[Football] At the moment, Graham Potter is too good for Brighton. He needs better players.

[um bongo molongo]

Those Xg stats are very good, and sure our players are missing loads of chances to score - but with such a gulf between near Champions' League and near relegation points tally, Potter must be missing something too, surely?

A decent striker?

 

[BN41Albion]

Agree - statistics gone mad.

I’m interested in goals and points. Feck % possession as well.

But there is a lot to it. These stats are interesting because it shows how close a team like us is from being much higher up the league, and highlights where we need to invest to make that happen.

They also highlight just how shit some teams are, and how much further away from climbing the table they are. Palace are examples of this, and I don't just say that because they're rivals. They've been stuck around the same position since they arrived in the prem and the stats show they are miles from changing that. Yes, we've also been stuck down the bottom end since we arrived in the prem, but the stats show we are much closer to changing that than they are with one or two additions rather than wholesale changes to style and personnel being needed. Whether we are able to capitalise on the stats we're seeing and continue building with one or two shrewd signing remains to be seen, and obviously we've got to make sure we stay up too, or its all completely out of the window again for however long.

Long and short of it is that the xg stats show that we are building, or have been since GP took over, whilst clubs like Palace and Newcastle certainly have not been.
We are excruciatingly close. You'd expect and experienced pro like lallana to take at least one of those 2 great chances the other night for example. Some top, top draw saves by the villa keeper in another battering by us the other week. That's 5 points better off already, and we're sitting pretty in mid table right now.

IMO it's very simplistic to dismiss stats in football. Analysis is a huge part of the game.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

However, I note [MENTION=38333]Swansman[/MENTION] 's post with interest. On the positive (and please note Swanny that Monday has not shifted me back against Potter, I genuinely can see improvements over the last few weeks still) there is the physical conditioning (noticeable that we kept up with Leeds on a bad pitch). That bodes well for the future. But Bielsa is also a coach who has got the most out of an average striker. Bamford had a career as a journeyman Championship striker, mostly on loan. Now he's already beaten Maupay's best tally with 13 games to play. So you can coach a striker - or, if you can't, then you can give him better quality chances. That may be the actual difference. Bloom's risk will be whether he caves in to demands for a £50 million striker (VERY unlikely) or whether he gambles that just as we're about a year behind Leeds in approach play, that year will lead to us creating chances we simply cannot miss.

It's probably worth bearing in mind that Bamford is also top of the list of "good chances missed", and is 3 years older than Maupay. I gather Bielsa's done great work to improve his confidence, and the team clearly create a lot of chances, but it's not the case that he's been coached overnight into being some sort of crack sniper of a goalscorer.

 

[Swansman]

Good thread, but perhaps the realistic question should be "does xG really mean anything"?

When I did my coaching badge level one the instructor spent time with us explaining how "unlucky" can be misused with youngsters. Obviously you're trying to encourage them and let them have fun but saying "unlucky" when they have done something fundamentally wrong is not helping them. You need to find a way of correcting the mistake without upsetting or discouraging (not easy, trust me). So is our xG fail bad luck, bad skill, inflexible coaching or a mix of the last two (if you accept that "unlucky" is really an outlier where a really stupid deflection happens or the ref gets in the way)?

For me the answer lies with the Villa game. An xG of 2.44 yet at no point did we look like scoring. A mixture of an opposition keeper in very good form and lots of shots from the wrong place (long range, on the turn when covered) meant that we were always in for a frustrating evening. xG doesn't take into account just how good Martinez has been since signing for Villa, nor that this restricted our attackers to poor decisions, nor that the coaching staff appeared unconcerned that we were mostly happy to hit it at the keeper (or if they were, they failed to get the message over adequately).

Now, what would make an interesting and well researched article would be to analyse the reasons why we underachieved in each game that we did, seeing as it is an obvious pattern, but that would take a long time, lots of work and potentially not leave you with such a dramatic headline.

