Premier League Games 1/2/3 April '23

[heslops barnet]

Geordie ball boy must be a red?

 

[jimharri]

If I could turn back time...

Now, THAT was a video!

 

[johnevans]

Shooting off at a tangent here (for which, apologies), but how relevant to the ordinary Joe is "xg"? Most of us are fortunate enough to have eyes, we can see how decent (or not) chances are.

At school decades ago, I managed to get my head around Maths concepts to do stuff like calculus, differentiation and so on*..

But I've never been able to begin to understand this stupid 'expected goals/'xG' nonsense, nor see the value of it. It adds nothing to the game, whatsoever!

(* Quite how I managed to get a grade two 'O' level in it I'll never know.. I could do by rote the harder calculus stuff etc in Part 2 of the exams etc but I'd completely f**k up the easier Part 1 questions like 'If it takes a bloke three hours to run a bath, how long..' To this day I expect someone from the Joint Matriculation Board to knock on the door and claim my grade two back because they've discovered the typing error from 1969..!)

 

[Theengelbert]

What a dreadful game of football. We’re so spoiled what we get to see week in week out

 

[madloaf]

Another completely anonymous display from 87 million pound man Anthony.

 

[ali benarbia's studs]

From memory, I'm fairly sure he thought he was better than he actually was, and was worthy of a place in the team.

not doubting that, he only would have got a handful of games....he did good moving away getting game time and well paid contracts.

 

[stan bowles]

Such a poor game. Quality is non-existent.

 

[Jam Tomorrow]

Geordie ball boy must be a red?

Yeah I noticed that, the little fucker should get binned for that.

 

[Sonic Temple]

How the fuck are the Rags vying for top 4?

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

Shooting off at a tangent here (for which, apologies), but how relevant to the ordinary Joe is "xg"? Most of us are fortunate enough to have eyes, we can see how decent (or not) chances are.

To the average Joe, probably not very important at all. To team statisticians it is important. Every team tends towards their xG outcomes over a long enough time horizon. It’s a bit like investing in stocks, the value might fluctuate huge amounts over a month or two but you expect to see a certain level of return over a decade.

If you are over-performing your xG (as in scoring more goals than you deservedly should) it is an early warning indicator that you’re not playing as well as you might think you are. I know this only too well because I used to do analytics for a lower league team and they massively overperformed their xG for the first 10 games and as a result doggedly stuck with the same strategy all season. They ended up only just avoiding being relegated.

There are some “systemic errors” in the calculations (one is called Erling Haaland). But it’s generally a very reliable measure.