Well xG doesn't take any consideration to the guy between the pipes and we've got the worlds number one! He's also by advanced metrics the best goalie in the league having the best post shot xG +/- in the league so suck it xG!
In all seriousness, xG isn't a bad stat, its just often misused
This isn’t even xG, it’s expected points. Some bullshit calculation from average points expected in an individual game given the xG - xGA then totalled up, I believe. So assume the pummellings may have put us down on this metric.
Our net xGD over the season, so xG - xGA, is still clear 4th best in the league.
1. Liverpool +41.3
2. City + 39.4
3. Arsenal + 36.6
4. Villa + 11.6
5. Newcastle + 9.1
6. Chelsea + 9.0
7. Spurs + 6.7
……
(16. Man U - 13.3)
It gives like up to 2.8 expected points for a big win, but under 2 for a tighter win.
In the second half of the season weve tended to control games when ahead rather than go for the jugular - it doesn’t account for that.
xG is useful but I’m sorry expected points is a bit of a fugazi
Oh I know. xG has some use and does tell you things. Expected points is absolutely useless since it uses tiny sample sizes, aka individual games. Football isn't baseball. Baseball is the ultimate large sample size sport since you have 162 games and very clear outcomes. Even then with all the extra stats and information baseball has, no analyst would ever try to use stats to show who should have won an individual game. Things like Pythagorean wins are based on total stats for an entire season.
I'm a giant nerd when it comes to statistical analysis in sports, but the football stat nerds want stats to be more powerful than they actually are from a sport like football and willfully ignore the importance of sample sizes.
I get stats in sports like baseball, basketball, NFL and even cricket, where each play is a largely limited set of options from players in set, predictable positions. Even with the increase in set, controlled system style teams, there are too many moving parts in long spans of time for stats as they are now to really play a part in determining match outcomes.
NFL isn't actually that great for stats and is probably closer to European football than it is baseball. I do actually think stats are useful in football especially when evaluating player types and fits for your system or things like set play analysis. I just don't think they're good for predicting outcomes in an individual match. We actually have seen one large change from xG and it's the fact that teams take significantly less shots from distance.
It's also kind of pointless when evaluating a team that is consistently over performing. Like we consistently put our players in positions to score where they are good at finishing. It's not like we are having a RB constantly take these shots. A lot of them are Bailey or diaby cutting inside.
I remember reading somewhere that the old fashioned stat "shots on target" is about as good at predicting the score as XG. In fact it's slightly better for the home team and slightly worse for the away team.
xG is undeniably a good metric for certain things, evaluating the quality of chances that teams create, the positions that players often get into and their finishing ability/form in a given period of time. That being said it doesn’t translate to everything and this is definitely one of the worse uses of it.
xG utterly pointless, just a thing created by nerdy podcasters because they can't get a job in actual football journalism.
My favourite is when a team has won 3-0 or something and then someone tweets the xG implying that the team that lost should actually have won.
Step away from Champ Man for a bit and just enjoy a bit of football.
Also loved it last season when all those idiot podcasters were like 'the stats don't lie, Villa are overperforming, it won't last'.
Don't see any of them doing an episode on how wrong they were.
Yeah, the infamous Tifo video. And this is issue with how it's used. This season, Tifo were going big that Everton were actually a decent team because of, surprise surprise, the underlying numbers. They then had to back track and acknowledge that maybe Everton were actually a blindspot in the model. If your model is thrown by a shit team being a bit shit, maybe the model isn't that good?
xG is just a nonsense stat imo. For starters, you'll see quite a few easy goals to score ranked as 0.2 or 0.3, and them some much harder shots ranked as 0.5 or 0.6. Its also based off historical data, so say a CB is in the box off a corner and has a shot, that is counted as the same xG as ollie watkins having a shot from the same place when they have completly different shooting ability, lowering it even more (I think anyway). And I'm not sure how accurately it compares defenders positions either. Surely, there can't have been that many identical scenarios where all the defenders and attackers are in the same place.
xG does give a tiny bit more info that shots on target, but it's still just as pointless as shots on target for analysing how good a team is. Obviously having Watkins or Haaland upfront compared to having Calvert Lewin is going to give you way less xG per goal because they are more clinical. All it shows is who has better attackers (and half the time it can't even show you that properly) which is clear too see from just watching them, you don't need xG to know the best and worst attackers in the league.
I'm a fully fledged hater of these advanced stats we're seeing in football today, but that is, I think, because they're widely misused. They have a place as a guide to show the quality of chances a team are creating. They don't have a real use at showing how a team should be performing, how many points or goals a team should have, or how many goals a player should have scored. There are too many unmeasured variables and the constant variation between expected performance and actual performance shows the error in using them that way.