However, I note [MENTION=38333]Swansman[/MENTION] 's post with interest. On the positive (and please note Swanny that Monday has not shifted me back against Potter, I genuinely can see improvements over the last few weeks still) there is the physical conditioning (noticeable that we kept up with Leeds on a bad pitch). That bodes well for the future. But Bielsa is also a coach who has got the most out of an average striker. Bamford had a career as a journeyman Championship striker, mostly on loan. Now he's already beaten Maupay's best tally with 13 games to play. So you can coach a striker - or, if you can't, then you can give him better quality chances. That may be the actual difference. Bloom's risk will be whether he caves in to demands for a £50 million striker (VERY unlikely) or whether he gambles that just as we're about a year behind Leeds in approach play, that year will lead to us creating chances we simply cannot miss.

Bielsa (and more importantly Bamford himself) definitely got the most out of Bamford. Over the last two seasons most Leeds fans wanted him out of the team because he was wasting chances and not scoring enough (just 16 goals from 45 starts last season in a team that scored a lot of goals in the Championship). Read any Leeds forum/reddit thread about strikers from the 2018-2020 years and you'll find Bamford getting the same if not more criticism as Maupay is getting, same thing in the media ( https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/sport/leeds-united/marcelo-bielsa-addresses-patrick-bamford-17797894 ).

Turns out however that Bielsa knew what he was doing even if KillerWhale perhaps didnt. A year ago Bamford was on a long goalless run in the Championship as mentioned in the article and seen as someone who worked hard but scored way too little for a team with Leeds ambitions and Bielsa was sometimes accused of not being able to make strikers score, now Bamford is one of the top scorers (despite not being very efficient) in the PL and people see Bielsa as the master of striker coaching. Things change quickly in football (but a thousand times slower than fans think/hope/expect). We'll see what happens with GP alleged inability to coach strikers and Maupays alleged inability to score. It also comes down a lot to the teammates of said striker and a lot of other things such as recruitment. Its not as black and white as some think it is.

 

[Bry Nylon]

...lead to us creating chances we simply cannot miss.

Adam Lallana : “Hold my beer...”

 

[Bozza]

If you don't like conversations about xG move on - there's little for you on this thread.

But, for me at least, it does mean something. It attempts to quantify what football fans instinctively know, and have always recognised - the "we were unlucky today", "we might regret not scoring one of these chances" and "we've got to stick one of those away" scenarios.

Does it matter or count for anything that we out-xG the opposition in any given game? Of course not.
Is it only goals that matter in games? Yup.
Is anyone taking some perverse pride in our xG-busting ways? Not that I can see.

If you don't shoot, you don't score. A goal sometimes "comes from nowhere".

Whether we aren't converting possession and dominance into enough high quality chances, or whether we aren't clinical enough with the chances we do create or whether we've just been bloody unlucky, xG models put numbers on what we see with our own eyes. If you don't like that numerical interpretation, that's fine, but you are almost certainly seeing and experiencing what it is telling us.

 

[Swansman]

If you don't like conversations about xG move on - there's little for you on this thread.

But, for me at least, it does mean something. It attempts to quantify what football fans instinctively know, and have always recognised - the "we were unlucky today", "we might regret not scoring one of these chances" and "we've got to stick one of those away" scenarios.

Does it matter or count for anything that we out-xG the opposition in any given game? Of course not.
Is it only goals that matter in games? Yup.
Is anyone taking some perverse pride in our xG-busting ways? Not that I can see.

If you don't shoot, you don't score. A goal sometimes "comes from nowhere".

Whether we aren't converting possession and dominance into enough high quality chances, or whether we aren't clinical enough with the chances we do create or whether we've just been bloody unlucky, xG models put numbers on what we see with our own eyes. If you don't like that numerical interpretation, that's fine, but you are almost certainly seeing and experiencing what it is telling us.

Yup. It also indicates that the club is going somewhere as everywhere else on the planet, high xG generally means lots of goals and points while low xG means not a lot of goals and not a lot of points. People are worried as it is and sometimes people say "it would be easier to accept if we were just shite", but I'm pretty sure most wouldnt be any happier or less worried if all these "useless" stats pointed to the team not even being close to produce goals and points.

 

[Johnny RoastBeef]

It’s not click bait. It’s very well researched.

I fear you are wasting your time.

In the immortal words of Dorothy Parker,

'You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.'

 

[Birdie Boy]

Aaron Connolly (2 goals, 3.11 xG), Leandro Trossard (2, 3.13), Pascal Gross (2, 2.76) and Danny Welbeck (2, 3.70) are culprits on a lesser scale.

