In news that will shock precisely nobody, Redknapp-managed Birmingham have issued a profits warning

I saw that on twitter, how did he look other then that?

Allardyce left Bolton when they were fifth (!). He took over at Newcastle where they were 11th after half a season (they finished 13th the prior season). He took over at Blackburn who were 19th just before Christmas and ended 15th. The next season we finished 10th and the next season we were doing so well that when he was sacked in December even Steve Kean couldn't relegate us (that took til the next year). His record is incredible & I would love to see how how he'd do with a talented group of players (I think he'd do well).

Big Sam is clear top 5 manager in the PL era.

He clearly should be managing Real Madrid.

yeah - it's actually pretty clear he should

As much as I love him I think it's more likely to be a Brian Clough at Leeds situation to be honest.

I'm a numbers guy and am all for finding the perfect xG model.

The problem I have with xG is that there is so much variance in it within a game. Take someone binking a 0.1% backheel rabona cross, where the striker has an empty net from 5 yards. Should that really be 0.99 xG? Or should it be 0.001*0.99 xG? The right answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I know these things probably even out over the course of a season, but it seems like too much variance to analyze one game through xG.

It's like the red line in holdem manager, it can go through swings of it's own even if your play remains the same.

Go to your room with no supper.

I will happily take Wednesday, the other two can GTFO. We'll end up playing them when we get relegated though.

.

http://statsbomb.com/2017/07/quantif...nishing-skill/

XG still gibberish and has no use at all to me cos I don't play fantasy football.

Doesn't help me watch the games better, doesn't make my understanding of the game any better either.
Does **** all for me.

The above link just more nonsense on a huge big pile of nonsense.

No ****ing **** sherlock.

Aye ok.

Who does xG help better understand football? For one, everyone who regularly claims that a player "should have scored" or a team "should have five or six". That after decades of watching football people still have an incredibly unrealistic expectation of chance conversion rate is pretty telling in terms of how easily our brains are deceived. People see these chances being missed game after game, they know that there's on average like three goals a game, and still don't ask themselves wether scoring goals might be harder than it looks.

Also why 99% of fans are happy with their keeper and they're vastly overrated in general.

They can't explain xg to themselves in less than 50k words. Complete gibberish most of it.

Look at the paragraph I quoted ffs.

Xg experts needed data and debates to find out attackers are better than defenders at scoring goals. Should be enough said.

Was that a response to me or..?

Again, this is basic stuff.

Have said more than once 'should have 6/7 goals' but that's usually just a description of how dominant I felt one team was over the other. I don't need to know exactly how many goals xg (whichever one of the 5 xg models) says team x should have scored. Makes absolutely no difference to my viewing experience.

I understand what they are trying to do with xG and that's fair enough, but they are selling it as this infallible equation for what a result should've been. It's not even close to that.
So much fundamentally vital information is being ignored.
We've already mentioned quality of shooter but what about a goal like Chris Wood's v Palace?
From the position he scored xG perceives it as an unlikely goal. The fact is, he was clean through. It was a relatively simple chance.
Most shots from that position will have multiple defenders in the vicinity to block, hinder view etc.
xG ignores all of this.

who

where

no1 is selling it as infallible

Ok maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but a lot of people are taking the outputs way too seriously to the point of having the audacity to use it as form of arguement against people who actually watched a particular game.

I notice you didn't choose to tackle the point about the Wood goal.

1) you are assuming that i/others are looking at this



and going oh interesting palace were 1.31 goals better than burnley today. that's not how it works. that's not what anyone is doing

you're holding the thing up to an impossibly precise standard and then complaining when it doesn't reach it

2) note that the chance you're talking about where the bloke was through on goal is marked down as a chance he should score 22% of the time,



whereas a random tekkers shot at the other end from about the same position on the pitch is marked as a 2% shot because it was against a packed and set defense,



so they are taking stuff like whether the bloke was through on goal into account when assigning xG to chances

Where are those from BAOIDS? The xG numbers I've seen from that match are different (0.28 v 1.98).

22% seems low for Wood's goal, but maybe that's the point aof was making. If he'd taken it round the keeper and walked it into the net (which I think he could have quite easily done) instead of hitting it first time, it'd be a much higher xG when the chance was effectively the same.

Found this article which attempts to quantify the effect of defenders between the shot and the goal and explains somewhat how Burnley outperform xG defensively and that they may not be as bad as some people suggested last season.

Villas-Boas is absolutely furious.

if you assume there's no difference between hitting it first time and taking it round the keeper then the effect of him trying option 2 means he ends up with either an approximately 1.0 xG chance (keeper beaten, tap in from 4 yards) or an 0.0 xG chance (torreses the chance away, doesnt even get a shot off). this = more variance than the first time shot but same expected goals in the long-term

imo this sort of variance tends to quickly smooth out and is only really a problem if one is expecting an unrealistic level of short-term precision from current xG models

but anyway, whos to say the chance was effectively the same? maybe the overall xG of your plan is in fact higher b/c maybe taking it round the keeper results in more goals from that situation than hitting it first time from 30 yards out? idk

https://understat.com/match/7156

If they are taking defenders positions into account then I certainly stand corrected on that.
Thanks for the effort with the diagrams also.

I agree with TP on the 22%. Imagine the pelters he would've got if he didn't score!

Pretty sure Woods made the wrong decision in a vacuum but the right decision in reality as he'd factored in the +0.8 bonus Bumley players get whenever they take a shot from anywhere.