Wood.

Also, from BAIDS' link, we outscored our xG by just over 3 goals last season. For comparison, your team was 10 goals better than expected.

If you create 5 goals worth of xG a season (like Burnley did last year) then running 3 goals above is pretty darn lucky. Notwithstanding the fact that Burnley's best asset is actually how far under xG rival teams seem to perform against them.

Also Liverpool have better finishers.

I take this back, an irresponsible troll that could have led to an outbreak of full blown xG discussion itt.

Single game xg is definitely volatile and can be sometimes misleading. Especially true when an underdog scores early then parks the bus. Over the course of the season xG does a very good job of measuring teams attacking and defending, more so than just goals or shots. You should always combine eye test with data and investigate further when they don't match up .

Also things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Such as burnley got very lucky in a lot of games last year, but also do things that mess with xg a bit. They were likely worse than their results but perhaps not as bad as xg suggested.

Note to self: If Burnley beat Leeds in the League Cup but xG says otherwise. STFU.

We conceded just 1.3 fewer goals than our xG against.

Pretty poor trolling effort really.

Again from BAIDS' link (thanks BAIDS), It looks like xG suggested we should've finished 16th on 38 points. We actually finished 16th on 40 points.

Looks like Chelsea, Arsenal, Spuds and Plop were the teams that got luckiest last season. Funny how it was certain supporters of those teams who were the most vocal about Burnley "sunrunning"

No it doesn’t.

Stopping belthering utter ****e.

I’ll gladly accept your money again if you want to back it teams finishing positions based on xG in mid Jan and I’ll take bookies.

Single games are utter bs, think Plop v Everton last year one which stands out.

Arse the other day.

Projections based on xG have been utterly useless and completely wrong in cases where it may actually be benifictial to know. Time and time again. Will be willing to bet on this again - aside from the painstakingly obvious City are good, good chance of top 4 or league. Brighton are crap.

This is a theme we keep going over and over again.

Single game - xG has 2.3 - .04 - should have been 7-0. xG had 3.0 - 1.3 wow away team should have won.

Nah, you should do it as a rolling 6 game week - something you’ve said after being called out it this in the past.

Which again turns out to be a load of nonsense as well and doesn’t suit any purpose.

It’s not great for fantasy either. Stats like touches in the box, shots in the box, shots in 6 yard box etc are way better than xG

Look at the strikers xG, loads of them outperform xG - granted Aguero performed slightly below it last season likely a major factor in 8bus hate for him. You don’t need xG to tell me that a striker is going to score more chances than a defender.

This ‘debate’ will be brought up again this weekend when a team batters someone on the pitch but loses 1-0 but xG has it as 1.2 - .9 I for one look forward to it.

Please be the game at Anfield

burnley's 16/17 xG = 35.97, actual goals = 39
xGa = 56.34, actual goals against = 55

tp, i just clicked on a random game where u lost to west ham 1-0. the xG of the game was 2.35-1.08 in favour of ham, quite far from the actual scoreline (like many games are), and yet the total of all games throughout the season was virtually bang on the money on both sides of the ball. such a great example of variance being smoothed the **** out

i dunno how you're not impressed by that

I am quite impressed, to be fair.

I'm not quite as impressed by certain posters insisting we ran like Usain Bolt last season when, according to those stats, we were actually the only team in the league that finished where we "should" have.

iirc you sunrunned on xG early in the season, so you musta ran bad later on for it to even out

i guess what happened is p0sters developed a narrative of burnley sunrun - particularly after that pool game - and ran with it, while ignoring 2nd half of the season xG data

i think we can all agree that their failure was insufficient attention/conversation around the topic of xG, and that as a thread we must strive to talk about it much more this season

Lol fu

Is there any reason to think a manager who has been exceptionally successful at 'lesser clubs' wouldn't succeed at a CL contender? Seems to me that the skills are mostly transferable (player evaluation, "talent management", training, tactics). Fergie, Wenger, Mourinho, Klopp all started at 'lesser clubs'. Actually, CL contender managers by definition have to either have started (and presumably had success) at 'lesser clubs' or be some stud player parachuted into the job. There's little reason to think the latter will be successful and with few exceptions they haven't been.

But I thought using xG was supposed to help prevent us from forming narratives.

Surely only a fool would develop such narratives based on small samples of data.

in unrelated OT news, I have a controversial statement to make.

I've recently discovered Brewdog Nanny State, and it's an absolutely awesome beer. Can seriously recommend it.

I think it's .5%. I quite like their Punk I.P.A although the Beer Bores, self-proclaimed gatekeepers of good taste slag off Brewdog all the time.

I spent the last 3 days in yankland watching handegg and this thread is in another one of it's cycles where the usual suspects dig into their usual narratives and nobody changes their perspective at all. Good luck guys!

People railing against xG and other stats because "it doesn't incorporate x" when x has been apart of it for 3+ years for most models was fun though. As Baids showed, "shooting talent" is grossly, grossly exaggerated by the casual fan. Watch the training videos of most clubs. Everyone is great at banging them in from '18 in training. The real skill is repeatedly getting in good scoring positions.

I said in last year's thread that second half of season burnley underlying numbers improved but their results went the opposite way.

Just some random myopic spam but



Shrug. Can look back and now say I was severely wrong re aguero lol

Yet you still said, even yesterday, that we were worse than our results suggested.

And others have maintained the "sunrunning" narrative into this season (although given that some of them are probably just trolling).

LOLzil? CoutiniWOAT??

Most models aren't very good yet. They may be good in the future. A lot of 'x's are incorporated but not in an accurate or particularly useful fashion. Often because they can't be yet. xG's value as a statistic is therefore pretty poor as yet although improving all the time.