Always found the crusade against xG really strange (but maybe I shouldn’t knowing the average football fan’s resistance to anything that sounds new). Nearly every team in the football league uses it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you asked Pep and he thought it was the second most important stat after actual goals. Why? Because it’s the best predictor of success, that’s literally what it was designed for. If you’re getting points but your xG is shite then it should be ringing alarm bells because it means you’re getting lucky and eventually your luck is going to run out (look at United this year who based on performances should be 12th).
Expected values have been around for literally hundreds of years and have been used in everything from sport to the stock market to computer science. It’s not new. It’s just that we’ve gotten better at measuring it in football thanks to computers.
If you are given the ability to see if your results are down to luck or actual performances, why would you not use it? Why give your opponents the competitive advantage? What’s people’s problem with it exactly?
