Ok you know more than City well done pal.
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Expected Goals. There and back again
- Thread starter RobinHood
- Start date
Stiff Little Wingers
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 25 Aug 2010
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You sound like a bit of a dinosaur mate. I’ve been watching not quite as long as you (55 years) but the game has moved on.I have been watching football for over 60 years and I know that xG is bollocks. Why can't you explain how City had such a bad season and why half if the coaching staff have left the club. And just exactly where is Sterling now? He should be consistently one of the Premier League's top scorers if his xG indoctrination was worth a carrot. And when did a head of analytics ever lift a major trophy?
I don’t take stats as the be all and end all but they can be used to good effect
The only stat that matters is the final score. And you haven't answered the question where is Sterling now? If he is such a master scorer following his brilliant coaching from a statistical analyst how come he is not wanted at Arsenal? I am into sport not statistics. Just more Americanisation of the game.You sound like a bit of a dinosaur mate. I’ve been watching not quite as long as you (55 years) but the game has moved on.
I don’t take stats as the be all and end all but they can be used to good effect
You seem to be struggling with two posters responding to you. You haven't asked Stiff Little wingers a question that's why he hasn't answered you.The only stat that matters is the final score. And you haven't answered the question where is Sterling now? If he is such a master scorer following his brilliant coaching from a statistical analyst how come he is not wanted at Arsenal? I am into sport not statistics. Just more Americanisation of the game.
As for Sterling there could be many reasons why his form dropped after leaving City maybe he needed better analysts at his new clubs. Maybe he lost pace, maybe he lost heart, maybe he lost interest.
As for why we played so poor last season and coaches and analysts have left I've no idea, but a few of those left i believe joined Liverpool.
I know you dont like stats but here's a couple for you, in the league before Sterling was given the analysts advice i mentioned earlier his he scored a goal every 4.9, in the 3 seasons after that he scored a goal every 1.8 games.
Anyway I'll leave it there as this is detailing this thread.
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the-ecstacy-of-eight
Well-Known Member
It's just an average, that's all it is.Does XG distinguish brilliance. We have players who score worldies & then the XG is low but they are world class players. Is it a higher XG if the shot from R/H side is from Foden or Walker?
I don't understand why people have such strong negatively slanted opinions about it.
the-ecstacy-of-eight
Well-Known Member
FFS!The only stat that matters is the final score. And you haven't answered the question where is Sterling now? If he is such a master scorer following his brilliant coaching from a statistical analyst how come he is not wanted at Arsenal? I am into sport not statistics. Just more Americanisation of the game.
He's playing in a different team with a different system which has a different set of statistical distributions of "best time and place to be for a tap in".
Lots of teams score "the same type of goal" in many matches against different opponents, that's not just luck you know!
It's not fucking hard to understand, you (and many others) just don't want to hear it.
You seem to be struggling with two posters responding to you. You haven't asked asked Stiff Little wingers a question that's why he hasn't answered you.
As for Sterling there could be many reasons why his form dropped after leaving City maybe he needed better analysts at his new clubs. Maybe he lost pace, maybe he lost heart, maybe he lost interest.
As for why we played so poor last season and coaches and analysts have left I've no idea, but a few of those left i believe joined Liverpool.
I know you dont like stats but here's a couple for you, in the league before Sterling was given the analysts advice i mentioned earlier his he scored a goal every 4.9, in the 3 seasons after that he scored a goal every 1.8 games.
Anyway I'll leave it there as this is detailing this thread.
So in modern football the most important staff member at a club is the statistical analyst? More important than the managers and the coaches. He tells the players where to stand and where to run and where to shoot from. Before data analysts came on the scene the players didn't have a clue what to do. What if your opponentshave a better data analyst than you? There's no point in even turning up for the match because you haven't got a chance.
Think how good Pele and Maradona could have been with a decent statistical analyst behind them.
Think how good Pele and Maradona could have been with a decent statistical analyst behind them.
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Nobody has said this Don the fact you struggle with the quote button probably explains why stats aren't for you.So in modern football the most important staff member at a club is the statistical analyst? More important than the managers and the coaches. He tells the players where to stand and where to run and where to shoot from. Before data analysts came on the scene the players didn't have a clue what to do. What if your opponent have a better data analyst than you? There's no point in even turning up for the match because you haven't got a chance.
Think how good Pele and Maradona could have been with a decent statistical analyst behind them.
The fact you think you can pick one game to demonstrate this shows you haven't got a clue.Champions League Final stats:
City shots: 7 / Inter shots: 14
Goals 1 - 0 Inter
City xG O.98 / Inter xG 1.84
City xG per shot: 0.14 - Inter xG per shot: 0.13
I rest my case. xG is bollocks.
You might want to go back to my previous post though regarding Rodris xG positioning, look at the advice he was given and look where his goal was scored from.
You might also want to look into who Liverpool's top man is and his past experience.
Well i've literally been at the CFA with City coaching staff and head of analytics who put on a full presentation showing the slides they went through with Sterling and explained how they used xG to improve his goalscoring. But Don off the internet knows more than the City coaches and analysts.