I don't get the bit above, is the xG over the season or per game? Presumably it is power game, so their goal tally is really shit.

 

[vagabond]

But there is a lot to it. These stats are interesting because it shows how close a team like us is from being much higher up the league, and highlights where we need to invest to make that happen.

They also highlight just how shit some teams are, and how much further away from climbing the table they are. Palace are examples of this, and I don't just say that because they're rivals. They've been stuck around the same position since they arrived in the prem and the stats show they are miles from changing that. Yes, we've also been stuck down the bottom end since we arrived in the prem, but the stats show we are much closer to changing that than they are with one or two additions rather than wholesale changes to style and personnel being needed. Whether we are able to capitalise on the stats we're seeing and continue building with one or two shrewd signing remains to be seen, and obviously we've got to make sure we stay up too, or its all completely out of the window again for however long.

Long and short of it is that the xg stats show that we are building, or have been since GP took over, whilst clubs like Palace and Newcastle certainly have not been.
We are excruciatingly close. You'd expect and experienced pro like lallana to take at least one of those 2 great chances the other night for example. Some top, top draw saves by the villa keeper in another battering by us the other week. That's 5 points better off already, and we're sitting pretty in mid table right now.

IMO it's very simplistic to dismiss stats in football. Analysis is a huge part of the game.

Exactly.

There’s a reason why all elite clubs now have sports data science team and specialists poring over every metric through a season. Not just football either, most sports.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Matty Ryan being replaced wasn’t on a whim, probably very significant data analysis was used to build a case as well as feedback from coaches.

Football may have a lot of money, but it’s not a charity. They hire data science teams for a reason.

 

[Guinness Boy]

If you don't like conversations about xG move on - there's little for you on this thread.

But, for me at least, it does mean something. It attempts to quantify what football fans instinctively know, and have always recognised - the "we were unlucky today", "we might regret not scoring one of these chances" and "we've got to stick one of those away" scenarios.

Does it matter or count for anything that we out-xG the opposition in any given game? Of course not.
Is it only goals that matter in games? Yup.
Is anyone taking some perverse pride in our xG-busting ways? Not that I can see.

If you don't shoot, you don't score. A goal sometimes "comes from nowhere".

Whether we aren't converting possession and dominance into enough high quality chances, or whether we aren't clinical enough with the chances we do create or whether we've just been bloody unlucky, xG models put numbers on what we see with our own eyes. If you don't like that numerical interpretation, that's fine, but you are almost certainly seeing and experiencing what it is telling us.

To an extent you are, of course, correct but it is nuanced. Again take the Villa game. Were we the better side? Hell yeah. Did we dominate statistically? Yup. Did Potter and Veltman do an absolute NUMBER on Sockboy? Yep. Did we ever look like scoring 2 - 3 goals? No. No we didn't.

 

[keaton]

Good thread, but perhaps the realistic question should be "does xG really mean anything"?

When I did my coaching badge level one the instructor spent time with us explaining how "unlucky" can be misused with youngsters. Obviously you're trying to encourage them and let them have fun but saying "unlucky" when they have done something fundamentally wrong is not helping them. You need to find a way of correcting the mistake without upsetting or discouraging (not easy, trust me). So is our xG fail bad luck, bad skill, inflexible coaching or a mix of the last two (if you accept that "unlucky" is really an outlier where a really stupid deflection happens or the ref gets in the way)?

For me the answer lies with the Villa game. An xG of 2.44 yet at no point did we look like scoring. A mixture of an opposition keeper in very good form and lots of shots from the wrong place (long range, on the turn when covered) meant that we were always in for a frustrating evening. xG doesn't take into account just how good Martinez has been since signing for Villa, nor that this restricted our attackers to poor decisions, nor that the coaching staff appeared unconcerned that we were mostly happy to hit it at the keeper (or if they were, they failed to get the message over adequately).

Now, what would make an interesting and well researched article would be to analyse the reasons why we underachieved in each game that we did, seeing as it is an obvious pattern, but that would take a long time, lots of work and potentially not leave you with such a dramatic headline.

