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Match PSG v Tottenham Hotspur Wednesday 8pm

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Shadydan said:
Bless, you're emotional because your brain can't accept the concept of a simple formula totally alien to you

I suggest you should do some reading and researching, my fellow Yid
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I suggest you go back and read the edited version of the post you replied to so you can understand how statistics work and how they can be made to twist any narrative or tell any story you want.

Riddle me this gunga-Din.

If XG is so fucking important how come low block teams are so popular?

The entire premise of a low block team is not to create stacks of chances or to have high expected goals. Its to sit in, be hard to break down and if you can nick a goal at the other end from a break or set piece so much the better. And it works that's why so many teams use it as a way to bridge a gap in quality.

A quick co-pilot check will tell you that 40-43% of matches the result goes against XG. So if its a formula for winning its a fucking shit one.
 
Distaste for scouse said:
I suggest you go back and read the edited version of the post you replied to so you can understand how statistics work and how they can be made to twist any narrative or tell any story you want.

Riddle me this gunga-Din.

If XG is so fucking important how come low block teams are so popular?

The entire premise of a low block team is not to create stacks of chances or to have high expected goals. Its to sit in, be hard to break down and if you can nick a goal at the other end from a break or set piece so much the better. And it works that's why so many teams use it as a way to bridge a gap in quality.

A quick co-pilot check will tell you that 40-43% of matches the result goes against XG. So if its a formula for winning its a fucking shit one.
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Low block teams, popular? What teams nowadays exclusively play a low block??

The majority of teams play a high press or a mid block, low block football where teams set out to exclusively contain their opponent is in vogue so I don't really understand your point and more to the point you can't get away with just sitting in a block these days, you need to attack and create chances so your point doesn't really support your argument anyway.

As I keep saying xg is perfect for working out long term trends, it's not an accurate measure of one off matches because it doesn't tell the full story I agree however clubs use the data to work out trends - whether you're winning the xg battle over a period or not normally aligns with the eye test and whether your team is getting better or worse.

Distaste for scouse said:
EDIT : The trouble with stats is you can make whatever you want out of them, they can spin a narrative or pad a report.
I work with them all day every day. You can always find a stat to manipulate to tell a good or bad story.

An example, the PSG game approaching the end of the first half, the co-commentator says it must worry Thomas Frank that PSG have had I think it was 8 shots to our 1 or something like that. But most of those shots were long ranged efforts that didn't trouble the keeper or were blocked. Meanwhile we were getting in on PSG's right flank time and time again with Spence and Bergval but just lacking a final pass. If anything we looked more dangerous than them in that half. This speaks to my first point about using stats to spin a narrative, because the narrative surrounding us this season is all about chance creation.
Once the media gets it into their tiny skulls they will just rant on and on.

XG will sometimes tell a story of a match and sometimes it won't. And its largely irrelevant because we have won and lost plenty of games in the past with superior or inferior XG with a low block and the low blocking team scores one of their only chances on the counter.
The entire premise of low block throws XG into a cocked hat as a reliable stat.
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And let me just quote this - you've said that we looked more dangerous than PSG in the first half and the model just backs that up anyway :porrohands:


View: https://x.com/xGPhilosophy/status/1993785502017716720?s=19

So all you're doing is contradicting your own point.

If you're buying into a narrative that doesn't support the evidence then that's a you problem, not an xg problem mate.
 
Matt1882 said:
Goal one - rocket out of nowhere.
Goal two - rocket out of nowhere.
Goal Three -a'most out of nowhere.
Goal four - scrappy goal
goal five - penalty.

Not one of their goals actually "opened us up"
They were all freak goals. It is genuinely mad that it happened 4 times. But the fact they scored 5 and we had a higher Xg tells you something was off.
I actually think all 3 of ours were better team goals, although obviously not as easy on the eye as Vitinha's
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You'll never sing that

:frankwhoa:
 
[LINEUP[/LINEUP]
bk_spur said:
My main worry is that PSG are overly reliant on Vitinha. If they don't have him available to face another top team they very well might lose. If he's available though I'd put PSG ahead of Woolwich midfield. I had thoughts yesterday they might meet in the final as well. Seems like theres a very good chance.
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Relax ; we’ll get him in a swap-loan right to buy with an option to extend deal in January. And then he’ll immediately get injured .

Let the rest take care of itself.

# believe.
 
Distaste for scouse said:
If XG is so fucking important how come low block teams are so popular?
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A lot of the time it’s not intentional. Teams get put on the back foot by better teams and it’s human instinct to drop in and go a bit defensive when stuff like that happens.

Teams only set out deliberately with a low block strategy from the offset when there is a huge talent differential and if they allowed space or time then they’d concede more xG than they would by not.

That said, xG definitely has uses and is used by clubs/managers but isn’t really a good predictive tool game by game because you could have several great chances on paper fall to a CB or one great chance fall to Kane .. it doesn’t take stuff like this in to account.
 
Shadydan said:
Yeah I don't think people go through games and note down the xg like you say, it's a good tool to analyse the game state after the match though

As I always say it's best used to work out trends so it's better to use it over time as opposed to an isolated match because it's very accurate in that sense.
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Once you're aware of the xg after the match, how is that information useful? It's going to vary depending on the quality of opponent and whether they sit deep and are difficult to create chances against. There's factors that it doesn't allow for.
 
McCOYS said:
Once you're aware of the xg after the match, how is that information useful? It's going to vary depending on the quality of opponent and whether they sit deep and are difficult to create chances against. There's factors that it doesn't allow for.
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For me it's a bit of fun, I don't really look at post match xg and form a conclusion about the match itself because isolated matches don't really tell the full story. I use it to work out trends instead - Rolling xg is a good one for example

spurs-rolling-xg-for-and-against-since-2017-18-in-pl-768x432.jpg


Because if you're winning your xg battles more often than not it means you're doing the right thing and you will eventually get your rewards, if you're losing it then you will eventually get punished.

I bought this up before the Villa match saying I was concerned by our underlying stats and people jumped all over it because they didn't like what they were hearing but I was proved right because our form since then has been 2-2-4 (all comps) and 1-1-3 (in the Prem)
 
Shadydan said:
For me it's a bit of fun, I don't really look at post match xg and form a conclusion about the match itself because isolated matches don't really tell the full story. I use it to work out trends instead - Rolling xg is a good one for example

spurs-rolling-xg-for-and-against-since-2017-18-in-pl-768x432.jpg


Because if you're winning your xg battles more often than not it means you're doing the right thing and you will eventually get your rewards, if you're losing it then you will eventually get punished.

I bought this up before the Villa match saying I was concerned by our underlying stats and people jumped all over it because they didn't like what they were hearing but I was proved right because our form since then has been 2-2-4 (all comps) and 1-1-3 (in the Prem)
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Looking back at the attacking stats on Google for the Villa match we had three shots on target and scored one of them. Villa had two shots on target and scored them both. We obviously didn't shoot well enough to score our three chances or it would have been a 3-2.win.
 
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