Finishing isn't a thing

[JPRouve]

The thread doesn't seem to be about the best goalscorers being the best finishers though, but that "finishing" isn't a skill.

Both positioning and finishing are important. I'd probably even accept the former as more important, because ultimately you can't score if you're not in a position to do so, but if you've got two players regularly getting into scoring positions, but one is better at finishing, he'll score more goals.

Your answer to my post was about the best goalscorers, here is what you said:

The best goalscorers are better at a) getting into positions to take shots and b) better at scoring from those shots.

Erling Haaland's shots per 90 since joining City have been 3.95 and 4.25. He scored 35 goals and 31 goals respectively.

Darwin Nunez's shots per 90 in those two seasons have been 4.44 and 4.77, and he scored 9 and 11 goals respectively.

The best goalscorers are the best at putting themselves in goalscoring positions but they are not better at scoring from these positions. That's statistically untrue, their goalscoring records are based on volume not quality of finishing.

Now earlier in the thread I stated that finishing was a thing but I added that finishing isn't what separates great goalscorers from the rest, it's the ability to be in goalscoring positions and should have added, volume shooting.


It's one of those things that is polluted by an ancestral wisdom that is wrong.

 

[JPRouve]

I remember when Wayne Gretzky said in an interview once that he mostly didn’t see the players around him, he only saw the spaces.

50 years later, wordings like ‘attacking the space’ is held synonymous with ‘tinfoil hat’ in quarters like these. I guess learning is a slow process.

It's definitely a slow process. What you describe is one of the reasons why I was very excited by the start of Slafkovsky's season last year when most people were very worried, he kept seeing space and trying to either rush or pass in the correct spaces. The other example of this is Laine who is a great finisher but for some reason when he has less luck, he stops shooting which is the opposite of what should happen, he is so used to be an efficient scorer that he gets easily discouraged when it doesn't get in.

 

[Catt]

Read fishing and thought Erik had taken them fishing

 

[T00lsh3d]

I'm a decent finisher. As long as I can use my right leg and you give me space I can turn on a dime and fire off a relatively powerful shot from a standing position. For a while I didn't think that this was special, but then I realised that much better players than me simply can't do that and it's not in their arsenal, which is why I almost never see it. And when people attempt it they almost always fail unless they are specialist strikers or actually high level players.

I’m left-footed, but basically just as good with my right, in fact some things feel better with my right. I never considered that special, until I saw other players use theirs or run round theirs

 

[GoodTimes]

Defending isn’t really a thing, it’s more important to position yourself correctly.

 

[troylocker]

Your answer to my post was about the best goalscorers, here is what you said:


The best goalscorers are the best at putting themselves in goalscoring positions but they are not better at scoring from these positions. That's statistically untrue, their goalscoring records are based on volume not quality of finishing.

Now earlier in the thread I stated that finishing was a thing but I added that finishing isn't what separates great goalscorers from the rest, it's the ability to be in goalscoring positions and should have added, volume shooting.


It's one of those things that is polluted by an ancestral wisdom that is wrong.

Lewandowski is a good example of this, as he was always just a decent finisher. You can be a great goalscorer without being an elite finisher, and you can be an elite finisher without being a great goalscorer. Absolutely, but that doesn't mean that finishing isn't a thing. Being good at finishing will always get you more goals than being an average or poor finisher. If Lewandowski was an elite finisher he'd probably add a 100 goals and maybe even a trophy or ballon d'or to his CV.

 

[Scandi Red]

I’m left-footed, but basically just as good with my right, in fact some things feel better with my right. I never considered that special, until I saw other players use theirs or run round theirs

Guilty as charged! I would rather use my right heel than my left foot

 

[JPRouve]

Lewandowski is a good example of this, as he was always just a decent finisher. You can be a great goalscorer without being an elite finisher, and you can be an elite finisher without being a great goalscorer. Absolutely, but that doesn't mean that finishing isn't a thing. Being good at finishing will always get you more goals than being an average or poor finisher. If Lewandowski was an elite finisher he'd probably add a 100 goals and maybe even a trophy or ballon d'or to his CV.

I totally agree. There are great finishers and bad finishers, it is a thing but I would say that people make a bit too much about it and generally they do it out of context. As an example when a team struggles to score people clamour for a great finisher but in reality what teams generally lack are great volume creators both in terms of passing and movement because volume is the most consistent metric, everything else is all over the place.

