The Fish

A mate exiled in the US is over so I'm meeting him in Newcastle this Saturday night, and he's been recommended Khai Khai on the Quayside. Has anyone been, is it any good?

So? None of us are professional scouts or coaches yet we all give our opinions about players, formations, tactics. Thing is, the professionals use it, the pundits use it, the betting companies use it, so why wouldn't I see it's value? It seems to bother you way more than it should. It's like getting in a tizz about assist stats. It's only a mugs game if you're a mug. I can use the data to make an informed decision about what to bet on.

If you think that in todays professional game the coaches and analysts won't use every minute detail to gain an advantage in whatever fine margin they can, you're out of your GOD DAMN MIND, sir. Also means you make a bit of money on games you don't care about.

Not trendy, it's just that for me, Newcastle comes first.

Then I produced even more information to disprove your assertion.

Because knowing whether or not a team is creating/conceding chances in their other games, or games against teams with a similar set up to us gives me a better idea of what might happen in our game, how best we might get a result. If I know that Everton are giving up loads of chances but are reliant on Pickford to dig out a result I can continue my one man crusade against the ill proportioned chav. It's more information on a subject I want to know more information about. Also it matters to Newcastle because they'll be able to better tailor the match plan to counter the threat or capitalise on the weakness.

I tell you what your eyes don't help you with, they don't help you see that throughout all of this I've been saying xG is there to provide additional context and to refute testimonies given in bad faith. Not exclusive context, additional context.

Ok, but thanks to the magic of not being wilfully ignorant and the wonders of xG I can see that West Ham were good value for their win (1.8) and Bournemouth deserved nothing (0.4). Whereas Southampton had some really good chances (1.9) and Brighton had fuck all (0.3), so the score didn't reflect the balance of the chances.

Just realised my names been dragged into this. I want no part of this 0-2 loss.

Yeah, but what did your eyes tell you about the games, were they fair results? Were there many chances in each? Were Bournemouth lucky to get the 0? Howay, what do your eyes tell us about those games? Ya Gonk.

No, people are saying unmitigated horsepiss, that is refuted by the stats and personal testimony. It used to be the case that Jimmy said X and Tyrese said Y and the two of them could argue back and forth forever. Now, Tyrese shows a stat that backs up his claim so Jimmy can stfu orrrrr Jimmy can dismiss the validity of the stat and they can have a circular argument about that instead. It's neither bollocks, nor irrelevant. It's an integral part of the professional game now, both in coaching, scouting and punditry and yes, even arguments on messageboards.

What about Southampton 1 - 3 Brighton? or West Ham 2-0 Bournemouth?

Because our eyes lie all the time. Confirmation bias, outcome bias, it's always there for everyone of us. xG isn't replacing anything, it's just providing context, adding more detail. The only thing that is bollocks is people reading that 'article' by KCG and thinking it's damning. It's like a creationist dismissing evolution because it's 'only a theory'. That article says xG isn't perfect, but says that as more data points are added, as greater granularity is added, it will become even more accurate. And even in it's current state, I'd trust an xG stat before I listened to some gobshite on here.

I'd agree a low scoring draw would be about right. The two chances they scored from weren't their best. Casemiro's chance goes begging 9 times out of 10, as we saw when a very similar chance came for us in the second half. Roughly the same position for the freekick, put into the same area, but this time it didn't come off. I'm reminded of a goal Wilson scored for us earlier on this season. Can't remember who it was against, but the ball came in from the left and he ran onto it at the near post and prodded it at an obtuse angle to the far corner of the net. That chance was something like 0.1 xG, but the finish was so good, it had a post-shot-xG of something like 0.9. When I talked about it later on I was surprised how many people described it as a good chance because it really wasn't. The angle was bad, he had a defender on him, the 'keeper was in a decent position and I'm not even sure it was with his favoured foot. But because it resulted in a goal, people said it was a good chance. There are competing models of xG, which is good, because it means they're trying to improve the reliability of the data. OPTA are pretty good though.

Well, each chance is given a xG score, so he'd be able to see what patterns of play produce the best value chances. Something that worked really well in the early stages of the season was our work down the right hand side. The interplay between trippier, Almiron and Bruno was creating multiple decent chances each game. The issue we're facing now is that Trippier hasn't been as superb as he was, Almiron's purple patch is fading to a hardworking but less brilliant violet and Bruno's been suspended. He'll be aware that we're not taking a great deal of shots despite creating a good number of opportunities so he can instruct the players to take more shots from lower xG opportunities. He'll be aware of the players contributing the most to passages of play that end up with a big chance and will work to get them more involved in the game, or tweak another's' role to increase their threat. y'know, stuff like that

It's not about telling the results man, it's providing context. So, our home game against Leeds, finished 0-0, right? So what xG tells us is that we actually created enough good chances to score at least 1 goal, possibly even 2. With 2 additional numbers you immediately learn a little more about the game. A casual fan might see 2-0 and assume Man Utd were much the better team. But xG and our eyes tell a different story, don't they? I don't understand why you're so anti something that shouldn't impact your enjoyment of football one iota? You don't care about PPDA, or ODC, so why do you care about xG?

In terms of xG, the difference between the two sides was nominal. Put it this way, in xG terms the expected outcome of a penalty is around 78%, or 0.78 xG. So a variance of <0.25 is nothing.

No it doesn't.

Of the 220 PL games played so far, 137 games have gone the way of xG. That's 62%. 51 of the remaining 83 have <0.7 variance. (In other words 186 results have been at least close to the 'expected' result) So there've only been 32 results from the Premier League season that have gone differently than the xG suggested, by a significant measure. Of those 32, 7 wins went to the team with the significantly lower xG. tl;dr I don't think you get it.

Because xG records quality of chances, how many goals you'd 'expect' to see from the chances that occurred in the game. In those games you show, the xG adds so much more context than the Goals for and against figures do. The Man Utd - Newcastle game there. it shows that despite the 2-0 scoreline, the game was one of relatively few 'good' chances and that 2-0 flatters Man Utd. Their freekick was excellent, but in reality that chance is one that is missed more often than not. Rashford's 'goal' was, again, not a massive chance. It doesn't mean the team with the highest xG will always win, because football isn't like that. It simply records which team created the most high 'good' chances. 0.4 - 0.7 means there weren't any big chances and there was a huge difference between the two sides.

No not a stereotypical one, but he's more of a goal threat than Wilson is, right now.

I'd love to, but I don't have the stats for it. The two stats that I'd bee looking for would be xG and post shot xG. Former would show us if we were causing their defence as big a problem as we remember, the latter would emphasise just how good Peter Schmeichel was.

We were having to rely on Murphy and Ritchie in the final few minutes, they could bring on Jadon Sancho, Sabitzer et al. Another couple of windows and we'll be bringing on the likes of Saint Maximin to replace our 1st choice left winger, or our young midfielder with bags of potential to replace Bruno's tiring legs. re: the shots, I think it must be. We've been shot shy in a lot of games recently. Partly because the chances haven't been falling to Wilson, but I'm convinced the main reason is that we're trying to fashion a chance with a high chance of a goal. Unfortunately that's not been happening. Bruno, Longstaff, Schar and Trippier can all have digs from deep if they want, and in games where we're playing well sometimes you need something like that to give the opposition another threat to be concerned about.

We're not even 'miles away', we literally got to the cup final, had a lot of the ball, played some good stuff too. If Wilson was on form, or if we had another Bruno-level player I think we could have won that game.