The Fish

Who, Forest? Aye, that'll happen in your first home game back in the top flight after 20 odd years. They were still lucky to come away with 3pts, any points really. West Ham had a bad game and yet still could/should have been 2-3 goals to the good. The analysis on MOTD2 was odd though. Fara Williams was praising how far apart the two central midfielders were, saying that they've got this great understanding already and that the work rate allows them to be so far apart. I'm not buying that. That kind of space will be targetted by a better midfield, Bruno and the Joes absolutely dominated the centre of the park on the first day. If I was an opponent manager I'd definitely exploit that kind of space by drawing one of them to the ball and overloading the other with runners. Especially as they were both so keen to join the attack. Lingard looked awful again, by the way.

Well in Rents! This is great news mate. "Strange as it seems, I think my recent alcoholism is a symptom not a cause of my problems." Don't think it's strange what so ever. Makes total sense to me. My particular brand of Anxiety & Depression means I instinctively reach for short term highs regardless of the consequence. At Uni it was drugs, alcohol but at first it was food (Gemmil can attest to that). I had my stomach pumped a couple of times, lost a job, lost a couple of friends, and all because I hadn't understood that I was escaping into all that because I have anxiety and depression.

Makes sense if we don't have better in the squad and he might be back in time? If we go off and sign Paqueta, and Shelvey's out until February, then I'm sure we'll do the same to him as we did with Gayle?

Fucking, and I do mean this, hell.

People don't update their opinion very quickly. For years we were still the fanbase 'happier with a 4-3 loss than a 1-0 win'. You'll be Moneybags Man City until you haven't overspent on a player for years.

I appreciate the work of a Sapphist, but I can't claim to be one of them.

I remain quite the sesquipedalian.

Yeah, maybe introduce Botman earlier, crotchety

What fucking speech impediment turns an f sound to a th sounds? Other way round, sure, but that? Jesus Christ Toonpack, any more of that amateur hour horseshit and I'll talk about comics at you for days!

Donna Air

zero as well, as the straw hasn't had something removed from it, it's formed around empty space*. A hoolahoop doesn't have a hole, does it? If the 'wall' of the straw was perforated, then the straw has a hole? *yes, like my head. I see you MF and it's not funny.

The thing is, all you luddites talk already about xG, PpDA, progressive carries, pass %, you just don't have it codified or necessarily accurate. You can sit in the pub and bemoan that your Nan could have finished that, or we sat off 'em too much, or Rodgers might have them knocking the ball about but it doesn't go anywhere. None of the stats stop you saying all of that, it's just that the galaxy brain folk can back that up with evidence, beyond our own unreliable eyes. It also means that we can see that a striker is less of a concern than a threat from the right flank because we can look at where the numbers show our weakest area of threat is. It also means that ASM can be defended with objective numbers, instead of my romanticised entreaty.

xG is better at gauging if someone is consistently scoring or missing good chances. If Wilson missed that chance he scored from, you can't criticise him for it really, it was a really difficult chance. Schar's goal, it doesn't matter who's out there, someone taking a shot from there has a small chance of scoring. a high xG tells us that the player gets into a situation to take a shot that you'd expect to lead to a goal. Combine that with their goal return and you get a mark of how good/bad a player is at putting away those chances. e.g. if Jonny Scoresalot get 20 league goals in a campaign, you may think, "Jonny's the one for me", but when you look and see his accumulated xG is 40 you realise that given the chances he's getting, he's only putting away half of what you'd expect. Likely because he's in a team that makes a load of good chances. If Shearer said "WIlson missed an easy chance today", you'd likely believe him, because Shearer knows his stuff. What you might not account for is this; Shearer may think of that as an easy chance, but that's because he was fucking mint and would regularly do better than expected given the chances that fell to him. You come on here and see some stat-nerd has said that it was a hard chance and Shearer's being harsh. What's more reliable, thousands of objective data points that say what the expected outcome of that situation was, or a subjective account from a biased witness? Also, to take your example, I wouldn't say x player, I'd be specific. Dave " Adama Traore has a PL career non-penalty xG of 0.11 per 90 minutes, he has scored 0.1 goals per 90. Allan Saint-Maximin is npxG 0.16 and has scored 0.16 per 90. Therefore ASM gets more chances per game, and puts more of them away than Traore did. Couple that with ASM getting 41% of his shots on target to AT's 29.7%, 74% pass completion to 67%, 0.43 to 0.32 Goal creating actions per 90. It shows that, not only does ASM have the skills that get you out of your seat, he's also got decent end product that will likely increase when he's playing alongside better players, in a better system." PL "Oh, so stats can help you back up your opinion that Traore is ASM's little muggy bitch boy?" Dave "Yes PL, that's spot on, he's ASM's muggy little bitch boy"