However, I note [MENTION=38333]Swansman[/MENTION] 's post with interest. On the positive (and please note Swanny that Monday has not shifted me back against Potter, I genuinely can see improvements over the last few weeks still) there is the physical conditioning (noticeable that we kept up with Leeds on a bad pitch). That bodes well for the future. But Bielsa is also a coach who has got the most out of an average striker. Bamford had a career as a journeyman Championship striker, mostly on loan. Now he's already beaten Maupay's best tally with 13 games to play. So you can coach a striker - or, if you can't, then you can give him better quality chances. That may be the actual difference. Bloom's risk will be whether he caves in to demands for a £50 million striker (VERY unlikely) or whether he gambles that just as we're about a year behind Leeds in approach play, that year will lead to us creating chances we simply cannot miss.

Is £50m enough? Timo Werner's xg is much worse than Maupay's and Martial and Richarlison are worse as well.

 

[GT49er]

A decent striker?

No, not that. Some flaw in the playing plan somewhere. Although obviously better players in all positions would improve the team.

 

[BN41Albion]

Exactly.

There’s a reason why all elite clubs now have sports data science team and specialists poring over every metric through a season. Not just football either, most sports.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Matty Ryan being replaced wasn’t on a whim, probably very significant data analysis was used to build a case as well as feedback from coaches.

Football may have a lot of money, but it’s not a charity. They hire data science teams for a reason.

Exactly.

People saying 'sod xg stats, I want more goals and points' don't seem to realise that the xg stats just back up, at it's simplist level, pub chat: fans discussing the ins and outs of a game after it's finished - where it went right/wrong, why the season's going right or wrong overall, etc.

Surely all football fans analyse a game once it's over to cartain extent?

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

But there is a lot to it. These stats are interesting because it shows how close a team like us is from being much higher up the league, and highlights where we need to invest to make that happen.

They also highlight just how shit some teams are, and how much further away from climbing the table they are. Palace are examples of this, and I don't just say that because they're rivals. They've been stuck around the same position since they arrived in the prem and the stats show they are miles from changing that. Yes, we've also been stuck down the bottom end since we arrived in the prem, but the stats show we are much closer to changing that than they are with one or two additions rather than wholesale changes to style and personnel being needed. Whether we are able to capitalise on the stats we're seeing and continue building with one or two shrewd signing remains to be seen, and obviously we've got to make sure we stay up too, or its all completely out of the window again for however long.

Long and short of it is that the xg stats show that we are building, or have been since GP took over, whilst clubs like Palace and Newcastle certainly have not been.
We are excruciatingly close. You'd expect and experienced pro like lallana to take at least one of those 2 great chances the other night for example. Some top, top draw saves by the villa keeper in another battering by us the other week. That's 5 points better off already, and we're sitting pretty in mid table right now.

IMO it's very simplistic to dismiss stats in football. Analysis is a huge part of the game.

I glance at them but realistically they tell me little that I don’t know already, by watching the game.... (apologies if that sounds arrogant)

Sorry old fashioned....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

Deleted

 

[zefarelly]

FFS it’s an example obviously, this lot need an empty net or a fluke, and even then an empty net becomes an issue re Spurs at home.

Anyhow did you not enjoy those to crackers against West Ham then

What did I say last night . .. make an 'example' and get ripped to shit for it.

which ever way you look at it, as a collective, we're not quite there. a good striker is the obvious requirement, as it has been for years.

 

[zefarelly]

Exactly.

People saying 'sod xg stats, I want more goals and points' don't seem to realise that the xg stats just back up, at it's simplist level, pub chat: fans discussing the ins and outs of a game after it's finished - where it went right/wrong, why the season's going right or wrong overall, etc.

Surely all football fans analyse a game once it's over to cartain extent?

In the pub with mates and a few pints, leave it there and move on.

not pouring over tedious stats on spread sheets all week.

old fashioned, yes. but we ( well most of us) still live in a variable natural world, sanitisation of sport is killing it.

 

[zefarelly]

Is £50m enough? Timo Werner's xg is much worse than Maupay's and Martial and Richarlison are worse as well.

Is that why Richarlison and Werner have scored 10 goals each ?

 

[A1X]

What I think this shows (and some of us have warned about for a while, is you simply cannot do the Premier League "on the cheap". We've tried this so far, especially up front, and rather than spending money on one proven striker we've tinkered with cheaper options (Locadia, Andone, Maupay, Ali J, Connolly), and while this has just about kept our heads above water to this point there's no guarantee it will continue to do so, indeed it might not even do so come this May.