Take Sainz out of Norwich and they have nothing up front. It also depends too on who takes the corners that teams score from, a LB taking a corner or a Rothwell won’t count on attacking player stats I looked at Azaz and immediately I thought I bet he is the corner taker, I googled it and sure enough he is. I look at all those groups of players, give me a free swap with any of the others and I would pass
I think people misunderstand how many shots it typically takes to score goals. Even really good chances are missed far more often than they’re scored. All football fans think their team should score more. The xg knockers out there should look at the facts! Truth is our xg aligns pretty much with our actual goals this year. If people think we should be scoring more then we need to be creating more. Except of course we are scoring more than any other team in the division, because we create more. We have the best goal difference, the best expected goal difference (by a distance), most shots etc etc etc. We’ve had a bit of bad luck (and a few too many keeper howlers) and Sheffield united have ridden the waves of good fortune. Nothing more to it than that.
With regard to assessing who has the best front line. It’s interesting stats from Aski (as always fella) but the challenge is comparing what the attacking units have produced as opposed to what opportunities they’ve had. A good forward line that’s starved of the ball won’t out perform, in absolute terms, a weaker forward line in an otherwise dominant team. xg helps a bit with that as it shows conversion efficiency - but still doesn’t tell you whether an individuals xg is lower because his movement just wasn’t good or because his team never set him up. personally I think assists is an over-rated stat. As risty says, dead ball guys get assists and it rewards the last guy to touch the ball before a scorer… whether it was a 2 yard sideways pass or an inch perfect cross. Often the guy who ‘made’ the goal is unrewarded. my personal view is we have the best attacking unit in the league (as a squad at least) I do think our 9/10 positions could be improved a bit - although our current 10 is picked for his off the ball work more than his on the ball stuff. Eg Hamer would score and create more than aaronson but we wouldn’t force errors and win the ball back so much with him.
It’s not just the likes of me that says we need to be more clinical in converting our chances created, Farke has voiced it as did Bielsa regularly (so we’re in fairly decent company), and it is highlighted more in the tight games like Preston and Blackburn where we drop points. “Assists” is a BS stat as it depends on the quality of the forwards and XG is just subjective bollocks (imo).
im well aware you think xg is bollox. It has obvious weaknesses it’s just better than shots and shots on target. The one thing it isn’t is subjective. It’s pretty much the opposite. It’s based on historical fact. It was brought in as a measure to ‘help’ those fans who think their team should have been 4 up at half time because they had 4 shots. As for managers wanting their teams to be more clinical. I think you’ll find every manager whose team didn’t win will say that. it’s also actually been true in previous years that our actual goals underperformed our xg (sadly quite a bit of that, though not all, was bamford). Our nadir was probably under marsh where we missed countless sitters and an equal number of defensive howlers. It’s not this year. We’re average. Not good not bad. I’m sure Farke would like us to be above average. So would I. under Bielsa, marsh and farke we are/were vulnerable to the counter, so we give up fewer opportunities but they tend to be good ones and sides seem to take them against us. Maybe the ‘clinical’ nature of the (seemingly lesser skilled) opposition makes it look like we struggle in comparison. My view is that with possession football, clear cut chances are harder to fashion. Hey at least we have common ground on assists
du du du du xg increase Expect to hear that when Oxford register their first shot in the 88th minute It's the small wins
I'd say the bookies make billions a year out of punters. The bookies use the stats (including xg) to set their odds and let's face it, they usually win. That's why Leeds are odds on to win the league and promotion. I'd trust the bookies odds over @Leedsoflondon and @Eireleeds1 eye test.
Wont disagree with anything you said there Milky. It was just a pure numbers comparison, done off the cuff. Way to much research needed to make it anywhere near meaningful
Never a truer word spoken. Beginning of last season, had a discussion with Jammy about Bamford's conversion rate and I just asked the question if failing to get a shot on target from within the 6 yard box 58% of the time, or whether scoring 35% of all your shots from within the 6 yard box was a good or bad rate of return. Those figures related to Erling Haaland where he scored a total of 36 league goals from 35 league games. Haaland had 19 shots from within the 6 yard box that season and scored with 7 of them. 11 of those shots didn't even hit the target but went wide or over the goal. Harry Kane who was second top goal scorer that season, did remarkably better, scoring 9 goals from his 15 shots from within the 6 yard box, whilst Ivan, who was the 3rd highest goal scorer, was only just slightly better than Haaland, scoring 8 from 19 shots within the 6 yard area, with 6 of those shots failing to actually hit the target. So from a total of 38 shots from within the 6 yard box, both Haaland and Toney failed to hit the target 44% of the time, had their shots saved or blocked 17% of the time, and managed to actually score 40% of the time, or from within the 6 yard box, they need 5 chances to score 2 goals. Of course though any of our players fail to score from within the 6 yard box, then its because he's crap Figures from last seasons Championship Only one club managed to score more than 40% of their chances from within the 6 yard box, that being Watford. Norwich and Sunderland were the only other clubs who managed to score more than 35% of their chances from within the 6 yard box . Sheff Wed were the worst at converting chances inside the 6 yard box into goals, scoring just 14.29%. We were just above average converting 31.75% of our chances from within the 6 yard box. If we had the the same conversion rate as Coventry, who were the 4th highest that season, then we would have scored 21 goals from our 63 chances from within the 6 yard box, instead of the actual 20 goals we scored.
I was going to post the xg diagram (but couldn’t be arsed ) where each segment of the pitch has an xg (based on historical fact, not opinion). Once you get outside the box the likelihood of shots going in drops exponentially. I think once you get to 22-25 yards it’s something like 3% Even if it’s central. So when everyone shouts ‘shoot’… it’s less than 1 in 30 that go in. It’s why so many teams play keep ball…to try and get a ‘better’ opportunity. Passing stats are up, and shots from outside the area down from the football we grew up with.
Think I've written two articles on here about why teams aren't shooting as often from outside the penalty area. Last season for the Championship 3.98 % of shots from outside the box ended up as goals. Then again I think we are both preaching to the converted, its all the other heathens that need to understand what we are telling them
I know bud. There’s no hope for them. To be fair they’d have to read our lengthy monologues to get it, and I can’t blame them for thinking life’s too short
If we’d never had Bielsa, we would not have had PL money, we would not have afforded the players we currently have so Farke would have inherited an average Championship team and his weaknesses would be magnified
Or conversely, if we never had Bielsa, we would not have the PL money so someone like Farke (with two promotions to his name), might not have wanted a job at a mid table championship team so we might still be employing the likes of Steve Evans.
