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davieG

xG Discussion

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1 minute ago, yorkie1999 said:

Probably why football is so good, there are no guarantees and no way of accurately predicting the result before it happens, whatever the stats say.

Nobody is saying there is a way of predicting a one-off result, people are saying there is a way of predicting long term performance.

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45 minutes ago, ttfn said:

Nobody is saying there is a way of predicting a one-off result, people are saying there is a way of predicting long term performance.

Tonight we took a big steaming dump on our xG, to follow up our little turd against Newcastle. Goals scored > xG = a team full of confidence with quality strikers scoring lots of goals not necessarily a team about to fail.

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Surely the better finishers are more likely to score unexpected goals than less capable ones, so in turn are more likely to attempt earlier strikes or be part of more complex moves that result in goals before they get into a clear XG zone. A less confident player/team might take those few extra touches that take you into higher XG rating area. An example could’ve been Perez pulling that angled ball from Chilwell back to someone centrally if he was a struggling Southampton toward rather than walloping it on the half volley into the roof of the next from a tight angle! 

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I really struggle to understand why there is such disdain for xg. It seems to stem from a misunderstanding of what it is attempting to portray. It is simply an improvement of the age-old shots on/off target that has been used for ages without so much abuse. 

 

It doesn't take into account the team, the player shooting, the goalkeeper or what colour underpants they are wearing and it does not need to. Over the years, they have collected data based on where the shot was taken from, where the defenders are, where the keeper is and so on. All this allows them to build a database of how likely it is that the shot will go into the goal. That's it. Nothing more. 

 

Now AFTER a game, the statisticians can analyse the chances a team created during the match and come up with a relatively meaningful measurement of approximately how many goals those chances *should *have resulted in. Its not simply opinion as some have said, neither is it a guess or prediction of any sort, its simply an evidence - based analysis of the quality of the chances created during the game. 

 

It's meaningless to take games in isolation as it's common for short term trends to defy long term results. What evidence does show us is that over the course of a season, short - term trends will revert to the mean and Xg therefore is a meaningful tool for analysing where a team is in relation to where they would be expected to be. 

 

If we continue to finish games with an Xg of 0.5 to 1, then quite simply we will not stay near the top of the table. Yes, we can defy the odds for a few games with confident goalscorers or a bit of luck, but it will not last all season and we simply have to continue to generate higher Xg figures if we want to continue to challenge for the top 4.

 

If we want to challenge for the top 4 then we damn well need to up the Xg stats against all teams. The excuses some are making based on "oh we've played difficult teams" are not valid for a team with our ambitions. 

 

Fortunately, recent games seem to show that we're starting to click and it looks very likely that we will keep improving our Xg stats and, accordingly, not have to keep outperforming Xg so much to get our *actual* goals. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 25/10/2019 at 18:44, Les-TA-Jon said:

Wait, what!?

 

So if a team misses 5 open goals during a game, but it finishes 0-1, you’re going to confidently say their blank was a true reflection of how many they should have scored? 

Yes.

Because if your team misses five open goals, it obviously has sh1t strikers - ergo will not score goals.

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On 25/10/2019 at 17:05, Raw Dykes said:

It's just not, though. It's a good indication of whether you're creating enough decent chances or not.

 

No. How many you scored isn't the same as how many you should have scored. Obviously.

Disagree. Creating chances is not the same as scoring goals. No such thing as 'should have scored'.

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On 26/10/2019 at 07:44, AKCJ said:

Apparently Southampton have a higher xG this season than us and they've only scored 9 all season.

 

I do broadly appreciate the value of xG and related stats and do feel they often reflect the reality of how games have played out, but if this is still true I can understand people thinking it's a load of old bollocks.

 

I think it's undersold us all season.

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