 

[Bobski]

Lewandowski is a good example of this, as he was always just a decent finisher. You can be a great goalscorer without being an elite finisher, and you can be an elite finisher without being a great goalscorer. Absolutely, but that doesn't mean that finishing isn't a thing. Being good at finishing will always get you more goals than being an average or poor finisher. If Lewandowski was an elite finisher he'd probably add a 100 goals and maybe even a trophy or ballon d'or to his CV.

Cavani as well I would say, never really a great finisher but his movement and energy to continually get on the end of things made him a huge if erratic threat, and he is on 400 career club goals now, so a great goalscorer on an historic level without being an exceptional finisher.

Finishing matters but if it is the one strength a striker brings they probably won't have a long career at a top club. People point at Haaland but his freak athleticism carries him, guys his size should be not as quick and agile as he is.

 

[Chipper]

Wonder how Andy Cole would have looked on xG? Another one from the past that we unfortuantely don't have numbers for. Would be great to see how he performed in that metric versus Hoddle's assertions.

The claim in itself can also be looked at in different ways I suppose, it was that he needs 4 or 5 chances to score a goal. Would have to define 'chance' too, as scoring from 20%-25% of all attempts isn't bad if we take it to mean that. Haaland has 445 non-penalty shots in league games since signing for Dortmund, 111 non-penalty goals for a 24.9% shots to goal ratio. Only looked at Haaland, first striker that came into my head.

 

[Oranges038]

Defending isn’t really a thing, it’s more important to position yourself correctly.

That's the VVD school of defending right there.

 

[GazTheLegend]

I was having what I thought was an interesting discussion the other day and I thought opening it up to the forum might be fun.

I don't think finishing is a thing. It's meaningless when we talk about strikers. RVN wasn't good because he was able to put the ball in the net from improbable angles, he was good because he got into probable positions

XG kind of backs this. Everyone bar Messi and Ronaldo reverts to their average over time. Why? Because unless you're a god, you'll score what you're expected to over time, regardless of any supposed finishing ability. Getting there is much more important to putting it where.

What about a strikers chances of getting the shot away to begin with?

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago in an argument about Hojlund - someone said something along the lines of "he'd scored around about the sort of number of goals you'd expect him to, given his xG" and all I could think was, well, yes, but you have to be able to have a shot to begin with, so part of xG is actually making the space for the shot and/or creating that xG for yourself. The old boring Office-memed-to-death-cliché of "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" is true, if you never get past a defender to make a shot you're not going to have any xG at -all-. If Ronaldo takes 100 shots with an xG of 0.1 per shot, that's going to be 10 goals. If he takes 10 shots, with an xG of 0.3 on every single shot i.e. triple, he's only getting 3 goals. So being a fantastic finisher is sort of meaningless - it's all about the goals, ultimately.

It's sort of why football has gotten so boring in a sense, because essentially the greatest managers like Guardiola have figured out football, essentially. More possession = overall more shots. Keep those shots inside the box = more xG per shot. More xG is more goals and so on and so forth. And he'll even have calculated the odds per shot of playing the ball out from the back versus hitting the ball long, etc. But you get players that are statistically better at all of the above, you don't need to worry about things like mentality, or the numbers going against you, over time these things work -themselves- out. It's why he was so full of praise for Brentford: for 30 minutes they actually genuinely outplayed Man City, and that's so insanely rare to see.

But as to "finishing" vs anything else, well, it's hard to stop Haaland having a shot, and he seems to score whenever he does, so football really does include finishing, as a combination of basically everything else in your team.

 

[JPRouve]

IIRC an example of an above average finisher was Vardy during his prime, he had a conversion rate above 50% when he hit the target and he used to hit the target at a similar rate than the other top scorers.

 

[Alex99]

I’ve been told that by two of the good finishers I’ve played with, “the through balls you play…..just pass it with pace into the corner of the net like that”. Never fecking works for me But I can whip it accurately to a moving target…..which should be much harder than the stationary goal, almost every time. It’s not fair really

I got told something similar. Also didn't work for me.

The thing with a great through ball is that it probably has a couple of yards grace before it's either too close to the player or too far in front. With a shot, that same margin is the difference between it being too close to the keeper and going wide.

Your answer to my post was about the best goalscorers, here is what you said:


The best goalscorers are the best at putting themselves in goalscoring positions but they are not better at scoring from these positions. That's statistically untrue, their goalscoring records are based on volume not quality of finishing.

Now earlier in the thread I stated that finishing was a thing but I added that finishing isn't what separates great goalscorers from the rest, it's the ability to be in goalscoring positions and should have added, volume shooting.


