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Crazy Stat Time!

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15 hours ago, Will1981 said:

we beat Cambridge 5-0 in the play-off semi-finals.

Before yesterday, I think that was the last 5-0 victory. As has been stated, 6-0 v Ipswich is the biggest in many years whilst 6-1 v Huddersfield the last 5-goal margin.

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18 hours ago, Kinowe Soorie said:

Leicester 6 Sheffield Wednesday 1 1986?

Gosh…. I remember that game so well…. Glorious - and I was very young!

 

Steve Lynex was amazing  and some young academy kid in their too if my memory isn’t playing tricks on me…. Sat in the double decker with my Dad

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The Athletic ran an antidote to the praise after our dismantling of NUFC today.  They take us to task for not creating chances.  We’re third in the table and joint fourth (with Bournemouth) for goals, but near the bottom for expected goals.  (numbers from understat.com)

 

Xg4.JPG.481fa28f5651be77cb68be1bdccee55a.JPG

 

They put it down to two things.  One is obvious: negligible goal threat from the wings (Perez 0.7 xG in 425 minutes, Barnes 0.4 xG in 293’).  The other more arguable: too many pot shots from Maddison when a final pass could have led to a much better (higher xG) attempt.  Maddison’s chance creation per 90’ has dropped from 1st to 29th in the league.  Their point:

 

What does that tell us? Well, essentially, that Leicester have finished their chances exceptionally. On Sunday, they smashed in five goals from just 1.8 xG of chances – of their goals, only Vardy’s second, a header from Marc Albrighton’s left-wing cross, could genuinely be considered a clear-cut chance. Vardy’s first was squeezed in from a tight angle, Ricardo Pereira’s was a remarkably composed shot from range, and there was also an own goal and an unlikely finish from Ndidi.

Finishing effectively is, of course, a very good thing. But the general lesson is that outperforming your xG is unsustainable, even if Vardy’s ability to strike from unlikely angles appears to be a genuine feature of his skill set rather than a lucky streak.

 

Fortunately, even if you agree that our attack isn’t all that … our defense from an xG perspective has been even better than most perceive.

 

xGA.JPG.dc3bb273b177ee8e85a8d94319fd05e4.JPG

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28 minutes ago, KingsX said:

The Athletic ran an antidote to the praise after our dismantling of NUFC today.  They take us to task for not creating chances.  We’re third in the table and joint fourth (with Bournemouth) for goals, but near the bottom for expected goals.  (numbers from understat.com)

 

Xg4.JPG.481fa28f5651be77cb68be1bdccee55a.JPG

 

They put it down to two things.  One is obvious: negligible goal threat from the wings (Perez 0.7 xG in 425 minutes, Barnes 0.4 xG in 293’).  The other more arguable: too many pot shots from Maddison when a final pass could have led to a much better (higher xG) attempt.  Maddison’s chance creation per 90’ has dropped from 1st to 29th in the league.  Their point:

 

What does that tell us? Well, essentially, that Leicester have finished their chances exceptionally. On Sunday, they smashed in five goals from just 1.8 xG of chances – of their goals, only Vardy’s second, a header from Marc Albrighton’s left-wing cross, could genuinely be considered a clear-cut chance. Vardy’s first was squeezed in from a tight angle, Ricardo Pereira’s was a remarkably composed shot from range, and there was also an own goal and an unlikely finish from Ndidi.

 

Finishing effectively is, of course, a very good thing. But the general lesson is that outperforming your xG is unsustainable, even if Vardy’s ability to strike from unlikely angles appears to be a genuine feature of his skill set rather than a lucky streak.

 

Fortunately, even if you agree that our attack isn’t all that … our defense from an xG perspective has been even better than most perceive.

 

xGA.JPG.dc3bb273b177ee8e85a8d94319fd05e4.JPG

They fail to differentiate our output when we've played 4-1-4-1 vs when we've played 4-3-3 with 2 DCM's. 

 

10 goals in 3 games we've played that, they can stick xG up their harris

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3 hours ago, KingsX said:

The Athletic ran an antidote to the praise after our dismantling of NUFC today.  They take us to task for not creating chances.  We’re third in the table and joint fourth (with Bournemouth) for goals, but near the bottom for expected goals.  (numbers from understat.com)

 

Xg4.JPG.481fa28f5651be77cb68be1bdccee55a.JPG

 

They put it down to two things.  One is obvious: negligible goal threat from the wings (Perez 0.7 xG in 425 minutes, Barnes 0.4 xG in 293’).  The other more arguable: too many pot shots from Maddison when a final pass could have led to a much better (higher xG) attempt.  Maddison’s chance creation per 90’ has dropped from 1st to 29th in the league.  Their point:

 

What does that tell us? Well, essentially, that Leicester have finished their chances exceptionally. On Sunday, they smashed in five goals from just 1.8 xG of chances – of their goals, only Vardy’s second, a header from Marc Albrighton’s left-wing cross, could genuinely be considered a clear-cut chance. Vardy’s first was squeezed in from a tight angle, Ricardo Pereira’s was a remarkably composed shot from range, and there was also an own goal and an unlikely finish from Ndidi.