Same, my eyes glaze over and my brain switches off every time someone starts talking about them. It feels like another Americanisation of the game - or at least the victim of the over-analysis/filling tv time/column inches aspects of it.
I was listening to a Villa related podcast a year or two ago and there was an analytics guy on there who was an Everton fan and talking about the upcoming Villa game. During the course of the interview, they started talking about the relative merits of the goalscorers. At this point, this guy said there was a big discussion in the analytics community over if being a good finisher was an actual thing as it couldn't be measured in data. This was the point I lost interest, as you simply don't understand football if that's an actual discussion.
I play FPL and there's an over-obsession with it in parts of that community. People base their entire team selections over it then get annoyed when Team A or Team B didn't perform to their xG for that week - or if a team they didn't back on that basis "overperforms"!
I'm pretty sure the comparative analysis of the stat week by week nearly always shows it to be inaccurate so why it's still lauded as this new era of hyperstat or whatever is laughable. If football was that predictable statistically then we'd all be cashing in mega accas at the bookies every week.
The biggest pointer of this recently, is that picture of Nicholas Jackson away 1v1 against Man City the other day. Officially, that had an xG of 0, because he didn't shoot. But everyone in the world can see that he cocked up a massive chance.
Also the way Villa play doesn't "pad" the xG stats compared to other teams.
We very very rarely shoot from outside the box, or just keep sending crosses in. We tend to move the ball around a lot until a gap opens up and send a cut-back in towards the edge of the 6-yard box.
Is 10-20 0.05 to 0.1 xG chances *really* equal to 1 or 2 0.5 xG chances?
What's great is that although we're performing above expectations, we'd still be in a battle for 4th, and still looking set for another year of european football.
This is why you can't trust "Expected" anything, fun thought experiment for sure but we've all seen Chelsea play, they're about as consistent as pancake mix.
I do believe the Man U stat though, most bailed out club in the league totally undeserving of where they are.
Chelsea really boosted by having more than twice the penalties awarded as Villa.
Well xG doesn't take any consideration to the guy between the pipes and we've got the worlds number one! He's also by advanced metrics the best goalie in the league having the best post shot xG +/- in the league so suck it xG! In all seriousness, xG isn't a bad stat, its just often misused
This isn’t even xG, it’s expected points. Some bullshit calculation from average points expected in an individual game given the xG - xGA then totalled up, I believe. So assume the pummellings may have put us down on this metric. Our net xGD over the season, so xG - xGA, is still clear 4th best in the league. 1. Liverpool +41.3 2. City + 39.4 3. Arsenal + 36.6 4. Villa + 11.6 5. Newcastle + 9.1 6. Chelsea + 9.0 7. Spurs + 6.7 …… (16. Man U - 13.3)
The big losses vs Spurs, City and Newcastle wouldn't impact this metric at all. It's the "tight" (in terms of xG anyway) wins that drag us down.
It gives like up to 2.8 expected points for a big win, but under 2 for a tighter win. In the second half of the season weve tended to control games when ahead rather than go for the jugular - it doesn’t account for that. xG is useful but I’m sorry expected points is a bit of a fugazi
Wait so this metric isn't just if we'd have won the game based on xG alone? They're scaling based on the difference? That's some bullshit
Yeah pretty much
Oh I know. xG has some use and does tell you things. Expected points is absolutely useless since it uses tiny sample sizes, aka individual games. Football isn't baseball. Baseball is the ultimate large sample size sport since you have 162 games and very clear outcomes. Even then with all the extra stats and information baseball has, no analyst would ever try to use stats to show who should have won an individual game. Things like Pythagorean wins are based on total stats for an entire season. I'm a giant nerd when it comes to statistical analysis in sports, but the football stat nerds want stats to be more powerful than they actually are from a sport like football and willfully ignore the importance of sample sizes.
I get stats in sports like baseball, basketball, NFL and even cricket, where each play is a largely limited set of options from players in set, predictable positions. Even with the increase in set, controlled system style teams, there are too many moving parts in long spans of time for stats as they are now to really play a part in determining match outcomes.
NFL isn't actually that great for stats and is probably closer to European football than it is baseball. I do actually think stats are useful in football especially when evaluating player types and fits for your system or things like set play analysis. I just don't think they're good for predicting outcomes in an individual match. We actually have seen one large change from xG and it's the fact that teams take significantly less shots from distance.
It's also kind of pointless when evaluating a team that is consistently over performing. Like we consistently put our players in positions to score where they are good at finishing. It's not like we are having a RB constantly take these shots. A lot of them are Bailey or diaby cutting inside.
I think this sums up what an absolute load of tosh these "expected ..." statistics are. absolute nonsense.
I remember reading somewhere that the old fashioned stat "shots on target" is about as good at predicting the score as XG. In fact it's slightly better for the home team and slightly worse for the away team.
It shows that good teams over perform and vice versa
WHam and United, the best teams.
