Quote:
Originally Posted by ikestoys
Cech wasn't slightly off. He was making awful mistakes. Additionally in the case of the header, the entire team took the play off.
Goals change games as well, especially when the away underdogs score. I'm not sure how valid that measure is when Arsenal is chasing and the dogs are sitting back.
Michael Caley factors in gamestate when looking at xG of shots. So shots from a team who's losing 1-0 or 2-0 will have much lower values.
these are all the factors taken into account when assigning values to shots.
The one big one that hasn't been implemented is defender positioning. Teams that pressure and block shots really well will typically outperform most shot or xg metrics because of this.
Fact of the matter is this, west ham didn't really have any big chances, mostly just half chances and ran good on their finishing + poor goalkeeping. Arsenal had a lot of similar half chances, with some pretty good ones mixed in and just didn't do well with their finishing.
This game was just as likely to be 5-1 arsenal as it was for it to be 2-0 to west ham. That's the sort of variance that can occur in a football match.
Arsenal will be fine, they generated lots of good chances and as long as cech's performance was the exception rather than the rule they'll be fine. Chelsea and United had far more worrying performances even though they got better results.