Pre match thread

[It's Your Round]

1 minute ago, TRO said:

Barkley, up the arse.

[robby b]

6 hours ago, troon_villan said:

I think if we see Luiz back in the starting line up then he must have reacted well in training this week.  

Dem girls, dem girls, dem girls, dem girls they all love the Ziggyman and Zagamuffin.

[Teale's 'tache]

1 hour ago, alreadyexists said:

I totally agree. I do like stats, but at what point to stats stop predicting what’s actually happening and start becoming something in their own right!? The xG thing is odd... what does it matter what expected goals are, it matters how many you score?

xG really just shows the quality of chances a team creates, it's more useful on a player by player basis for scouting/coaching as much as anything. I don't really get why it's used as a barometer of how a result should of gone, at the end of the day it doesn't matter how good the chances are you create, it's how many of them you take that matters.

[villalad21]

2 hours ago, mjmooney said:

This sort of nonsense boils my piss. **** "xG" - they have EXACTLY as many points as they 'should'. As do we, and every other team. The table does not lie. 

Dean Smith said he is a big believer in xG in his press conference

[Vive_La_Villa]

I like xG. Whilst shouldn’t be taken too seriously it gives you an indication of whether a team is over or underachieving based on big chances. I guess it’s very subjective as to what classes as a big chance but I like the fact we are 5th in goals for and 3rd bottom in goals against. Sort of confirms what we have been seeing from performances and gives a small hope there could be an outside push for top 6. 

Im not sure why it annoys people tbh.

Moving on to tomorrow’s game. Contrary to what Owen has said I expect us to have most of the ball and Brighton playing on the counter (he thinks the opposite). We’ll need to be really switched on not to get caught on break. Definitely one of our weaknesses.

 

[Keyblade]

2 hours ago, mjmooney said:

This sort of nonsense boils my piss. **** "xG" - they have EXACTLY as many points as they 'should'. As do we, and every other team. The table does not lie. 

Deano also brought up their xG. He says it's a good indication of performance levels. I tend to agree. The period in November when we lost 4 out of 5 games I think, we actually performed really well in them and were unlucky to lose a few. Our xG was right up there to reflect that.

[The Fun Factory]

36 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Dean Smith said he is a big believer in xG in his press conference

I want to believe.

[useless]

I had a look at a 'XG' table and according that Sheffield United who are thirteen points from safety shouldn't even be in the relegation zone, and Burnley who are eight points clear of relegation should be in the bottom three.

It probably has it's uses for those in the game, but one of those uses isn't to tell you that team that's near the bottom of the league and that have been near the bottom of the league ever since promotion, and had only won one game at home in 2020 and have only won one at home this season, are in fact quite good and just 'unlucky'.

They've had a few good results of late but fact of the matter is Brighton haven't been very good for a while now, and are where they deserve to be in the table, it's not like they've been much better in previous seasons and this season is some sort of anomaly.

All that said I wouldn't be at all surprised if they beat us tomorrow, it seems almost inevitable as would be typical of some of our results against similar sides this season, but come the end of the season I'd be surprised if they finished any higher than where they are now, which is fifteenth.

[VillanousOne]

I don't understand why Brighton and those dirty feckers Burnley are our bogey teams (Man City and Manure aside).

I know it's a hard league and we can't win every week, but I hope we can get a good run going again even if it means grinding out a few draws.
 

[Tomaszk]

3 hours ago, alreadyexists said:

I totally agree. I do like stats, but at what point to stats stop predicting what’s actually happening and start becoming something in their own right!? The xG thing is odd... what does it matter what expected goals are, it matters how many you score?

 

4 hours ago, mjmooney said:

This sort of nonsense boils my piss. **** "xG" - they have EXACTLY as many points as they 'should'. As do we, and every other team. The table does not lie. 

It has it's place in the game for me. Smith mentioned it again in his pre-match for this game. 

