Cole Palmer

Lavinda Past said:
No.
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Yes, it is, though, for many, many reasons.

But we can just look at statistical analysis of difficulty to capture all of them in a tidy framework for comparison.

The xG of a penalty kick is generally held as ~0.76. A non-penalty chance from the penalty spot is ~0.22.

For reference, the xG of a chance on the goal line is ~0.95 (meaning players would be expected to score nearly every time this happens; it’s not 1.00 because you can have a defender block it on the line). The xG of a chance two yards out from the goal line and dead centre of goal is ~0.76. It goes down to ~0.55 if you are standing two yards out aligned with one of the posts (angle range to goal is now much more limited, with or without a keeper).

This season the league has a 0.90 penalty conversion rate.

It is easier to score from a penalty than nearly any other scoring chance on the pitch, barring tapping it in from a yard or two out from the centre of the goal, primarily because of the rules and setup of a penalty, which heavily favour the taker over the keeper (and only involves those two players in infinitely more controlled/simplified conditions than a chance in play).
 
normskih said:
A City fan saying that. Blimey, a couple of seasons back we were missing them left, right and centre.
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And still had a better conversion rate than what would be expected compared to most chances on goal in play, especially from left or right of centre. ;-)
 
SebastianBlue said:
And still had a better conversion rate than what would be expected compared to most chances on goal in play, especially from left or right of centre. ;-)
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He has, he’s a good penalty taker. The one he took for us, was it in a pre season ‘final’, rocketed in, but I still don’t think it’s easy to take a penalty.
 
normskih said:
He has, he’s a good penalty taker. The one he took for us, was it in a pre season ‘final’, rocketed in.
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It was a great penalty.

But not a difficult chance to convert as a professional footballer.

Hence why the difference between a “great” penalty taker and a “good” penalty taker is negligible in actual penalty outcomes over time.

And there is some evidence that a combination of players generally getting better at scoring them and the rules continually being modified to increasingly disadvantage keepers, is just making scoring penalties more likely as time passes.

Even to the point that a few serious people think we need to rethink how penalties are taken and when they are given, particularly in situations like Adam Smith’s handball at the weekend or Grealish’s in the FA Cup final (i.e. should we really be giving a team a ~80% chance to score when a ball that was going nowhere near goal strikes the arm of a player obviously not trying to handle it).
 
bluenova said:
But was Palmer "the penalty taker" when he took that first one, or just in the right place, in a team with no-one else on the pitch ready to step up.

Palmer is having a brilliant season, but all I'm suggesting is that it's likely lucky that it was Broja rather than Jackson on the pitch when the penalty was awarded. That sliding doors moment, means he's the one up there with Erling at the top of the scoring charts. Had Jackson, as centre forward, been there to grab the ball, he could be challenging for the Golden Boot.
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But Jackson has been on the pitch when other penalties were awarded before we signed Palmer, and he either didn't step up to take it or someone else pulled rank. We were given a penalty West Ham away for example, which was before we signed Palmer, and Jackson was on the pitch at the time but it was Enzo who stepped up to take it. He missed it and we lost the game. You are largely right though, but I think Palmer must have shown something in training for him to be given the responsibility as the new lad. I'd have thought with Enzo and Sterling on the pitch, they'd want to be the man for the job but they trusted Palmer that day.
 
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