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Tactics TFC's Tactical Autopsy Thread
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The team topping this chart have conceded 8 goals in 2 games, and their game against Chelsea alone featured some of the most naive defending I've ever seen, so I wouldn't take this as evidence of a particularly "strong defence", regardless what the account has labelled it as.
As for us, I fail to see how someone could look at the goals we conceded against Brighton and not conclude we have serious defensive problems we need to address as a collective. For both the first two Brighton were able to walk it to Mitoma in our final third unchallenged and pop it in behind our high line. Yes, naive. Yes, capitulation. Yes, same old Ange. And yes, same old Spurs.
We’ve naive players, I wouldn’t say we are a naive team. They are two different things. It’s because we have no experience in the side or nowhere near enough.
I think the Brighton game was our worst game defensively this season, XG wise, an outlier I think, that chart is an aggregate of all our games which averages out our performances.
We’ve also still got the third best XGA in the PL.
weve got a naive manager, that makes us a very naive team.
Brighton's xGA is 3 higher than ours...
What is an xG difference? raG (real, actual goals) - xG?
xG - xGA (expected goals against)
Pretty sure it's just (xG for) - (xG against). So what the team's goal difference would be if all strikers and goalkeepers were bang average.
That what happens when you keep signing high school students instead of proven players in the PL.
Chris Wood > Haaland
His stats last season were outstanding, 14 goals from 11.9 xG in 20.1 full matches. This season 4 goals from 2.5xG in 6.2 matches. And all that playing for Forest.
If you take out penalties, for last season and this combined, Wood has 0.65 goals per 90 from 0.52 npxG (+25%). Haaland has 0.70 from 0.81 (-14%).
Kane is 0.92 from 0.76 (+21%)
And yet there they are in the "strong defence" quadrant. Which was my whole point to begin with - that that graph was pretty useless.
I think it highlights something though. Defence based on pressure on the ball, rather than structural compactness, results in more turnovers and hence fewer shots conceded, but potentially at the expense of being a "big chance" if you get it wrong. Structural compactness can result in more shots but they are generally low xG.
There are 3 teams showing low number of shots conceded + high xG per shot: Brighton, Tottenham and Man City. They are averaging 8.6 shots conceded per match and 0.137 xG per shot.
At the other end, the 3 teams showing lowest xG per shot (Forest, Chelsea and Woolwich) are averaging 13.8 shots conceded at 0.073 xG per shot.
Liverpool and Villa finding the best combination so far:
Team | npxG/npSh | % Opp Poss'n ending in Shot | npSh/90 |
vs Brighton | 0.149 | 8.2 | 9.3 |
vs Ipswich Town | 0.144 | 10.1 | 14.4 |
vs Tottenham | 0.131 | 8.4 | 8.7 |
vs Manchester City | 0.130 | 8.4 | 7.7 |
vs Wolves | 0.128 | 12.4 | 13.7 |
vs Manchester Utd | 0.125 | 9.75 | 12.0 |
vs Crystal Palace | 0.118 | 7 | 12.6 |
vs Everton | 0.113 | 9 | 14.1 |
vs Southampton | 0.112 | 12.3 | 17.4 |
vs West Ham | 0.108 | 10.6 | 14.6 |
vs Leicester City | 0.104 | 11.4 | 18.9 |
vs Brentford | 0.100 | 13.3 | 18.3 |
vs Bournemouth | 0.099 | 10.7 | 12.9 |
vs Newcastle Utd | 0.091 | 11.7 | 16.1 |
vs Fulham | 0.087 | 10.3 | 13.3 |
vs Aston Villa | 0.085 | 9.4 | 10.1 |
vs Liverpool | 0.080 | 6.7 | 9.1 |
vs Nott'ham Forest | 0.076 | 7.9 | 13.0 |
vs Chelsea | 0.073 | 10.1 | 13.7 |
vs Woolwich | 0.070 | 10.8 | 14.7 |
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Lies, damned lies and statistics.Chris Wood > Haaland