SHA Small Heath Alliance

We made the play offs

JohnP 13:24, Tue 5 May

Bluesince62 F.E.A.   -1
Replying to lowercaser   14:52, Tue 5 May
lowercaser
Just shows what utter b*ll*cks all this xg stuff is!

^^ This - a totally subjective 'stat'. Utterly meaningless.

I do chuckle when you have fans of clubs going "But...but... we were better on xG!". Yeah? So what? Do they give points for being better on xG? Nah, didn't think so.

This basically. As ever, not a bad tool if used in context, but you then get dweebs claiming they were the better side and 'shud of won' because of it.
Up the feckin Blues
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newblue   0
Replying to Rab C Nesbitt   14:58, Tue 5 May
I suppose it’s arguable that in a few games (particularly at home) we should have won quite a few games we drew. However, the best performance indicator as it turns out is the table. I think it reflects the season we had. Could have done better but we weren’t far off doing worse either. Getting into the play offs would have flattered us, even if the last play off place was a bit of an open goal, which we fluffed Kyogoesque.
‘Comically negative’ - Colin Robinson
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Bagel   1
Replying to Bluesince62 F.E.A.   15:11, Tue 5 May
Bluesince62 F.E.A.
lowercaser
Just shows what utter b*ll*cks all this xg stuff is!

^^ This - a totally subjective 'stat'. Utterly meaningless.

I do chuckle when you have fans of clubs going "But...but... we were better on xG!". Yeah? So what? Do they give points for being better on xG? Nah, didn't think so.

This basically. As ever, not a bad tool if used in context, but you then get dweebs claiming they were the better side and 'shud of won' because of it.

a. it's about as objective as humanly possible
b. it's basically a quantitative measure of 'we had the better chances/should have scored four today' which is a conversation everyone has with their mates
c. it's kinda useless on a game by game basis but has excellent predictive properties over a long time frame

it's a very useful stat that people wilfully misunderstand in order to call it 'bollocks' 'cause it wasn't around when they were a kid.

Outliers do not prove the stat is nonsense, by the way. Something having a 20% probability and happening doesn't mean that probability is fake
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Snoop   0
Replying to Bagel   15:21, Tue 5 May
Bagel
Bluesince62 F.E.A.
lowercaser
Just shows what utter b*ll*cks all this xg stuff is!

^^ This - a totally subjective 'stat'. Utterly meaningless.

I do chuckle when you have fans of clubs going "But...but... we were better on xG!". Yeah? So what? Do they give points for being better on xG? Nah, didn't think so.

This basically. As ever, not a bad tool if used in context, but you then get dweebs claiming they were the better side and 'shud of won' because of it.

a. it's about as objective as humanly possible
b. it's basically a quantitative measure of 'we had the better chances/should have scored four today' which is a conversation everyone has with their mates
c. it's kinda useless on a game by game basis but has excellent predictive properties over a long time frame

it's a very useful stat that people wilfully misunderstand in order to call it 'bollocks' 'cause it wasn't around when they were a kid.

Outliers do not prove the stat is nonsense, by the way. Something having a 20% probability and happening doesn't mean that probability is fake

To balance that, it isn't just people wilfully misunderstanding it in order to call it bollocks but also people misusing it which then provokes the objections to it.
Nobody should be rating a player based on their xG in a single game, or even a short run of games. And yet they do.
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Tandy   0
Replying to Rasputin   15:25, Tue 5 May
Just shows what utter b*ll*cks all this xg stuff is!

Only if you use it to measure the wrong things, like this article does and most people do.

The only thing it’s good for is to see whether your strikers are under or over performing. Things always regress to the mean.
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Charcy   0
Replying to Rab C Nesbitt   15:51, Tue 5 May
Rab C Nesbitt
newblue
Rab C Nesbitt
It does give an indicator of over performing or underperforming teams though. vile were massively over performing there xG stats upto February and were in the title race upto then. Now they’re getting results their performances merit

Yep, shouldn’t be taken ‘literally’ because games are ultimately decided by goals scored (and not scored). But it’s a decent indicator of how you should perform, and one of the things it suggests is that our strikers haven’t come up with the goods, which should surprise none of us.
People poo pahed it last year when I linked we weren’t as dominant as the table suggested upto January/February, especially away. That aligned with what my eyes saw.

A lot of people complained we never crossed it last year too, now we cross it too much.
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number8   -2
Replying to Tandy   15:52, Tue 5 May
In my simple mind, I could understand it more if xG were in whole numbers, as you can't score part of a goal. Hence why xG of 1.35 for example doesn't really compute for me.

So many variables on what constitutes a good chance as well.
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Charcy   0
Replying to number8   15:53, Tue 5 May
number8
In my simple mind, I could understand it more if xG were in whole numbers, as you can't score part of a goal. Hence why xG of 1.35 for example doesn't really compute for me.

So many variables on what constitutes a good chance as well.

Don't you do numbers for a job?
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Rasputin   -2
Replying to Snoop   16:19, Tue 5 May
Snoop
No - It is purely a representation of how likely a shot is to go in from a certain position and game scenario.

To me, that is the obvious problem with it. The base data is flawed, as is pretty much is subjective if you are assigning a likelihood to whether a shot goes in
"A good man always knows his limitations"
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Le Mod   0
Replying to Rasputin   16:24, Tue 5 May
It's based on the shots that have happened in the past and whether they went in or not, it's based on stuff like distance, angle, body part, keeper position, pressure from defenders, speed of ball etc etc

Obviously there is still an element of subjectivity in some of that but it's much better than using 'shots on target' which really is pretty meaningless. It's just a tool.
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number8   0
Replying to Charcy   16:25, Tue 5 May
Yes, but they tend to add up according to set rules and calculations, not intangible definitions.
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Alfvoy   0
Replying to Le Mod   16:25, Tue 5 May
Does it ever factor in the player taking a shot? A central defender or a centre forward taking a shot from the same position surely has a different probability of ending in a goal?
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Oldham M   0
Replying to Le Mod   16:27, Tue 5 May
Yeah I don't get why people find it complex. It's analysed from thousands and thousands of data sets. If a player takes a shot from a certain spot and a goal would result 30% of the time from there, it would equate to 0.3. If you had 5 shots your xg would be 1.5.

I don't think it's useful on it's own, but it helps paint a picture. Like I said before, context.
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Le Mod   0
Replying to Alfvoy   16:28, Tue 5 May
No it doesn't and that's one of the flaws. It basically tells you if you are creating quality chances or not, whether you are restricting quality chances against you, and whether your players are scoring the chances at a rate that is 'normal' based on historical data.
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Oldham M   0
Replying to Alfvoy   16:28, Tue 5 May
Alfvoy
Does it ever factor in the player taking a shot? A central defender or a centre forward taking a shot from the same position surely has a different probability of ending in a goal?

No, but the mean effect of the thousands and thousands of historical data samples smoothes that out. Because within that , a low percentage of shots would have been from that type of player ion that position.
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