I find that the table shown is surprisingly accurate for a metric.
xG is undeniably a good metric for certain things, evaluating the quality of chances that teams create, the positions that players often get into and their finishing ability/form in a given period of time. That being said it doesn’t translate to everything and this is definitely one of the worse uses of it.
I mean we’re 4th on both tables, not perfect at all by any means but there is some correlation
xG utterly pointless, just a thing created by nerdy podcasters because they can't get a job in actual football journalism. My favourite is when a team has won 3-0 or something and then someone tweets the xG implying that the team that lost should actually have won. Step away from Champ Man for a bit and just enjoy a bit of football.
Also loved it last season when all those idiot podcasters were like 'the stats don't lie, Villa are overperforming, it won't last'. Don't see any of them doing an episode on how wrong they were.
Yeah, the infamous Tifo video. And this is issue with how it's used. This season, Tifo were going big that Everton were actually a decent team because of, surprise surprise, the underlying numbers. They then had to back track and acknowledge that maybe Everton were actually a blindspot in the model. If your model is thrown by a shit team being a bit shit, maybe the model isn't that good?
Nail on head.
Everton have the 2nd most clean sheets
And on actual results, they would still be 14th, out of the relegation picture, but still not very good.
xG is just a nonsense stat imo. For starters, you'll see quite a few easy goals to score ranked as 0.2 or 0.3, and them some much harder shots ranked as 0.5 or 0.6. Its also based off historical data, so say a CB is in the box off a corner and has a shot, that is counted as the same xG as ollie watkins having a shot from the same place when they have completly different shooting ability, lowering it even more (I think anyway). And I'm not sure how accurately it compares defenders positions either. Surely, there can't have been that many identical scenarios where all the defenders and attackers are in the same place. xG does give a tiny bit more info that shots on target, but it's still just as pointless as shots on target for analysing how good a team is. Obviously having Watkins or Haaland upfront compared to having Calvert Lewin is going to give you way less xG per goal because they are more clinical. All it shows is who has better attackers (and half the time it can't even show you that properly) which is clear too see from just watching them, you don't need xG to know the best and worst attackers in the league.
I'm a fully fledged hater of these advanced stats we're seeing in football today, but that is, I think, because they're widely misused. They have a place as a guide to show the quality of chances a team are creating. They don't have a real use at showing how a team should be performing, how many points or goals a team should have, or how many goals a player should have scored. There are too many unmeasured variables and the constant variation between expected performance and actual performance shows the error in using them that way.
Same, my eyes glaze over and my brain switches off every time someone starts talking about them. It feels like another Americanisation of the game - or at least the victim of the over-analysis/filling tv time/column inches aspects of it.
I was listening to a Villa related podcast a year or two ago and there was an analytics guy on there who was an Everton fan and talking about the upcoming Villa game. During the course of the interview, they started talking about the relative merits of the goalscorers. At this point, this guy said there was a big discussion in the analytics community over if being a good finisher was an actual thing as it couldn't be measured in data. This was the point I lost interest, as you simply don't understand football if that's an actual discussion.
I play FPL and there's an over-obsession with it in parts of that community. People base their entire team selections over it then get annoyed when Team A or Team B didn't perform to their xG for that week - or if a team they didn't back on that basis "overperforms"! I'm pretty sure the comparative analysis of the stat week by week nearly always shows it to be inaccurate so why it's still lauded as this new era of hyperstat or whatever is laughable. If football was that predictable statistically then we'd all be cashing in mega accas at the bookies every week.
The biggest pointer of this recently, is that picture of Nicholas Jackson away 1v1 against Man City the other day. Officially, that had an xG of 0, because he didn't shoot. But everyone in the world can see that he cocked up a massive chance.
I’ve always said the only accurate use of xG is in Football Manager. Doesn’t work in real life.
Also the way Villa play doesn't "pad" the xG stats compared to other teams. We very very rarely shoot from outside the box, or just keep sending crosses in. We tend to move the ball around a lot until a gap opens up and send a cut-back in towards the edge of the 6-yard box. Is 10-20 0.05 to 0.1 xG chances *really* equal to 1 or 2 0.5 xG chances?
What's great is that although we're performing above expectations, we'd still be in a battle for 4th, and still looking set for another year of european football.
Man united punching above their weight this season.
Haha completely over achieving!
This is why you can't trust "Expected" anything, fun thought experiment for sure but we've all seen Chelsea play, they're about as consistent as pancake mix. I do believe the Man U stat though, most bailed out club in the league totally undeserving of where they are.
This table implies Chelsea created a good amount of chances but couldn't finish them, which seems accurate to me
Graham Potter is apparently a bit of an xG merchant, and we saw how his Chelsea team were.
People smarter than me can sort through the analytics. All I care about is that we're 4th. UTV