@twosips was at the same presentation.
Can confirm. Was fascinating. The premise being that if Sterling was consistently finding himself in a place to take shots where xG is high (or i you just wanna be less modern and call them 'easier chances') then his return would be higher. They literally spent weeks on the training pitch doing positional repetitions. They told Sterling exactly where to be when attacks were developing knowing that players were much more likely to score from the positons he was being told to get in based off the data. It worked too. His goal return rocketed. The ideas and then implementations were all based around stats and data. Big football clubs worth billions do not go off their gut instinct. They have insanely deep data analysts looking for any marginal gain possible.
There is no point arguing against xG. It's literally not some philosophy or anythng. It's just numbers and probability. We've all been referencing it since we all started watching football, but in different language. One person might say 'he creates high xG for himself so scores regularly due to the quality of the chances he creates', another might just say 'got good movement, hasn't he? it's why he scores a lot'.
Or we've all said 'just one of those days, they score from 30 yards, we played well but missed a hundred chances' - xG would just put that into numbers - they generated 0.2xg vs us creating 3.0 xG, which roughly means we could/should have scored around 3 goals, whereas their goal was just a moment of brilliance and they created nothing else - statistically they wouldn't have usually scored based on the quality of their chances.
xG as an idea is just a metric that measures the quality of chances that teams create and creates an estimate of how likely a goal is to go in. Naturally sometimes a team will just score three goals from 30 yards and create no other chances and the other side can miss 10 open goals and there's nothing you can do about it, and the xG for one side will look insane (0.1 v 2.6 or sumat), but largely extrapolated over big periods of time its a good metric to show you how successful a side is at creating chances. It *is* a good indicator of a side's quality.
Or we've all said 'just one of those days, they score from 30 yards, we played well but missed a hundred chances' - xG would just put that into numbers - they generated 0.2xg vs us creating 3.0 xG, which roughly means we could/should have scored around 3 goals, whereas their goal was just a moment of brilliance and they created nothing else - statistically they wouldn't have usually scored based on the quality of their chances.
xG as an idea is just a metric that measures the quality of chances that teams create and creates an estimate of how likely a goal is to go in. Naturally sometimes a team will just score three goals from 30 yards and create no other chances and the other side can miss 10 open goals and there's nothing you can do about it, and the xG for one side will look insane (0.1 v 2.6 or sumat), but largely extrapolated over big periods of time its a good metric to show you how successful a side is at creating chances. It *is* a good indicator of a side's quality.
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However did Pele and Maradona manage without statisticians?Can confirm. Was fascinating. The premise being that if Sterling was consistently finding himself in a place to take shots where xG is high (or i you just wanna be less modern and call them 'easier chances') then his return would be higher. They literally spent weeks on the training pitch doing positional repetitions. They told Sterling exactly where to be when attacks were developing knowing that players were much more likely to score from the positons he was being told to get in based off the data. It worked too. His goal return rocketed. The ideas and then implementations were all based around stats and data. Big football clubs worth billions do not go off their gut instinct. They have insanely deep data analysts looking for any marginal gain possible.
However did Pele and Maradona manage without statisticians?
Honestly? They played against shit teams in a virtually amateur sport where the worldwide talent was spread out among 200 clubs instead of 15. It was pretty common for teams at the top of Serie A to have 2/3 internationals when Maradona was playing. Now you'd expect 20 in a squad, minimum. Defensive tactics other than man marking barely existed when Pele was playing.
Love those guys for the joy they brought and skill they had in their time, and how they moved the game forwards, but it's like comparing your favourite game on an Atari to the latest AAA blockbuster on a PS5.
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So they weren't very good then?
They were the best there'd been in their time.
If you dropped a 25 year old Maradona or Pele into a Champions League semi final in 2025 they'd look like the worst player on the pitch and wouldn't make it to half time.
It doesn't mean they weren geniuses or brilliant, it's just how things work. Newton was a genius, but his most complicated theories would have been understood by Einstein when he was 10.
The level is constantly rising.
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Yes it was definitely fascinating. Thanks for confirming.Can confirm. Was fascinating. The premise being that if Sterling was consistently finding himself in a place to take shots where xG is high (or i you just wanna be less modern and call them 'easier chances') then his return would be higher. They literally spent weeks on the training pitch doing positional repetitions. They told Sterling exactly where to be when attacks were developing knowing that players were much more likely to score from the positons he was being told to get in based off the data. It worked too. His goal return rocketed. The ideas and then implementations were all based around stats and data. Big football clubs worth billions do not go off their gut instinct. They have insanely deep data analysts looking for any marginal gain possible.
cheekybids
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 18 Sep 2009
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- 12,843
It's just an average, that's all it is.
I don't understand why people have such strong negatively slanted opinions about it.
I don’t think it gives you any more than possession & shots on goal. I see us miss 27 shots with 85% possession & some nerd tells me it’s 1.8 XG. If it’s important to distinguish the likelihood of scoring from where the shot is taken then surely you need to go the next level & include the player shooting in the stat.