Laughing
Well-known member
You are not far off on penalties. the xg for every penalty is 0.76. It's accurate over thousands of penalties, but doesn't tell you a lot about a single penalty.
Do you think stats ruin the game?
- Thread starter GibbosEmpire
- Start date
Frankie Lee
Well-known member
I hate the assists stat. A player can get all his assists from taking a corner and make it look like he’s having a great season. Whereas another may have none yet is creating loads of chances and playing brilliant.
R
rbmfc1985
Guest
That's why they use the xA stat as well. Clubs won't be making all of their decisions on goals and assists. They'll be looking at the xG and xA to try and get a striker who scores more than his xG and midfielders/wingers who have high xA stats.
Frankie Lee
Well-known member
Yeah. It’s more when fans use it. Just an example was Traore when he was here. He didn’t have the assists so was sh*t, even though he created bucket loads of chances per game.
viv_andersons_nana
Well-known member
Was going to post similar, col. I think stats are generally giving a level of evidence or fact to what a lot of seasoned football watchers can or do see with their eyes. Sometimes I look at them, sometimes not. I don’t need stats to tell me Boro were terrible on Saturday, or that yesterdays Arsenal game was a good watch from start to finish and Odegaard is absolute top notch.
They’re also a very good way for a lot of young men who would’ve been working in the city 15-20 years ago to get work as football ‘journalists’ instead.
newyddion
Well-known member
xG is total bollokcs
viv_andersons_nana
Well-known member
Always think this about Stewy. He went from crossing it to Jimmy, Viduka and Yakubu to crossing it to Aliadiere, Alves and Jason Euell. It can depend on the quality of player on the end of the chance. They measure ‘chances created’ now though I think. Apparently.
coluka
Well-known member
I thought it stood for expected goals, not the volume of gonads, how wrong was I.
R
rbmfc1985
Guest
Yeah that's true. Assists are flawed as a stat anyway. You don't get an assist if you win a penalty, and you don't get one if you cross it in, a point blank effort is saved, then someone scores the rebound. But you do get one if you play a 5 yard pass about 40 yards out to someone who pings it into the top corner. Realistically, the first two chances created are far better than the last one.
The xG and xA stats are very useful for anyone analysing a game. But no stats tell a full story about a player's influence on a game and a team. For example, what stat could tell you about a player making a decoy run that creates the space for a player to score? You can only see some things by watching the game, not by analysing the stats.
WilliamMunny
Well-known member
Do you remember the occasion when Downing could have shot/scored but passed it across goal to the back post for an unmarked Dong Gook Lee to tap in for his first Boro goal. Unfortunately DGL missed!
WilliamMunny
Well-known member
This is true, but I'm sure that clubs that lean heavily on the data also look at each player in the flesh/on video.
jonny_greenings_sock
Well-known member
I’m not sure you can blame Pep for it, he’s a genius and his system evolves every season.
I do think Man City score quite a lot of boring goals. But every year there’s something noticeably different about Man City which inferior teams try and copy, last season it was the four centre backs with two of them kind of becoming midfielders. Tony Pulis also liked playing four centre backs.
Tactics will always evolve, it also depends who the great players are. There’s always something that’s meta (at the minute it’s 4-2-3-1 ish) and there’s always a counter. Couple of years ago it was mental gegenpressing like Liverpool. Long before that Mourinho got everyone counterattacking, which he did because Pep got everyone trying to keep the ball. It’s why I love World Cups, because you get to see loads of different tactical approaches from all over the world (and usually some nutter like Bielsa playing positionless madness).
I do think Man City score quite a lot of boring goals. But every year there’s something noticeably different about Man City which inferior teams try and copy, last season it was the four centre backs with two of them kind of becoming midfielders. Tony Pulis also liked playing four centre backs.
Tactics will always evolve, it also depends who the great players are. There’s always something that’s meta (at the minute it’s 4-2-3-1 ish) and there’s always a counter. Couple of years ago it was mental gegenpressing like Liverpool. Long before that Mourinho got everyone counterattacking, which he did because Pep got everyone trying to keep the ball. It’s why I love World Cups, because you get to see loads of different tactical approaches from all over the world (and usually some nutter like Bielsa playing positionless madness).
R
rbmfc1985
Guest
Of course they will. It's about working smart I suppose. You can only watch so many players at a time. The stats are an easy way to find a list of players to look at. Then you're relying on your scouts to fill in the gaps.
Frankie Lee
Well-known member
As much as stats obviously help a manager, it still bugs me when a manager is sat on an iPad during a game. What can he possibly learn that his own eyes can’t see?
BoroMart
Well-known member
times change, the game is far more professional today than it was then, they were great characters and successful in an entirely different environment, but that wouldn't necessarily translate to today. The game is much more technical, much more analysis led, and better quality for it. I truly believe top championship teams would beat top Division One sides from the early -80s on technical and tactical ability alone, that's before you get into advances in sports science and sports psychology, you just have to look at how quickly Arsenal dominated when Arsene Wenger brought those attributes to the english game, it was transformational and they went a season unbeaten within a few years (well almost unbeaten)
BoroMart
Well-known member
plenty, if you have access to real time data on 11 players, but you haven't got 11 sets of eyes to intently monitor each player for the full 90, then why not?
newyddion
Well-known member
nothing changes.. some managers can see it with their own eyes.. having assistants with the stats to hand can help make that picture clearer.
BoroMart
Well-known member
exactly that, making decisions on one metric is a poor thing to do, as you lose all context.
Charles Hughes in the late 70s got data from 1,000s of matches that showed that the majority of goals are scored from 5 or less passes. He pushed the FA to use the mantra of "get it forward fast", direct football, this culminated in Graham ' hit it long' Taylor becoming England manager.
The problem is that years later, proper statisticians looked at the data, and analysis showed that there are many many times more '5 or less pass sequences' in a match than say '20 pass sequences'. When you deep dive into the data the chances of "20 passes leading to a goal" was actually many, many times higher than "5 or less passes leading to a goal".
He'd ben a right Charley and used a single metric to define the philosophy of English football for a decade, they even taught the up and coming coaches like Warnock that this was the best chance of success, Charles set english football back 20 years.
Andy_W
Well-known member
I like all the stats, and xG is more accurate with the more data you have, a bit like anything I suppose.
We've had stats for shots on target and shots off target etc, but they're poor in standard compared to xG, although still better than nothing.
Using stats to predict future events is a bit hit and miss mind, usually as the variables get changed.
We've had stats for shots on target and shots off target etc, but they're poor in standard compared to xG, although still better than nothing.
Using stats to predict future events is a bit hit and miss mind, usually as the variables get changed.