 

Finishing effectively is, of course, a very good thing. But the general lesson is that outperforming your xG is unsustainable, even if Vardy’s ability to strike from unlikely angles appears to be a genuine feature of his skill set rather than a lucky streak.

 

Fortunately, even if you agree that our attack isn’t all that … our defense from an xG perspective has been even better than most perceive.

 

xGA.JPG.dc3bb273b177ee8e85a8d94319fd05e4.JPG

I've said it before - xG is the Spursiest stat ever shat out by football nerds. It doesn't reflect the reality on the pitch whatsoever, it's just a dumb crux which instagram-generation plastics use to gloss over their side not being able to finish their dinner. I wonder what our "xG" was when we won the league?

 

We scored four good goals and Praet forced an embarrasing clanger for our other one. The Athletic can stick their analysis up their bums, frankly. lol

Edited by OntarioFox
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As far as xG goes, think back to the Wolves game. Vardy came within a whisker of getting a toe on a ball (I think from Perez) which would've almost certainly put the ball into the net. However, as he didn't make any contact with it the xG is zero. It's a half-decent metric to assess the quality of chances, but it's susceptible to missing key moments such as that and there are number of flaws with it which means analysis like that from The Athletic is often a bit misleading.

 

From an FPL perspective, someone on Reddit posted some analysis from last season (I can't remember the link) which should that the xG stat is not the best predictor of the number of goals a player or team will score. The actual best predictor is - wait for it - goals scored. 

 

Speaking as a data analyst who loves diving into these sorts of stats, quite often the importance of such are massively over-inflated and actually the best way to judge performance is the exact opposite approach: the good ol' fashioned eye test. 

Edited by Xen
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21 hours ago, OntarioFox said:

I've said it before - xG is the Spursiest stat ever shat out by football nerds. It doesn't reflect the reality on the pitch whatsoever, it's just a dumb crux which instagram-generation plastics use to gloss over their side not being able to finish their dinner. I wonder what our "xG" was when we won the league?

 

We scored four good goals and Praet forced an embarrasing clanger for our other one. The Athletic can stick their analysis up their bums, frankly. lol

Why wonder when you can google? We had the second highest Xg in the league and 4th in Xpoints.

 

it was the xga that we were miles up on and that’s understandable, so many goals should have been scored against us that weren’t (most memorable being Jack Rodwell).

Edited by lildave3
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13 minutes ago, lildave3 said:

Why wonder when you can google? We had the second highest Xg in the league and 4tg in Xpoints.

 

it was the xga that we were miles up on and that’s understandable, so many goals should have scored against us that weren’t (most memorable being Jack Rodwell).

I really don't understand it though, it's just a stat to comfort when being notoriously bad at converting chances. There's a belief with it that by continuing to miss loads of chances that the players and teams will start putting them away in future, but that's no likelier to happen than a team who consistently takes a high percentage of their chances are suddenly going to stop taking their chances. It's bull crap

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39 minutes ago, Ric Flair said:

I really don't understand it though, it's just a stat to comfort when being notoriously bad at converting chances. There's a belief with it that by continuing to miss loads of chances that the players and teams will start putting them away in future, but that's no likelier to happen than a team who consistently takes a high percentage of their chances are suddenly going to stop taking their chances. It's bull crap

Except it’s not and is proven out time and time again in the real world.

 

The best recent case in point being Manchester United under Solskjaer, whose xG was massively mismatched to results for his first 10-15 games. Lo and behold enough time passes, the sample size becomes bigger and the correlation narrows. United were never as good as they looked at the start under Solskjaer - xG was a good early warning of that.

 

Sometimes teams are very efficient in front of goal and others aren’t. That much is absolutely true and is why the teams at the top of the league often outperform their xG. But it is a perfectly reasonable point to make that we have been improbably efficient at converting our shots given the quality of chance created and that the chances of sustaining that over a season are small. We do need to improve the amount of good chances we create if we’ve got aspirations of a top 6 finish.

