Who actually were the A-League's best and worst?

Ola Toivonen perhaps summed it up best when he said that the A-League finals series means that the rest of the season "doesn't really matter". 

For all Perth Glory's dominance and gusto over 28 rounds, Sydney FC will go down in the record books as this season's Champions. They turned up on the day and won the one that mattered most.

56,000 people - the biggest crowd in Grand Final history and 46,000 greater than the average A-League attendance - watched the goalless 120-minute spectacle.

Was the excitement of the penalties a payoff? Well, given 95% of the crowd were Perth fans (many assumably first-timers)...we'll wait and see.

Hopefully HBF Park is packed for round one this season, but if Newcastle Jets were anything to go by then a stunted, controversial Grand Final loss may do as much harm as good. Like we said, the Big Swede has a point...

Of course, there's also Mark Bosnich's old argument that perhaps we shouldn't want to listen to the Eurosnobs. That maybe the Grand Final, harking back to the old NSL traditions, is a unique Australian event that enriches the A-League, rather than demeans it.

Have we ever thought that perhaps Europe got it wrong and Australia got it right? While we'd all love a little more Serie A or Bundesliga quality on the pitch, seven consecutive titles to the same club isn't all that exciting now is it...

And after all, if the Grand Final winner doesn't offer a fair representation of an actual league season, is a league table any different?

Well, rather than set sail pretentiously into a puritanical anti-finals headwind, we thought we'd check out the statistics behind the rankings, to find out whether all this fuss over finals is founded, or merely another funnel for fan furore.

(Hint: it's always a bit of both)

FIRST, THE STATS THAT (DON'T) MATTER

Before we kick things off, because surely everyone who's reading this is as big a stats nerd we are, we thought we'd take a quick overview of the 2018/19 season as a whole:

440 Goals

557 Yellow cards

30 Red cards

3,773 Shots

1,321 Shots on target

125,425 Passes

62 Clean sheets

3,796 Fouls

40 Penalties

WHO HAD THE BEST FORWARD FINESSE?

With Graham Arnold out and Tony Popovic back in the frame, a significant diversity emerged among the A-League's big guns.

Kevin Muscat's Victory offered a mix of all-guns-blazing with careful, measured passing while Steve Corica kept hold of Graham Arnold's dominating approach, but added a tendency for quick combinations and direct penetrative passes.

All the while, Popovic's intense, hard-working style was given a new dimension through Diego Castro's free-wheeling fluidity and the searing pace of Chris Ikonomidis.

We know how it all turned out on the pitch, but in a purely attacking sense, which was actually the most effective?

Goals

WAS THE BOTTOM FOUR ACTUALLY HARD DONE BY?

It's worth noting that Perth the Premiers finished a mile on top in the goalscoring charts with 10 more than champions Sydney, while Victory still vastly outperformed the rest

The Mariners are rock-bottom but Western Sydney Wanderers, who finished eighth, were actually the fifth most dangerous team in the competition, while Melbourne City only scored once more than Brisbane Roar.

The best way to find out which coach had the most hair-tearing season is to track shots-to-goal conversions and it's little surprise to see the Wanderers slip back to near the bottom of the pile.

Interestingly the Mariners' conversion wasn't actually that bad, further pressing just how poor they performed to finish last. Interestingly, Adelaide who finished fourth, was actually equal second-last in the conversion stakes.

Goes to show that if Marco Kurz had a little more investment up front, Adelaide may have accomplished even greater things throughout the season. 

Goal Conversions

THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF THEM ALL?

If you noticed Newcastle Jets were last in conversions, it will be little surprise to see they led the league in shots taken despite finishing seventh - arguably the biggest surprise of the 2018/19 season statistics.

Ernie Merrick harped on about the Jets deserving more than they got and perhaps he has a point, but it's interesting that the Wanderers were second in the shooting charts yet still finished eighth.

Obviously simply rifling off efforts in the A-League isn't the best way into the net, Melbourne Victory were third last in shots taken, but second in goals scored.

Shots

WHAT DOES A GREAT DEFENSIVE SIDE ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?

While the conceded table reads more or less as expected, there are two points worth noting. First, fifth-placed Melbourne City were actually the third best defensive side in the league which, when you combine with a relatively low conversion rate, cast a slightly warmer glow on Warren Joyce.

Yeah, it was arguably his fault that Bruno Fornaroli wasn't in the squad to begin with, but you can imagine that had the Uruguyan managed to put in a season's shift, Joyce could very well still be in the City hotseat. 

Conceded

HOW GOOD WAS WELLINGTON REALLY?

The second point is Wellington's mixed result. Despite having the best goalkeeper in the league with the highest save percentage, the Nix still conceded the fourth-highest goal count.

Then you add that Wellington had the third highest goal conversion rate thanks to deadly strikers David Williams and Roy Krishna, as opposed to the dismal returns for Newcastle and Western Sydney, and you begin to realise the gap between sixth and eighth is probably a lot less than many thought.

As if to hammer the point home, despite receiving the golden glove Filip Kurto's Wellington side only registered the equal-seventh most cleansheets.

Given they finished sixth, for all the plaudits given to Mark Rudan's side, even with a rampaging Krishna it's possible that without Filip Kurto they may have finished below the Jets and Wanderers after all.

Luckily for Rudan, he'll have the prized Pole at Western United next season, so we may never know...

Cleansheets

DOES THE SALARY CAP MATTER?

Another interesting statistic compares the passes to shots ratio, with Western Sydney managing to fire off the second most shots with the second least passes in the build-up.

It's a sign that the A-League, despite its agricultural reputation among the wider public, is a league that vastly rewards a calm, measured build-up.

This is still thrown out a little by Sydney's success under Corica's slightly more direct style however and both Melbourne Victory and Sydney's success against Perth by remaining defensively solid and playing counter-attacking football.

But ultimately what these stats tell us is that while the salary cap certainly pushes towards equality, the A-league certainly has big guns: the best teams attempting to dominate and the weaker attempting to counter.

Passes

MELBOURNE CITY'S FRUSTRATION

Proving City fans' frustration is while their side had one of the lowest shot ratios in the competition, they still had one of the highest pass completion and accuracy ratings. A lot of side-to-side then backwards at AAMI Park then.

This table also highlights one of the subtle ways in which Steve Corcia diverged from Graham Arnold's style, with Corica's Sydney outfit forcing the play earlier and relying on a more direct, quicker style, much to their success.

Passing Accuracy

DOES THE A-LEAGUE REWARD AGGRESSION?

Short answer, no. While some leagues around the world still play into the hands of hard-tackling, elbowing, crotch-grabbing skinheads, with VAR and Chris Griffiths-Jones keeping a hawkeye on proceedings, Australia is the land of little opportunity.

The most aggressive out of the big three was surprisingly Sydney, fourth overall. While their mix of experienced heads may lend themselves to a little argy bargy, perhaps there's a stiffer side to Bimbi than many would have expected.

Perth were the fairest of them all with over 100 less fouls than Rudan's Nix and Joyce's City sides, while Muscat, for all his reputation, presided over the third nicest team on the park.

Fouls conceded

OR ARE YOU JUST GETTING AWAY WITH IT...

They may have been one of the highest-foulers, but Sydney clearly knew when to step in and when to step back - the only side to avoid a red card all season and very low on the yellow card spectrum as well.

We can already see the 'Sydney referee bias' comments coming now - hey, maybe they have a point?

Yellow Cards

Red Cards