In theory it can help tell you how well you've been playing. How well you've defended and how well you've attacked. It just puts a defined figure on it. Do you need to rip up the plan and try something else? Or are you actually doing OK and the results will come.

There isn't one set rule for "xG", different companies and providers all figure it out slightly differently. But if you watch a 1-1 play out and think team A were much better than team B, it's likely A had a higher xG.

Brighton's xG is very impressive for being so low in the table, and that largely makes sense when you watch them as they look about 500 times better than the likes of Burnley and Newcastle. If they had an Ollie Watkins who hangs around the six yard box when the ball comes, they'd probably have a lot more actual points but their xG would remain the same.

[Keyblade]

20 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

 

It has it's place in the game for me. Smith mentioned it again in his pre-match for this game. 

In theory it can help tell you how well you've been playing. How well you've defended and how well you've attacked. It just puts a defined figure on it. Do you need to rip up the plan and try something else? Or are you actually doing OK and the results will come.

There isn't one set rule for "xG", different companies and providers all figure it out slightly differently. But if you watch a 1-1 play out and think team A were much better than team B, it's likely A had a higher xG.

Brighton's xG is very impressive for being so low in the table, and that largely makes sense when you watch them as they look about 500 times better than the likes of Burnley and Newcastle. If they had an Ollie Watkins who hangs around the six yard box when the ball comes, they'd probably have a lot more actual points but their xG would remain the same.

Weird how lukewarm Maupay's arrival has been. He seems like the type of player who would do well in their system. Good to see Brentford fans were right about Watkins being better and VT's obsession with Maupay was unfounded.

[Tomaszk]

Just now, Keyblade said:

Weird how lukewarm Maupay's arrival has been. He seems like the type of player who would do well in their system. Good to see Brentford fans were right about Watkins being better and VT's obsession with Maupay was unfounded.

He's probably been more down than up, yeah. I'd still much rather have him instead of Wes.

[Keyblade]

9 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

He's probably been more down than up, yeah. I'd still much rather have him instead of Wes.

Think they had roughly the same goals/game ratio which is kind of funny given how much shit Wes got and how much people were pining for Maupay last year.

I like that we have Wes and Watkins. 2 different options. Wouldn't want to be those teams like Brighton and like Sheffield United who just have 3 or 4 of the same striker just with varying ability. 

[Vancvillan]

8 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

 

It has it's place in the game for me. Smith mentioned it again in his pre-match for this game. 

In theory it can help tell you how well you've been playing. How well you've defended and how well you've attacked. It just puts a defined figure on it. Do you need to rip up the plan and try something else? Or are you actually doing OK and the results will come.

There isn't one set rule for "xG", different companies and providers all figure it out slightly differently. But if you watch a 1-1 play out and think team A were much better than team B, it's likely A had a higher xG.

Brighton's xG is very impressive for being so low in the table, and that largely makes sense when you watch them as they look about 500 times better than the likes of Burnley and Newcastle. If they had an Ollie Watkins who hangs around the six yard box when the ball comes, they'd probably have a lot more actual points but their xG would remain the same.

People who are annoyed by stats not being completely predictive shouldn't look at stats. Each individual stat is just one of many metrics you can use to make decisions when trying to predict an outcome.

It's like people who complain that political polls aren't completely accurate - they don't understand things like margin of error, biases is collection methodology and dozen other mitigating factors that are attached to any stat.

These numbers are very useful, but if they actually had true predictive value on their own (without other stats, context, etc) we wouldn't have things like a betting market or a stock market.

If you hate xG, the problem isn't the stat, it's your interpretation of it.

[useless]

I think it's other people's interpretation of 'xG' that people find annoying. If you're near the bottom of the table and have been near the bottom the table consistently for a while then that's where you deserve to be, having a high 'xG' doesn't change that, it just means that you're not very good at taking your chances, and by the same token if your highter than your 'xG' would suggests then your doing well at taking your chances, doesn't mean that you should be lower down the table,  using that kind of logic is no different from saying that a team should be further up or down the table based on possession stats.