 

@Xen makes a good point about chances missed without a shot - in our game at Chelsea we opened them up several times in the second half but we didn’t get a shot out of it so it counts for nothing in xG. But the same can be said of other sides, and the fact we’re so low down the rankings indicates that chance creation has been a problem whether we like it

or not. It’s a small sample size and on paper the fixtures have been tough but we’re going to need to improve in the final third to challenge for the top 6.

 

Edit: Just to add, it’s a shame that people have jumped on the xG because that’s one of the best articles I’ve seen about us.

Edited by ttfn
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1 hour ago, ttfn said:

 

The best recent case in point being Manchester United under Solskjaer, whose xG was massively mismatched to results for his first 10-15 games. Lo and behold enough time passes, the sample size becomes bigger and the correlation narrows. United were never as good as they looked at the start under Solskjaer - xG was a good early warning of that.

Or they were playing well full of confidence, the shackles had been released and they were more clinical in front of goal. Now they have lost their focal point, Lukaku, or did xG factor that in? Man City consistently score more than xG does that mean that they are actually shit?

 

All it shows is when a good team plays and takes their chances they tend to score more than expected, and when they defend well and have a keeper in good form they concede less than expected. There is no evening out over time. 

 

Under Puel we consistently conceded screamers, low xG that doesn't mean we were actually good it meant that we allowed teams too much space to have long range shots unchallenged.

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2 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

I really don't understand it though, it's just a stat to comfort when being notoriously bad at converting chances. There's a belief with it that by continuing to miss loads of chances that the players and teams will start putting them away in future, but that's no likelier to happen than a team who consistently takes a high percentage of their chances are suddenly going to stop taking their chances. It's bull crap

It’s a better way to judge a team than solely on score lines. I don’t think anybody is claiming it’s a perfect stat, but I personally love it.

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1 minute ago, Captain... said:

Or they were playing well full of confidence, the shackles had been released and they were more clinical in front of goal. Now they have lost their focal point, Lukaku, or did xG factor that in? Man City consistently score more than xG does that mean that they are actually shit?

 

All it shows is when a good team plays and takes their chances they tend to score more than expected, and when they defend well and have a keeper in good form they concede less than expected. There is no evening out over time. 

 

Under Puel we consistently conceded screamers, low xG that doesn't mean we were actually good it meant that we allowed teams too much space to have long range shots unchallenged.

In a sense you’re absolutely right, that is what it shows. But there is an evening out over time, if not in absolute terms of goals scored/conceded then in relative terms regarding league position.

 

I’ve addressed your point about Man City further up, xG is obviously calculated on data from literally millions of individual events. The very best teams will outperform it because they will have better finishers and goalkeepers. Nevertheless if you look at where Man Ciry finish in any xG table over the course of a season it is always at or near the very top - that is where you get value from looking at it, not necessarily from one-off games where individual variables are more pronounced (it can still be interesting and illuminating for people who didn’t see the game themselves). Burnley massively outperformed xG In 2017-18 everyone was raving about them. The following season, the “fine margins” - as Dyche would say - didn’t go their way. In reality over the course of the two seasons they performed roughly as their xG suggested they would - it just didn’t happen on an even basis.

 

As for Manchester United the Lukaku point is just not relevant - he didn’t play much under Solskjaer last season, particularly at the start, which is a big reason why he left. 

 

Regarding the Puel situation, perhaps you’re right - I’d need somebody who understands statistics better than I do to explain how/if that’s correct.

 

There’s a reason that professional gamblers have been using it to inform their predictions for a fair while now - the guys at Brentford are massively into it and the far more sophisticated predictive tools they have now which are not widely available.

 

If you don’t see any value in it fair enough, but Michael Cox has written a good article there explaining that the fawning over our attacking play is overblown. He could use shots on target as a proxy and he’d be equally right but with less useful data.His underlying point is sound. XG is not perfect but it’s the best widely available tool for actually showing how a game/run of games/season unfolded. 

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From a article in the Guardian on Monaco...

 

"When Leicester signed Slimani from Sporting for £30m in 2016, he was the most expensive player in their history. But that move did not really work out and, after stuttering loan spells at Newcastle and Fenerbahçe, his career seemed to be at a low ebb. His reunion with Jardim has clearly brought out his best qualities and restored his confidence. Statistically speaking, no new arrival has had a better start to their time in Ligue 1 – not even Neymar or Zlatan Ibrahimovic. His tally of four goals and four assists in five matches represent a record that, despite its small sample size, is truly impressive."

 

A surprising and crazy stat for Slimani

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