It's one of those things that is polluted by an ancestral wisdom that is wrong.

You can have a good goalscoring record without necessarily being a great finisher because, by law of averages, getting into the right positions for a team creating lots of chances will see you find the net.

However, the best goalscorers will be the best at both putting themselves in goalscoring positions and at scoring from those positions.

To bring up Nunez again:

He was ranked 4th for xG per 90 (of players with more than 450 minutes). He was ranked 7th for overall xG. However, he was 22nd for goals.

Volume of chances isn't an issue for him. It's his finishing ability.

Finishing is by no means the only piece of the puzzle, and I'd agree it's less important than being able to get yourself in the right positions, but finishing ability is absolutely a distinguishing factor.

 

[Massive Spanner]

This is Attacking the Space levels of madness.

 

[Real Name]

So its all made up!?

 

[Borys]

Hojlund is a decent finisher, but has a lot to learn when it comes to movement, positioning and spacial awareness.
Haaland has only had the one season where he's underperformed his xG though, so it's not just the generation of xG that makes him stand out. It's the combination of good finishing and getting at the end of chances. It's not like it's one or the other. You can also be good at both. If you do both well, your numbers will stand out.

Shooting​

Per90 Stats

		Standard	Expected
Player	Span	Nation	Pos	Squad	90s	Gls	Sh	SoT	SoT%	Sh/90	SoT/90	G/Sh	G/SoT	Dist	FK	PK	PKatt	xG	npxG	npxG/Sh	G-xG	np:G-xG
Erling Haaland	2024-25	no NOR	FW	Manchester City	4.0	9	19	13	68.4	4.76	3.26	0.42	0.62	13.6	0	1	1	4.8	4.0	0.22	+4.2	+4.0
Erling Haaland	2023-24	no NOR	FW	Manchester City	28.4	27	113	50	44.2	3.99	1.76	0.18	0.40	11.9	1	7	8	29.2	22.9	0.20	-2.2	-2.9
Erling Haaland	2022-23	no NOR	FW	Manchester City	30.8	36	116	53	45.7	3.77	1.72	0.25	0.55	12.6	0	7	7	28.4	23.0	0.20	+7.6	+6.0
Erling Haaland	2021-22	no NOR	FW	Dortmund	21.2	22	74	31	41.9	3.49	1.46	0.22	0.52	13.9	0	6	6	17.9	13.2	0.18	+4.1	+2.8
Erling Haaland	2020-21	no NOR	FW	Dortmund	26.7	27	89	47	52.8	3.33	1.76	0.28	0.53	12.8	0	2	4	23.5	20.3	0.23	+3.5	+4.7
Erling Haaland	2019-20	no NOR	FW	2 squads	22.7	29	87	45	51.7	3.83	1.98	0.32	0.62	12.1	0	1	1	8.8	8.8	0.26	+4.2	+4.2

Yeah exactly, but what I think OP meant is that the movement/getting chances factor plays a bigger role than finishing as a skill, and there's a strong argument to support that (with Haaland as explained above - even when he had a poor season he outscored everyone else by quite some distance in the league, just because he accumulates so much xG).

Hojlund had pretty great numbers last season, I doubt he will copy that again, but he might be getting more chances and still turn out better - that's the whole point.

Haaland has only had the one season where he's underperformed his xG though, so it's not just the generation of xG that makes him stand out.

Last season it was actually.

 

[PoTMS]

Surely nobody will post anything sillier than this in the whole thread.



ah, nevermind, someone managed.

I see you're not familiar with the Sean Dyche meme.

 

[cafecillos]

So its all made up!?

Yep. Finishing, passing, defending, shotstopping, even goals themselves... all bullshit.

 

[JPRouve]

I got told something similar. Also didn't work for me.

The thing with a great through ball is that it probably has a couple of yards grace before it's either too close to the player or too far in front. With a shot, that same margin is the difference between it being too close to the keeper and going wide.



You can have a good goalscoring record without necessarily being a great finisher because, by law of averages, getting into the right positions for a team creating lots of chances will see you find the net.

However, the best goalscorers will be the best at both putting themselves in goalscoring positions and at scoring from those positions.

To bring up Nunez again:

He was ranked 4th for xG per 90 (of players with more than 450 minutes). He was ranked 7th for overall xG. However, he was 22nd for goals.

Volume of chances isn't an issue for him. It's his finishing ability.

Finishing is by no means the only piece of the puzzle, and I'd agree it's less important than being able to get yourself in the right positions, but finishing ability is absolutely a distinguishing factor.