It's not about the likelihood of that chance occurring. It's simply given all the factors I mentioned above, how often does that situation result in a goal. Schar's shot is a good example. The chance of a player scoring from there is 1/100. that's averaged out over thousands of shots from thousands of players. A player has more chance of scoring that chance with his dominant foot, right? More chance if he's under no pressure, right? More chance if the 'keeper decided to go walkabout to the opposite corner flag, and so on. the xG records, not the predicted goals, but the expected goals. So someone takes that shot, it's 1 in 100 that it goes in. Because, say, 100 players took that type of shot across the historical data of 10,000 instances just like that, and 1 went in. You'd expect that when Schar strides forward against Brighton and finds himself in the exact same situation, you'd expect him to miss 99 times 100. People traversed the globe without GPS, flight, or even a combustion engine. Doesn't mean those things are superfluous. It's not the be all and end all, but it's a very useful tool. That's why I said scouting in person adds intangibles that stats alone can't. How does the player react to going behind, or missing a chance. How does he interact with the officials, his teammates, the opposition. You can never replace the value of an experienced eye, but these metrics aren't solely useful for assessing a teenage Bulgarian plying his trade in the Dutch second division. They're also really useful for working out the way to get the most out of the players you've got. Of course you need humans to apply subjectivity, and interpret the data. Do it wrong (over-exaggerating the value of POMO) and you get Allardyce. Do it right and you get the high quality, high energy, fluid football of Man City and Liverpool.

ASM executed more shot creating actions than Almiron, but Almiron produced more key passes, the chances made by Almiron were higher quality, but ASM had a higher chance of scoring himself. It's close but, statistically speaking, ASM was a slightly bigger overall threat than Almiron. If Almiron had used his right foot, he would have surpassed ASM.

xG is objectively assessing the likelihood of a goal given thousands of data points across years of research. How often does a player score, with that body part, from that position, at that angle, after receiving the ball in that way from that place, when the defenders are there and the 'keeper is there. It doesn't account for who that player is, or who his teammates, or a subjective assessment of the difficulty of the chance. Wilson's goal was a 0.09 xG. So, if a player was in that position you'd only expect him to score 9/100. Not necessarily Wilson, or Haaland, or Botman or Dubravka, any player in that situation had a 9% chance of scoring. They're not, it's not do I think that's a good chance, it's how many times did that situation result in a goal. There's so many intangibles added by a scout watching a player that you cannot find in statistics, that's why more onus was put on personality, character, bravery, etc. But the margins are now so small, that statistics add objective value to a scouts subjective view. You will never see the likes of Ali Dia again. Or a Nacho Gonzalez. Looks mint on youtube, might look mint in the 2-3 games the scouts turns up for. But if his underlying numbers are bad, they're a better judge of the player's actual ability. Your eyes lie to you all the time.

Some luddite is doubting xG again.

But are they better than their replacements?

See?! See what I mean?! Relying on what people say they saw is fucking dumb bumpkin bullshit. Stat me baby

See, I don't trust people, people voted for Brexit, people are in favor of the death penalty. I trust numbers. People will say they saw Wilson score from a good chance, 7/10 you'd expect to score from there. But actually it was a really, really difficult chance, closer to a 1/100 chance of scoring. People will say they don't see ASM providing enough output in terms of goals or assists, but the stats show he's the biggest threat in our side. People allow their bias to colour their interpretation of the game. What is they say about eye-witnesses being the least trusted testimony?

... You think Botman, Burn, Guimaraes, Targett, and Trippier were not scouted? Jesus H. Christ.

Honestly, I think a lot of the names we're being linked with make a lot of sense. First we need to agree what we need. The game against Forest showed me that the idea is to press like a pack of dogs, find balls through the lines for a wide player to cut back. We created loads of opportunities for Almiron to do that, but it didn't really create a high percentage chance. So for me, it's a threat from wide right. To fit into Howe's team they have to have some degree of defensive effort. To fit into the project they have to show some degree of potential. We're limited to players not expecting an huge wage or European football. Bamba Dieng ("22" c£15-20m) looks good for the above, but he is very raw. He might want a move to a team playing in Europe. Viktor Tsygankov(24 £25m+) from Kyiv could also be excellent- Left footed right sided attacker, good delivery from set pieces, presses well, the only issue is if we're trying to build from short intricate passes. He may also need to be incentivised to move to a non-Champions League team. Maddison would not only be a huge improvement on what we've got, but would be the 'marquee' signing that would make other teams/players/agents take a bit more notice. However, I don't think Maddison will go for a palatable fee.

Big money in the ginger cyborg micro-penis kink, is there? Who knew?

Well, I think I'm safe as I've opted for a smooth bonce.