Newton and Einstein are geniuses because they were original thinkers, there was a before them and an after them, Similarly the greatest athletes are game changers too not just on the field but in their time.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.
Newton and Einstein are geniuses because they were original thinkers, there was a before them and an after them, Similarly the greatest athletes are game changers too not just on the field but in their time.
If you can say that a player left their mark and things were never the same after they hung up their boots, then that's the hallmark of true greatness.
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.
Another good metric of how well a team is doing is their position in the league table. That's good enough for me.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.
s it’s the video of the play that’s educated Sterling not the statistic
xG per shot?? That's fucking hilarious pal!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.
So @twosips goes to a talk at City, by the people who coached Sterling, and was told how they did it, and you (who presumably was not at this talk?) are now telling @twosips that what he was told by City's coaches was wrong.
Do you not feel a bit silly? You're espousing about something you have no idea about because you weren't there. The people who were there are telling you how it was done and you still think you know better.
No I don’t because I’m defending my point on XG & if you read what I wrote I’m questioning the need for a number. I’m not questioning the value of video analytics.
Listen to Pep & he says formations, possession stats don’t tell the story, he trusts what he sees with his eyes.
What you're talking about are individual player performance statistics and clubs probably collect this data too, but for totally different analytical reasons.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.
I never saw much of Pele but believe Maradonna would be outstanding in any era. He would probably fade due to higher standards of fitness but would still tie modern defenders in knots until he tires. The fact that Modric could play in chumps league games for Real at 40 years old suggests that a peak Maradonna would thrive.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.
I never saw much of Pele but believe Maradonna would be outstanding in any era. He would probably fade due to higher standards of fitness but would still tie modern defenders in knots until he tires. The fact that Modric could play in chumps league games for Real at 40 years old suggests that a peak Maradonna would thrive.
Again you’re just showing your poor understanding of xG.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.
OK clever prick. I got the data from dreamdataball.com which looks like a pretty slick and professional website devoted to explaining football statistics. If you've got a query why don't you take it up with them? While you're doing that why don't you ask them if they can add some simple explanatory notes that can be understood by arrogant knowalls like you?xG per shot?? That's fucking hilarious pal!
And what's your post supposed to be demonstrating? That Ederson made some very important saves that kept us ahead/level (depending on the time of the shot)?
If you can't read and understand statistical summarisations, just say so ;)
And again you're just showing that you're deluded. Statistics are worse than useless if you can just ignore the ones that don't suit your narrative. I have lost count of the number of times that City's xG stats have been superior to the opposition but we have lost, so what is the point of the stats? To show that we should have won? Big deal.Again you’re just showing your poor understanding of xG.
HA!OK clever prick. I got the data from dreamdataball.com which looks like a pretty slick and professional website devoted to explaining football statistics. If you've got a query why don't you take it up with them? While you're doing that why don't you ask them if they can add some simple explanatory notes that can be understood by arrogant knowalls like you?
Actually domalino I am more modern than you think. I have got a computer and through that I can access the internet. Have you heard of AI? It an abbreviation of Artificial Intelligence and I think it might be even cleverer than you. I asked the AI what it thinks of xG applications in regards to football and it pretty much agreed with me that it's just trendy woke bollocks which is what I have always thought.I agree, but that's not what @Donmcfc is arguing, to continue the metaphor he thinks science peaked at Newton because that's what he grew up on and he frankly doesn't understand how things have moved on leaps and bounds since then, so he just thinks anything new is nonsense.
While i dont want to get involved in this particular argument , you are aware that AI is nothing more than an amalgamation of opinions across the internet so if a few thousand people posted the same nonsense then that is what AI will come back with as it is the prevailing opinion not the correct one, as it stands it is not capable of independent thought and analysis.Actually domalino I am more modern than you think. I have got a computer and through that I can access the internet. Have you heard of AI? It an abbreviation of Artificial Intelligence and I think it might be even cleverer than you. I asked the AI what it thinks of xG applications in regards to football and it pretty much agreed with me that it's just trendy woke bollocks which is what I have always thought.
That's pretty much the same as xG.While i dont want to get involved in this particular argument , you are aware that AI is nothing more than an amalgamation of opinions across the internet so if a few thousand people posted the same nonsense then that is what AI will come back with as it is the prevailing opinion not the correct one, as it stands it is not capable of independent thought and analysis.
You're the one who started taking the piss with your "hilarious" comment. Condescending and patronizing just because I disagreed with you and made you look ridiculous. Don't dish it out if you can't take it.HA!
You posted telling us all that we were "idiots" if the Champions League Final stats you posted didn't illustrate that xG was worthless; and then you get all aggressive and abusive and start calling people silly names when somebody explains to you what the stats represent?!?!
Calm down, it's only statistics, and by your own analysis you "KNOW (fairly arrogant) that xG is bollocks", so not really worth getting so annoyed and worked up about it.
Just try to remember, stats are for nerds, and then blissfully continue to tell us all how shit and meaningless these numbers are, I'm sure you'll feel much better about it, and yourself. :)
My own take on the xg thing is that its subjective because surely everytime you take a shot you expect to score a goal otherwise why bother to take the shot in the first place, i think there is too many moving parts for it to be any kind of a decent metric on things, take 2 similar goals, marmoush against bournemouth and kompany against leicester, would marmoushs xg be higher because it was a striker that took the shot as oppose to a defender, how do you work it out?That's pretty much the same as xG.