we didn't need an xg graph to know that suarez was going to progress to the mean.

looking at the amount players hit the post was a sort of proto-xg, we didn't need a fancy graph to know that suarez was going to progress to the mean.

How about a more realistic xG of 30 scored with an xG of 25? can you really draw any conclusions from that??

You can certainly draw some conclusions from xG, but whether they are significantly better than basic descriptive stats such as total shots, % shots on target, etc I think is still very much debatable.

Again, you can tell this by just watching Townsend, you don't need xG to provide a descriptive.

Yes but sometimes you need a reference and xg is one attempt in producing more accurate info that is publicly available. A lot of the publicly available information is a starting point. I have no access to Arsene's high security safe of all the secret statistics.
You can't just say 'well we knew anyway'. That's not how things work.

Often forget around 10 years ago I worked part time at opta as some stats input person. Easy gig watching football a few hours a week clearing around 500 a month that covered rent - it was either that or male escorting but the agency got back to me a year a too late and I'd moved on. Anyway, you'd click where x player was on the pitch corresponding to an action (tackle, successful / non successful pass etc). Their data collection methods are of course much stronger now but back then just me and a bunch of students clicking buttons, and when in doubt giving fat frank a successful pass. For far greater accuracy, some would get paid a bit more to review each game after the event, play by play, but that seemed tedious and definitely worth avoiding when evaluating required effort for money gained. Remember messi scoring some nice goal in 2005 against panathinaikos and muttering 'he'll probably become the best player in the world'. I was wrong. He became the Greatest Footballer of all Time AINEC.

That's great if you can watch every game.

'yo look how much he hit the post tho' was the argument made at the time, but its a bit fluffy/subjective imo and not especially convincing to someone who is like yea he hits the post a load cos hes ****e at putting the ball in the net

whereas there's a load of of xg data for tons of players, and upon inspection we can be approx certain that no human being with 2 functioning legs is going to fall outside the +/- 2 goals vs xg per 50 shots range:





so when suarez turns up and hits the post 3 times every game for a season and therefore runs -3.5 goals vs xG/50 shots over a smallish sample we can refer to those two charts of bars and conclude that either suarez is the biggest outlier in spoarts history or he's running superbad, its obv the latter qed bbq

There was a huge portion of this thread that was talking about him being bad at finishing after his first year and that he would never be world class because of it

right, i mean sure i could spend a bunch of hours watching andros townsend in action and best case scenario (if my eyetest is good and i'm relatively free of bias) i'll come to the same conclusion as the bloke who spent 5 seconds looking at his xg chart

The best thing about xG is the charts after united games with .2 xG and three tiny dots on their side

right, who can fail to be amused by the following

lol. Might buy the compilation of greatest hits at the end of the season.

many posters in this thread were moronic then, as they are now.

It all depends whether people actually believe it. One might say something because they don't want the opposite to be true but not truly believe it due to their dislike for all thing plop. I can understand. I'll never ever say Spurs are the best team in the league this season.

found some old suarez convo, turns out that in the olden days everyone itf was wrong about everything

we got mun fans turning their nose up at a potential bale xfer because they have nani, lots of ppl lolling at how bad de gea and suarez are, and some idiot called basaint trying to convince everyone that welbeck is a very good player. this is all on one page (100pppgoat)

might do a grand langering retrospective of wrong opinions over a random 1 weeks worth of 5 year old poasting. 'this week in SE'

Imagine most of the analytics guys are smug *******s because when they present their work (which takes painstaking amounts of time to gather and process data), you have a bunch of ***** who go LOL MATH, UR WRONG CAUSE MOMENTUM, HOROSCOPES, TRADITION etc..

It takes quite a rare combination of skill sets to be a good data analyst. Just for starters gathering data in soccer to do innovative analysis is quite hard, expensive, and or just non existent. So before you can even start doing anything cool there is a huge barrier for entry. Then you need to have the programming skillset to manipulate the data. Then you need the knowledge of the sport to interpret the data (or know what to even look for).

I have the utmost respect for the guys trying to do things with stats. Some of it fails (often a lot of it), but at least they are trying to do something that adds value. Instead of attacking them, why not instead try to point them in the right directions of what they should be looking at or exploring. Kinda like not being a smug ******* that you are accusing them of being.

the thing is that the vast majority of people still believe shooting from distance is generally good, use finishing ability as the biggest factor in assessing a striker's quality, and overestimate the likelyhood of chances being converted in general. If it was obvious to you that all of this was bull**** even before seeing easily formated data on it then good for you, but I think xG serves as a nice entry point for a lot of fans who want to smarten up about the game.

Does it provide big surplus value over more traditional stats, maybe not, but it does a good job at melting several stats into one.

Its value over the eye test is obvious- it allows you to make rough estimates on players you don't get to see enough, and it's free of bias. If the whole analytics debate in hockey has taught me one thing, it's that fans have remarkable talent in telling themselves why their team is special so that stats don't apply to them.

I get this, it's when you get a mixedknuts or messiseconds saying they're literally worth several points to a top tier team as if they're somehow better than entire departments of people clubs have hired but can't hang onto a job at Brentford.

Well said and it's clearly a lot of work that many couldn't / won't do. Smugness is problem across all fields so I don't think it's a worthy complaint.

Also, if I watch a lot of team X, then some things might be obvious to me, ignoring the fact most people won't be watching a lot of team X and watch team Y,Z etc instead.

It's probably like religion. Before there weren't many tools for explaining why things are like they are, and human curiosity demands some sort of explanation. Satisfied people for a while. But when others started producing alternate theories, those satisfied people had invested so much time in previous beliefs that the shock that what they believe might be false was so overwhelming that it was just easier to build horoscopes instead.

Yeah, if you look at the state of discussion around stuff like evolution, climate change, religion. You will never convince the fat bloke in the pub that shooting from 30yards+ is not a great idea

BAIDS,

Didn't you claim for quite a while that Harry Kane wasn't legit and Spurs would fall away?

Prime example of a typical stats >>>> everything zealot. Broad-stroking statements (the implied "Shooting from a distance is generally bad"), based on raw numbers provided by a stats guy whose roots lie in analysing a static game (BaseLÖL), applied to a highly dynamic game. Similarly, I've heard the "Crossing is generally bad" mantra by you stats zealots, too. There's an entire chapter in the Pep book devoted to him explaining that he doesn't expect crosses to produce goals. He expects good scoring opportunities after crosses because of disorganised defences after a clearance and a quickly won-back ball.

Now, if Caley starts twatting Xgsoacboddaacaaqwbb g4rfs, I might take a bit more interest in them.

i think i was on board the kane boomtrain relatively early. by xmas a cpl years ago i was defo on board and that spuds chelsea game sealed it

was however convinced earlier this year that alli and dier etc were just meh unknown kids and that spuds were destined to fall off as a result - made the frankly ridiculous mistake of underestimating the heart, committment and bravery of english lads and i promise never to make the same mistake again

I was definitely all aboard the anti-Kane train, felt as smug as a Twitter statistician early in the season.

Did some langering from 12/13, obviously my skills are weak because ended up finding someone who got it right. This was the year RVP won the league for United and team bale.

cashdonk running well

Remember cashdonk also claimed arsenal would win the league easily if their 40mil + 1 offer got accepted.

Although think it was 11/12 that suarez hit many posts.

I was the George Stephenson of that train.

bjorn poasted a hugebig poast during the suarez hits post season defending his assertion that suarez was still a top player 20 itw, but i didnt mention it b/c its not much fun to applaud people for getting stuff right