Expected Goals

[Trav Le Bleu]

I'd noticed our expected goals was almost always better than our opponents, even when we lost, and I was wondering how well we were doing by comparison. I expected we were doing well, but not this good.

 

Schmeichel needs to pull his socks up though.

[SpacedX]

2 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

Load of baloney. With an almost infinite amount of variables during a football match it's impossible to predict a future result based on a previous result, let alone basing it upon a previous goal or save. Nerdy stuff for nerds. Having said that i did collect a bit of a win with the 2-2 against stoke and the other year did the same with 3-2 against west brom purely basing it on the previous years result. It's a funny old game. 

Such metrics also fail to make allowances for Christian Benteke.

[HighPeakFox]

It isn't baloney, that's for sure. 

[Koke]

2 hours ago, RoyFox said:

Reading this is hilarious. The best coaches use it, Pep more so.

 

Using expected goals allows you to enhance your teams ability to score, as it’s tied into; location of shot, the number of defenders present at time of shot, situation (counter etc) and angle to the goal. 

 

Ever notice that most of the Man City’s chances are guilt edged? Also the ball is never crossed high, but low into strikers? There’s a reason for that.

 

If Gray is coached properly to shoot inside the area rather than taking pot shots from outside (2/3% chance of scoring), he’d score a lot more goals.

 

Thankfully Vardy has the natural instinct to shoot from good locations (he’s one of the highest xG strikers in the league). Okazaki also adopted this at the start of the season (he said in an interview as much), hence his goals have picked up.

 

Expected goals isn’t the ‘be all and end all’,  but it can give you a good guide to how a team is truly performing and whether a current win or losing streak is due to variance (luck). Eg Burnley will regress very soon, their expected goals (for and against) isn’t sustainable, they have been lucky with recent results. 

 

Likewise coaches can use this to analyse expected goals against. Can the team change the positioning on the pitch of the back line? Will blocking in certain zones enhance the teams ability to prevent opponent strikers shooting from high % situations? 

 

This is spot on. . 

[lcfc sheff]

Any other season and we'd have 6 more points than we have and be on 19 points, joint fifth with Liverpool arsenal.. and Burnley.

This season we can really go under the radar, top 8 for me ? 

[SouthStandUpperTier]

Ever notice that most of the Man City’s chances are guilt edged?

Does this mean they feel bad about scoring?

Anyway I get it. I'm not a Luddite. It's obviously a useful tool for coaches. But I think you can go too far down this route. We'll get to the point where nobody will ever take a shot from outside the area ever again because the expected goal coefficient is too small. There's nothing like a good 30yd net buster. Football will become sterile, like it's being genetically modified in a lab.

[SWBlue]

hi all, new to this so be gentle! I work for Opta and created the video posted by Poznan. If anyone has any questions about xG in general I'll be happy to field them. Genuinely interested to see what everyone else thinks of it. Part of my work has been to try and successfully bed it into the mainstream football fans and make sure that they do understand it.

 

If anyone else wants more insight and to know about the new stuff we're going to be releasing soon let me know.

 

 

[Gerard]

1 hour ago, SWBlue said:

hi all, new to this so be gentle! I work for Opta and created the video posted by Poznan. If anyone has any questions about xG in general I'll be happy to field them. Genuinely interested to see what everyone else thinks of it. Part of my work has been to try and successfully bed it into the mainstream football fans and make sure that they do understand it.

 

If anyone else wants more insight and to know about the new stuff we're going to be releasing soon let me know.

 

 

 

Great video btw, I really enjoyed it and I think goal expectation is hugely relevant.

 

Do you have an algorithm to predict expected goals pre match in the PL and in football in general?

[yorkie1999]

4 minutes ago, Gerard said:

 

Great video btw, I really enjoyed it and I think goal expectation is hugely relevant.

 

Do you have an algorithm to predict expected goals pre match in the PL and in football in general?

Now that is the money question.

[Stadt]

Opta probably do but they’re not disclosing this information to blokes on a football forum