The less you need to defend to better your team is

Teams prefer to attack (blue) rather than defend (red). But if your team is up against a stronger team, the chance is that they’ll force you to defend. Transitioning is a lot harder than kick and rush. For that reason the weakest teams have very little effectiveness in transitioning.

Here are the results of all the teams in the Dutch Eredivisie. As you can see Ajax is the most balanced team. It also shows that even though the teams ended very close in the ranking, Ajax is obvious a stronger team.

These numbers are based on the FBM team score, which in turn is based on the attacking, defending and transitioning efficiencies of the individual players in the starting XI. There is a 67% correlation (reversed) between the defensive score and the points a team scored in the league.

Given that these numbers are about effiencies, these percentages are not about the time spent by each team on either attacking, defending or transitioning. Instead these numbers are about what is working for the team.

These numbers show that strong team first focus on transitioning. If that isn’t working out for them, then they go for kick & rush or long balls. If that fails, then all that is left to do is defending.

With FBM statistics we can find players for you club that strengthen the transition or the attack as we can calculate exactly how much a player contributes to the transitioning, attacking and defending of the team.

Ajax
PSV
Feyenoord
AZ
Vitesse
FC Utrecht
Heracles
FC Groningen
ADO Den Haag
Willem II
Heerenveen
VVV
PEC Zwolle
FC Emmen
Fortuna Sittard
Excelsior
De Graafschap
NAC Breda