What is this?

lets not forget lol "tibsy"

lol

it won't get noticed because of cech's awful performance but coquelin played everyone onside on the 1st goal and gave the ball away for the 2nd ?

in coq we trust

Tibs was fine, going to blame defence that lets swans in time and time again.


baids, lol.

and sure enough BBC is doing a feature about how awesome the 16 years old kid is

Looks like Ducksauce just got burnt on twitter

Thanks man

World class BANTR. is Colin ducksauce?

Viz is fantastic, more humour in one issue than most broadsheet "humorists" put out in their whole careers

To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with xG. It is an extremely illuminating metric with a lot of predictive power. The basis of the model is that shots are treated as random events with a probability distribution. No problem with that.

What seems to be happening is that some people are so wrapped up in this mode of thinking that they think that shots actually ARE random events. That's simply not the case in any meaningful sense. In reality, the execution of a good shot requires skill. It is not at all akin to, say, rolling a die. If you play a game where you have two throws of a 10-sided die and you need to throw a 2 twice in a row to win £1,000,000, then you can consider yourself lucky if you win this game. You have no influence over the outcome and the likelihood of winning is 1%, which is slim. If you're Philippe Coutinho shooting from 30 yards and you ping the ball into the top corner when xG model says that situation yields a goal 1% of the time, the conclusion is that you have executed a ****ing great goal. It's a weird definition of lucky that includes accomplishing exactly what you aimed to achieve.

Now, either you can tell me why you think this is wrong, or you can carry on sniping without adding anything of substance. Maybe if I can do the same I might become a better poster

Time for some TL;DR Liverpool Tactical Ramblings!

Rodgers has a tactical dilemma at the moment:

(1) Coutinho is at his best when he's part of the midfield rather than one of three advanced attackers (behind Sterling Suarez Sturridge in the diamond for example)

(2) Henderson is far more effective when he has license to get forward as opposed to being part of a restrictive double-pivot

(3) Milner has been promised a regular central midfield role, and he isn't a holding mid

Only two of these three things can be accommodated at once.

-If Phil plays at the tip of the midfield triangle: Milner and Hendo are forced to form the ineffective double-pivot we saw today.

-If a defensive anchor is inserted: Milner and Hendo should thrive, but Phil will bump forward and displace one of the two wide attackers.

-If Phil drops back to join Hendo in front of a DM: Milner either pushes out wide or goes to the bench (two places he was told he wouldn't be if he signed here).

These are, in my opinion, Rodgers' three most palatable options as things stand:

1. Diamond:

Benteke-Firmino
------Phil--------
Milner----Hendo
-------Can-----

Rodgers often struggles to put out a balanced team but hopefully he learned a lesson today. I like the width provided by Ibe, and he'll continue to get game time. But his final ball hasn't come to fruition yet, and for me at least it doesn't appear to be right around the corner either. Right now there isn't a lot of product to show for his aesthetically pleasing forays.

2. 4-3-3:

Firmino-Benteke-Milner
-----Phil------Hendo----
---------Lucas-----------

Milner won't love it, but you tell him that (A) he'll get plenty of opportunities to play CM between change-of-shape during the games and four competitions, and (B) it's a long season and things evolve. He isn't as electric as Ibe but his vision and delivery are light years ahead. We need those things from that position if we intend to persist with a 433 while Benteke beds in. I trust Milner more defensively at this stage as well. (Even if this isn't a formation we begin games with, it's a Plan B that I'd like to see in our arsenal).

3. Diamond v 2.0:

Benteke-Firmino
-----Hendo------
Phil-------Milner
------Lucas-----

A little counterintuitive because it seems like Phil and Hendo should be reversed on the CM----->AM spectrum. And it does make us a little more lightweight in the middle of the park (and towards the Gomez/Moreno side to boot), hence the inclusion of Lucas instead of the more ambitious Can. It also means Jordan will need to improve his poise in front of goal. On the plus side Hendo is one of our more energetic pressers and would be in a fine place to harass opposing DLPs.

Thoughts?

Leicester bid 7m and it was rejected. Assume an English club would have had to pay a solid bit more.

Does the model not update its base rate assumptions based on who the player is? So that a random in the league (or wherever the data is drawn) might have 1%, whereas he has maybe 10% or whatever.

thechef GOAT

correct, although they're clearly not as good as they used to be. their twatter feed is also glorious

love that the backdrop to that page is some hillsborough justice thing saying don't buy the sun. excellent grudge holding there

why is the dice roller not considered a great dice roller

if he rolls the dice very slightly more forcefully he doesn't hit the double 2s, so of course he has influence over the outcome

xD model would imply that he has only a 1% chance of binking, but he pulled off a great pair of rolls and we have to give him credit for that

Short answer? No. In general players further up the pitch tend to outperform their xG as a rule of thumb.

I don't believe that it does although I will stand corrected if somebody who knows more about it chimes in.

How is that relevant though even if somehow we knew for sure that Philippe Coutinho's individual probability of scoring in that precise scenario is 10%? To put it another way, if Dejan Lovren found himself in the exact spot and pulled the trigger with 1% probability of scoring according to xG, would he be luckier than Philippe Coutinho if he scored?

Fixed, IMO.

(I would have also put a line through "away to" if I wasn't forum-illiterate)

I don't know if the final numbers/table will bear it out or not, but anecdotally I feel like the middle class teams are as good as I've ever seen them relative to the big boys. There are players all over the place who can hurt you. They may have flaws in their game that will keep them out of the biggest sides in England, but on their day they can skin you (Shelvey, Ayew, Bolaise, Kouyate, Adam, Ki, Cabaye, Sigurdson, Tadic, Mare, Valencia, just to name a few off the top of my head). Personally I don't think the big teams have anything to feel lousy about this weekend. A lot of teams are gonna have their hands full against Swansea, and Stoke, and West Ham this year...

Quoting because your effort deserves to be acknowledged

remember when suarez only scored about 10 goals in his second pool season cos he kept beating the entire defense single handedly, got 1-on-1 with the keeper, but then hit the post. this happened about a million times. are we to conclude he was unlucky over that period? or that he was playing poorly?

i feel the first conclusion is more satisfactory

might be worth pointing out that there were a few people here that decided he was just a crap finisher, and not best played in the striker position for that reason

I really like this guy... but it's going to be misused lol.

agreed, i think pool broke the record for most woodwork in a season that year.

though, i think you can conclude he was at least slightly worse.