I can't see that it tells you anything new that shots on goal doesn't already show, the name even seems contradictory, how can something be called 'expected goals' when it's measuring chances that have been missed, you can't expect a goal to be scored when it's already been missed. And I say football's way too nuanced to accurately predict when a should have been scored or not, there are so many factors, like a player's mental state at any given moment, not just of a player taking a shot, but also the opposition players trying to stop him, weather conditions, fatige, niggling injuries, and so on.

And to end my brilliant post on a generous and forgiving note, yes i'm sure that xG does have it's uses when used in conjunction with other stats, but in isolation you can't use it to prove that a team is in a false position, perhaps over one or two games, but not over a large chunk of the season.

[Teale's 'tache]

I think most peoples annoyance is not with xG itself, more how it is used in the media generally. It has value for coaches and scouts who understand it and know how to use it in context, the media tend to just use it to say teams were 'lucky', or to fit any other narrative they want to push. That is probably what winds people up about it.

Brighton are going to be tough, they are a decent team in decent form, but not without weakness as their position in the league shows. A weeks recovery/preparation should help us, looks like they will be missing a few players as well, so it will be interesting to see how Smith plays it in terms of selection, but it's good that he has these options now. 

[useless]

On the match itself I have a bad feeling about it, it's a game we should have a very good chance of winning if we perform at our best, but it's also the kind of game that we've been prone to lose this season, maybe on some level without even realizing it we can be a little over confident for these kind of games, and just our luck that they're probably as confident now after beating Spurs and Man Utd as they've been in a long time.

[Mic09]

10 minutes ago, Teale's 'tache said:

I think most peoples annoyance is not with xG itself, more how it is used in the media generally. It has value for coaches and scouts who understand it and know how to use it in context, the media tend to just use it to say teams were 'lucky', or to fit any other narrative they want to push. That is probably what winds people up about it.

For decades football fans have been saying "we were the better team and they just got lucky".

xG is nothing more but a statistical representation of that very statement.

What's people's problem with it?

[Mjvilla]

11 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Moving on to tomorrow’s game. Contrary to what Owen has said I expect us to have most of the ball and Brighton playing on the counter (he thinks the opposite). We’ll need to be really switched on not to get caught on break. Definitely one of our weaknesses.

 

I think this is based on the Brighton of last year and maybe a bit at the start of this year. They definitely did used to keep the ball well. They have changed style from the few times I've seen them this season. (Which shows the excellent research of the well paid pundit)

Certainly more willing to let the opponent have the ball and break quickly. Both goals scored at VP were like this. I think Deano will have learnt some lessons from that game. They are missing a couple of key components for today too.

Lamptey was obviously key to the way they played with his pace down the right. Webster, too, likes to drive forward from the defence and he is a big loss for them. I think it'll mean Ben White and Dan burn will go centre back alongside dunk. Ben White looks very capable of doing the Webster driving forward, so we have to be aware of that.

I do, however, think we can get at them down the channels. I think Ollie will cause them troubles in this respect as he likes to run the channels. Is Dan burn the quickest? I know he's very tall and looks abit ugly at times but can be effective in the air. 

Tough Game, but certainly a winnable one. Keep that odious little twirp maupay quiet and look after Mac Allister (he looks a player to me) and we should be good. Think Nakamba may start to keep Mac Allister quiet, which would be a good move. 

 

[mjmooney]

Coulda shoulda woulda. If my aunt had bollocks she'd be my uncle. 

I have no problem with xG (and stats analysis generally) in itself. It helps in working out what we're doing wrong, and where we need to improve. But what happened, happened. Every single team is exactly where they deserve to be. Even though there wasn't this level of scrutiny in 1980-81, the pundits still went on about how technically fantastic Ipswich were. None of it meant a damn thing. Villa were better. Why? Because we ended up with more points at the end of the season.