ExiledAjax

To be fair, the frosty opening is in response to a bunch of questions about Baker that he's got neither the standing nor information to answer. Conway's is fun as well. Biggest takeaway? That the senior players still make the young lads take part in credit card roulette for meals out. Outrageous behaviour from the monied lads.

It stands for "Expected Goals". In brief - each shot taken by a team is given a score of between 0 and 1. The closer to 1 it is, the more likely it is to result in a goal. The score a shot is given is derived from analysis of thousands of historical games at all levels. For example a penalty will get an xG score of about 0.78 because history shows that about 78% of penalties are scored. A speculative long range shot might only register 0.01 because only about 1% of that type of shot ever goes in. Essentially it's a refinement of just looking at how many shots or shots on target a team takes, so allowing us to pick out anomalies. Preston are a great example right now. They've been recording 0-0 results with alarming frequency, but their xG scores are pretty normal. That suggests that it's not an impotency of attack that is depriving them of goals but bad luck, good goalkeeping, or a combination of those factors.

xG often gets mis-used to say that a team "should" have won a game or such. However, if you want to consider attacking effectiveness or threat as a whole and across many games, then it's about the best metric we've got. I'm quite happy to look at images like the one posted by @HappyClapper and at tabels and graphs that show xG, and say that yeh, we've got a dangerous attack. When you take that image and compare it to this table of shots and where they are taken: Then you start to see that we're dangerous because we shoot in the box. We're bang in mid-table for total shots taken, but we're 10th for shots in the box and 8th in the 6-yard box, and we're 19th for shots out of the box. So we shoot from close. Then you can look at individual player conversion rates and you see that of the 44 players to have attempted 10+ shots this season we have Conway and Weimann in mid-table for total shots taken (14 and 11 respectively), but they are both much higher up when you rank those 44 by things like shot on target %, shot conversion rate, etc. So the individuals are performing in line with the team, or perhaps it s the other way round. Either way it's not luck. Why? The very good numbers posted so far have largely been without Semenyo's involvement. He's a good player, and fits our play well, but if he leaves I am confident we can continue scoring at a good rate. There's nothing in the stats that suggests we have really suffered in his absence. We saw similar this time last season when he was out with injury. He may improve us, but we're also more than capable of being dangerous without him.

In these early days, yes. Best shot on target conversion rate. 4th best general shot conversion rate. Second highest xG generated from open play. It's a dangerous attack that creates quality chances and finishes them with aplomb. Edit: to add, the attack has been consistent in that threat creation as well. In the 6 league games so far we've seen xG ratings of 1.17, 1.22, 1.53, 0.91, 1.40, 1.73 and 1.92. so almost all above 1 but no single game is dramatically skewing our average of 1.45. An average xG of 0.134 per shot is very good, and compares favourably to the 0.097 of our opponent's shots. Essentially our average shot from open play has a 13.4% chance of becoming a goal, the shots our opponents take has a 9.7% chance of doing the same. That's good. All of these numbers are a good deal better than the averages for the whole of last season. Very. We could also improve by generating more opportunities for our strikers to score. We're effective, and we're clinical in our finishing, but we're not prolific chance/shot creators. We finish many of those we do create, but it's very much quality rather than quantity that is getting our goals scored column up. We weren't all calling for a striker to be signed.

I hope we do arrange a testimonial or friendly with Villa in the summer. In the meantime it might be possible to acknowledge him when we host Lincoln in the Cup? Presume he was on loan there many moons ago.

Yeh I hope this happens if it's something he'd like. I can only echo what others say. He comes across as a great guy, and this must have been a tough decision. I liked his commitment on the pitch, and he was a good servant for us. Villa supporting friends also never had a bad word to say about him. I hope he does very very well in the future.

See my opening post on this thread! And then please read the one a little further down where I apologise for my sweariness and anger.

Just watching MOTD. Can't believe there are still issues in the Prem with kit blends. I find it next to impossible to distinguish Liverpool and Bournemouth in the long camera shot here. All red (and a dark red at that) v all black is commonly known to be problematic for colourblind fans. Football clubs, officials, leagues, and designers all know it. Bournemouth should have worn the blue away kit. Easy solution that doesn't make it shit watching for 12% of the male population.

