you might not necessarily conclude Lars Friis wasn’t out there looking for band-aid solutions, it is the long game that Sparta are currently playing, much like St. Louis’ Montreal are, and it’s an open question how they’ll do.
The outlook
Funnily enough, this is not the worst Sparta winter forecast Kuba’s model has spit out in just three years of us doing this together. At 2022 Christmas, Sparta were projected to earn even less points (58.6) and given just a 2% chance of claiming the title, which they famously did eventually. But that was a weird January for forecasts generally (remember Bohemians were 9% likely to break onto the international scene), and Sparta were “only” languishing behind the league leaders by 7, not 13 points, so suck it!
All I’m saying is never say never, even though the model literally is saying it.
The question now is, should Sparta be more concerned about Baník potentially punching up (projected to earn just two regular-season wins less) or about climbing over Plzeň and salvaging at least some of their pride? The 20% likelihood of wrapping up the regular season as part of a Top 2 doesn’t feel great, and neither does their prospect of hitting the 65-point bar inside the 30 rounds (slightly over 8%), which they managed in both title-winning seasons; and very easily in the more recent one (76 pts).
I only have data available for regular season, but 18% to drop out of Top 3 and 20% to move up to 2nd? Boy, that is some unflattering juxtaposition.
The big question
Can Haraslín and Birmančević stay fit to improve Sparta’s ability to penetrate?
Listen, on balance, this was not a terrible Sparta by any stretch of imagination. Some — if not most — underlying numbers are still going strong and you could argue they have deserved better, owning the 2nd best non-penalty xG share (66%) to go with only the 4th best non-penalty goal share (62.3%). It’s fine margins what often decides these battles at the top, and this — along with 8 conceded goals facilitated by a grave error from a Sparta player, whereas Slavia have avoided these entirely — is one of those.
At the same time, it’s difficult to ignore just how much Sparta’s full-autumn underlying numbers get beefed up by the soft schedule to start the season.
In the first 8 rounds when Sparta got to face just two top-half opponents (for the eventual 7-1-0 record), they averaged 18.4 deep completions and 15 successful penalty area entries from open play for a league-leading average of 1.98 non-penalty xGF per game (Slavia were struggling at 1.45 and Plzeň were even slower out of the blocks with 1.28). In that space, they had accrued a marvelous 18.5 expected points, also besting the rest of the Top 3, just once — incredibly — dropping below two expected points on the day. Only that one xG performance (Hradec 2:0 win) also now does not fit inside the Top 60 of the most dominant xG performances across the entire league.
In the 11 rounds since, Sparta have accumulated 16.9 expected points, on only two separate occasions reaching beyond two expected points, with their average win probability dropping from 71% all the way down to 41%! Their average non-penalty xGF has faceplanted (1.24); their deep completion and successful penalty area entry rates have dropped by 3.
Is it a coincidence that Sparta had reached 57% of their autumn xGF total by Round 9, by which point Lukáš Haraslín had also reached 78% of his autumn playing time? Hardly. Is it a coincidence that Sparta went 1-3-1 in the five games Veljko Birmančević didn’t take any part in? Probably not. Is it a coincidence that in the 12 games they never got to share the pitch together (!), Sparta enjoyed a sub-par 42% success in entering the box in possession (doing so 12.3 times a game), while in those 7 other games their success rate shot up to 48% with a game average of 16.1 smooth entries?
Yeah, unlikely.
And you know what, any team — not excluding Slavia — would struggle without two attacking players whose respective tools to gain the danger zone ranked 4th and 5th (among wingers) last season. They were unstoppable and there was a reason to believe it would continue. Only having them to start a league game side-by-side three times was a massive handicap — one that was only partially down to Friis’ decisions (to rest his stars for UCL), and one Tomáš Rosický et co. should not be asked to have foreseen. No team is ever prepared for this. No team actually ever could. You don’t normally have two borderline 23/24 MVP candidates on standby.
