Greenlizard0 PL & Championship Football Thread ** spoilers ** [15th - 17th April 2023]

Tombstone said:
If Everton do go down, its probably the biggest team in my lifetime to get relegated. Its almost 75 years since they last went down
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Depends how you define big teams I guess, the one that sticks in my mind is Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest, bearing in mind it was the same manager still at the helm who had won back-to-back European cups with them. It was also quite remarkable in the sense that they got a British record transfer fee for the sale of one of their players, can't have happened that often where the record has been broken by buying a relegated player.
 
HangTime said:
Depends how you define big teams I guess, the one that sticks in my mind is Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest, bearing in mind it was the same manager still at the helm who had won back-to-back European cups with them. It was also quite remarkable in the sense that they got a British record transfer fee for the sale of one of their players, can't have happened that often where the record has been broken by buying a relegated player.
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I mean not so much by what they won but by the sheer fact that for my entire lifetime they have been in the top flight, I've never known a time in life when Everton were not at the big table. Forest , despite what they've won, I've seen get relegated before, Everton I've never seen relegated.
 
BaZ87 said:
I've always been partial to a stat but don't worry, I'm not stepping on your toes. You'll always be the designated statto around here.
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I’ve been holding back and have weeks of pent up frustration hah

Doesn’t help with the toon performance at the weekend also.

Heat map would be still on the bus.
 
adam cool dude said:
Leeds have always been that team because they actually try and play football at the bottom that they are perfect for 5+ goal pasting.
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We haven't played football since Bielsa left, under Marsch it was terrible, but slightly more organised. Gracia has brought more structure but as a team, we aren't good enough. Our best defender got injured on international duty and was keeping the back line together. Also, Adams, our only CDM and one of our most important players got injured for the season, we don't have an alternative.

We have good individuals but as a team we are just terrible, such bad recruitment too. There is no way we will remain where we are in the league with the defence we have. We're down.
 
The problem with xG is people sometimes try to make it out to represent what the score should have been, when all it really represents is what on average would the expected outcome of goalscoring opportunities in the game normally be, without considering how well the players actually did in those situations.
The reason it doesn't represent what the score should have been is because the actual goals scored is influenced by the performances of the players. So for example if Ramsdale makes a couple of great saves against Liverpool, that doesn't mean Arsenal were lucky not not concede or that Liverpool were unlucky not to score. It means one of the Arsenal team executed his job very well. Or conversely if Rosenthal misses an open goal then his team don't deserve that goal, or if a keeper does a Karius and just lets a weak shot squirm straight through him, it means Xg and actual goals are misaligned but based on the performances of the players on the pitch, the actual goals reflects the situation.

So in essence xG is probably a decent metric of the quantity and quality of chances teams are creating, but shouldn't be used to try and argue what the outcome of the match should have been.
 
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HangTime said:
The problem with xG is people sometimes try to make it out to represent what the score should have been, when all it really represents is what on average would the expected outcome of goalscoring opportunities in the game normally be, without considering how well the players actually did in those situations.
The reason it doesn't represent what the score should have been is because the actual goals scored is influenced by the performances of the players. So for example if Ramsdale makes a couple of great saves against Liverpool, that doesn't mean Arsenal were lucky not not concede or that Liverpool were unlucky not to score. It means one of the Arsenal team executed his job very well. Or conversely if Rosenthal misses an open goal then his team don't deserve that goal, or if a keeper does a Karius and just lets a weak shot squirm straight through him, it means Xg and actual goals are misaligned but based on the performances of the players on the pitch, the actual goals reflects the situation.

So in essence xG is probably a decent metric of the quantity and quality of chances teams are creating, but shouldn't be used to try and argue what the outcome of the match should have been.
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Agree with this.

Similarly, Liverpool were very efficient in front of goal. No chance will have a 100% xG; even an open goal will be, say, 90%. Is it lucky if you have 6 chances and score 6 times? No, it shows good finishing.

I think the only goal which you wouldn't have expected (i.e. more than 50% chance) one of our players to finish yesterday was Jota's second goal. From that perspective, we slightly outmatched expectations, but not drastically. We created 5 good chances and scored 6 goals.

xG is a useful stat to see, in the aggregate, which team had the better chances and who ought to have won the game, but I don't think it does a very good job of predicting the number of goals a team is likely to score (and that's not really its purpose - by its very nature, it's always going to be wrong as 1 actual goal is never going to go down as 1 xG).
 
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HangTime said:
The problem with xG is people sometimes try to make it out to represent what the score should have been, when all it really represents is what on average would the expected outcome of goalscoring opportunities in the game normally be, without considering how well the players actually did in those situations.
The reason it doesn't represent what the score should have been is because the actual goals scored is influenced by the performances of the players. So for example if Ramsdale makes a couple of great saves against Liverpool, that doesn't mean Arsenal were lucky not not concede or that Liverpool were unlucky not to score. It means one of the Arsenal team executed his job very well. Or conversely if Rosenthal misses an open goal then his team don't deserve that goal, or if a keeper does a Karius and just lets a weak shot squirm straight through him, it means Xg and actual goals are misaligned but based on the performances of the players on the pitch, the actual goals reflects the situation.

So in essence xG is probably a decent metric of the quantity and quality of chances teams are creating, but shouldn't be used to try and argue what the outcome of the match should have been.
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I'm not sure people use it to represent what the score should be at all. Its a very useful metric to gauge how the game would usually go based on the chances created. Over the course of a season its a pretty accurate measure of things most of the time.

By its very nature it is taking real world data in and spitting out predicted score lines. If players start becoming more or less clinical the predictions will change.

If a team massively outperforms their xG that does tell you something generally. Somewhere, someone has either dramatically over-performed or underperformed. My point with the United game was that people were acting like Liverpool were the second coming and it could have been 10 when the reality is that 3 or 4-1 would have been more accurate. As a result people wouldn't have been obsessing over it for weeks and weeks. (and no, before you say it Baz, I am not obsessing over it! :p )

If you want a good counter-point to Liverpools unnecessary scoring, look at Chelsea. They routinely put out an xG of 2-3 and score 0-1 goals which points at a serious issue with finishing.

So to summarise, its not the be all end all but its a good stat to put a bit of perspective on big scorelines when people are getting carried away.
 
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