The relevance is that it shows that we are "clinical" when compared to our competitors. In terms of being "clinical", long shots are shit. Generally they have about a 1-2% chance of going in. If they don't go in you generally cede possession to the other side. Relevant stats are generally limited to shots from inside or outside the box. On that metric yeh we're near the bottom. Ie we don't shoot from outside the box much. That's been a trend for a few seasons now. It used to be an issue under LJ and then Holden, but that was because we weren't creating and scoring the close range shots. We are doing that very well right now, and so now I'd encourage us to continue with it rather than waste our possession with a 25 yard speculation. Hope that makes sense.

The accountants would. I wouldn't, but they would.

This is from before today's games. We're second in the goals/shot on target table and 4th in goals/shot. Interesting that Huddersfield are right with us in both tables.

Yep, in a thread about our finishing I will happily ignore shots and xG against! The infogol graphic demonstrates well our style on a deeper level, that is that our threat on goal tends to come from a few high quality shots. This has been a theme for years. It's persisted from LJ, through Holden, and now into Pearson. We score from quality shots made from good chances and that are finished well. What we've managed to do this season is finish a few more, despite no increase in the actual number of shots or shots on target.

We're scoring with every 6th shot right now. That's mad levels of clinical finishing. By comparison our opponents are scoring with every 9th shot. We're clinical. We're even, dare I say it...******* lethal.

No I don't really worry about that. We're overperforming xG by a small amount, but not by an "oh my god how the hell are we scoring so many!?!?" amount. A regression from actual goals scored to goals equal to xG would mean that we go from our current 1.8 goals per game to 1.5 per game. 1.5 per game is damn good, and should still mean we draw or win most games. Last season our total goals per game was 1.35.

Yet again we have to say that we are actually very clinical in front of goal. Goals/shots is good. Goals/shots on target is good. Goals/xG is good. We're wonderfully attacking and quite fun. 11 goals in 6 league games from just 20 shots on target (xG of about 9). A lack of clinical finishing is not our problem

We do what we do.

As my wife always says "why don't they just pop it in the goal?"

Yep. This is the final game of that suspension. He'll be available for Huddersfield.

I claim my £5.

I'm not sure to be honest. I've got no detail of the nature of our discussions with the EFL or new unit. All I've been told is that we've made submissions that are broadly in line with the comments made in the press by Gould in (I think) January, and that we're watching the Stoke situation with interest.

So far as I am aware the EFL/the new unit are dealing with each Club on a case by case basis. We have made our case, and Stoke have more publicly made theirs. Our 2021/22 accounts will be published in a couple of months' time. I would keep your powder dry until then.

Pop, all I know is that it's in our interest for Stoke to succeed with their £30m impairment gamble.

Just so I'm clear: was Morrell a success in the 2020/21 season when he was playing in the Championship? Will he become a success next year if Portsmouth are promoted in May 2023? Also just to clarify: O'Leary doesn't count as a success because there are secret rules for goalkeepers that says they, unlike outfield players, have to be the No.1 choice in their position at a Championship club in order to be successful? Conway isn't our number 1 striker yet you count him as a success. Pring isn't our number one left back, yet you include him. Why can they be successes from the bench, yet O'Leary isn't? This is the trouble with setting rigid criteria for success, you end up failing them or confusing them or applying them inconsistently to different situations.

So what you're saying...is that our academy is perhaps just about as successful as it should be? Huge if true. Thanks for that by the way. Some of the methodology for measuring successful productivity may be of interest to @Better Red. For example: "An Academy, Centre of Excellence, or other club training structure was counted as having contributed to a player’s development if he was in attendance there at any point up to the age of 18." Shocking to think they have included players who joined an academy at age 16.

The original post states "much to his brothers and fathers disgust". The poor lad clearly has multiple dads (in addition to the usual familial confusions of Gas fans). It's no wonder he's confused about who he is. It must already be tough growing up with a deprived background, but to then be told you can't freely express yourself and be who you want to be? And to be told that by all of your dads. It's cruel. It's 2022. Some people support Bristol City, the greatest football team in the world. Get over it!