The wild card
Kuchta (not) bringing his A-game and fixing the finishing issue
One more thing that shouldn’t go understated is that Haraslín, Birmančević and Albion Rrahmani — all unavailable for large chunks of the fall — are also finishers who routinely score in situations and/or positions they shouldn’t be scoring from. The small 24/25 sample should provide enough of a proof: Birmančević bagged two non-penalty goals out of the blue, and even many neutrals were found salivating over the other duo’s shooting technique.
The correlation between Sparta having Birmančević, Haraslín and the best centre forward (Kuchta) healthy and firing at all cylinders in 22/23 to add nearly 3 goals to their pre-shot xG total through just their finishing touches (best mark in the league) and Sparta not having Birmančević, Haraslín and the best centre forward (Rrahmani) at their disposal for most of 24/25 to underhit their pre-shot xG by over 3 goals (worst mark) is absolutely real.
This six-goal swing may not seem that significant, but it totally is. Only Dukla come close to their misery this year — and they are not quality. Over the rough 8-game stretch of 1 win, 3 draws, 4 losses in particular, Sparta simply didn’t ask the opposing goalkeepers enough questions, requiring them to prevent a sum of 6.24 goals — comfortably less than one per 90 (average of 1.88 otherwise). Sure enough, they scored once per game, while their normal in the other 12 games was a much more respectable 2.27.
This is a rough patch that cannot be repeated for Sparta to climb up and potentially even challenge Slavia; something Jan Kuchta is surely coming to fix in terms of both danger creation and finishing, having put together the league’s top inside-the-box-xG rate and 75-percentile finishing in 23/24.
Then again, if Sparta are getting back his version from earlier this season…
MVP race
Pole position: Lukáš Haraslín — 711,6 pts — ranked 20th league-wide
Prominent chaser: Albion Rrahmani — 462,9 pts — ranked 55th
Here’s the damning thing about 24/25 Sparta: they don’t have an MVP front-runner. That is not a knock on Lukáš Haraslín by any means, as he’s averaged a marvelous average Deník Sport mark of 7.0 by no accident. He’s racked up 6 TotW nominations in the process, as many important points (5+1) and a fantastic 7.14 expected points added through his goals and assists. That latter numbers ranks 7th in the league even though Haraslín has managed to put together a mileage adding up to only 6.3 full starts.
It is not a knock on Haraslín, and neither is it a knock on the runner-up who’s contributed to a goal scored (7) or chance created (16) every 29th minute on average. Albion Rrahmani only qualified for 11 Deník Sport marks and was selected their man of the match on 3 of those occasions.
No, it is not a knock on Rrahmani, and neither is it a knock on Veljko Birmančević who also wouldn’t have qualified for a pizza chart (9.75 starts), yet contributed to 7 goals scored himself, sitting just below Rrahmani on the MVP leaderboard (57th) courtesy of 17 more chances chipped in to.
Nope, this is a knock on just about everyone else. On Martin Vitík whose autumn derailed to a point he’s squarely responsible for more goals conceded (four grave errors) than anyone in the league’s Top 200. On Filip Panák who’s suddenly a net-negative player on balance. On literally everyone who’s allowed Victor Olatunji, with his average Deník Sport mark of 4.5 (the worst non-Budějovice player with at least 9 marks to his name per Bárt!), to climb all the way up to 8th spot on the team’s miserable leaderboard.
At the end of 23/24, four Sparta players crammed inside the league’s Top 12. There was 6 of them in the Top 40 where it’s now just Haraslín by himself. If you’re wondering why Sparta aren’t getting it done this term… this is it.
Bold prediction temperature check
Prediction: Sparta score more than 3 times in Round 1 — and Round 1 only
Status: Dead in the water
Look, the reasoning was pretty sound. This was obviously a quick death, since Sparta only managed to put a pair of strikes past Viktor Budinský despite their third most inflated shot count on the season, but generally… as many as 11 two-goal efforts, and only two performances of 4+ goals. That’s not too bad, even though it was obviously a quick death nonetheless.
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