The bolded part isn't true, it's statistically untrue. And as I already told you, finishing is a thing, I didn't dispute that, I made a point about top goalscorers they are not better at scoring chances, they are for the most part anywhere between slightly below average to slightly above average among strikers, the big difference is volume. The exceptions last season were the likes of Isak or Mateta who had relatively low volumes, those are signs of good finishing but they are themselves outliers.

 

[Real Name]

Yep. Finishing, passing, defending, shotstopping, even goals themselves... all bullshit.

We've all been living in denial our whole lives.

 

[The_Midfielder]

Finishing is simple ..
Control the ball.. or hit it first time
Create space by your technique
Buy time..
Hit it away from the defender

 

[macheda14]

I think you need to explain how it's 'woke.' Maybe I could call all women facists to help?

People are using woke in football as a tongue in cheek way of saying everything is too modern/hipster/statophile. Like Xg and low blocks etc.

 

[troylocker]

Yeah exactly, but what I think OP meant is that the movement/getting chances factor plays a bigger role than finishing as a skill, and there's a strong argument to support that (with Haaland as explained above - even when he had a poor season he outscored everyone else by quite some distance in the league, just because he accumulates so much xG).

Hojlund had pretty great numbers last season, I doubt he will copy that again, but he might be getting more chances and still turn out better - that's the whole point.

Last season it was actually.

Yes, generating chances and xG is the most important skill for a great goalscorer, but finishing is still important and that's the thing we're discussing here.
Scoring 27 in the prem is good, sure, but that's the pretty much your ceiling if you're a bad finisher.
Haaland scored 36 the season before from the similar xG. Big diff in my book.

 

[Robbie Boy]

Yeah......what?

 

[RedDevil@84]

12 years back or so, there used to be discussions on some forums, possibly on the back of Pep's Barca and some Spanish teams going almost 4-6-0. This was mostly related to how the guys who could put the ball into the net was an outdated concept for a striker and the "modern day striker" was expected to play a larger role in both attack and tracking back and a bunch of other things and being able to score lots and lots of goals was less important.

This thread reminds me of that.

 

[giorno]

This thread sounds like someone had an argument with their partner and came here to vent

 

[GDaly95]

I just finished reading 'Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game's Analytics Revolution' by Ryan O'Hanlon, and I can't shake the feeling that the OP also just finished reading the same book.

​

 

[tomaldinho1]

Finishing is simple ..
Control the ball.. or hit it first time
Create space by your technique
Buy time..
Hit it away from the defender

Am I aiming at the goal?

 

[JPRouve]

I just finished reading 'Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game's Analytics Revolution' by Ryan O'Hanlon, and I can't shake the feeling that the OP also just finished reading the same book.

​

I don't know about that. Finishing isn't a thing.

 

[Alex99]

The bolded part isn't true, it's statistically untrue. And as I already told you, finishing is a thing, I didn't dispute that, I made a point about top goalscorers they are not better at scoring chances, they are for the most part anywhere between slightly below average to slightly above average among strikers, the big difference is volume. The exceptions last season were the likes of Isak or Mateta who had relatively low volumes, those are signs of good finishing but they are themselves outliers.

Within the group of "top goalscorers", do you not think that the ability to finish chances will be a separating factor between a fair few, given that they're all presumably benefiting from a similarly high volume of chances?

That is what the bold refers to, yet you keep completely disregarding finishing ability as something that could be a distinguishing factor between strikers.

For example, Cavani is a "top goalscorer", notorious for his wastefulness, absolutely propped up by the number of chances he had to score, but by the end of their careers, he will almost certainly behind other "top goalscorers", such as Kane, precisely because of his poorer finishing ability.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

I can remember when they first started tracking assists. Because I remember thinking it was nonsense imported from ice hockey and would never catch on.

It’s worse than that. Early assists were very much a vibes based metric. If I pass you the ball on the halfway line and you slalom past 7 players to score, it never appeared as an assist. Which is sensible as while you don’t score without my pass, I didn’t really assist you to score in the grand scheme of things.

Ditto for fouled players for penalties. Under no set of circumstances is that at assist, but it’s counted. Unless you get fouled and take it. At which point it’s not an assist. Probably because it breaks a line of computer code somewhere.

 

[Canucantona20]

Would you rather have Welbeck or RVN 1-1 with the keeper in a goal scoring opportunity ?

 

[OverratedOpinion]

Without being unkind this is reductive silliness born from looking for an interesting idea rather than stumbling across one.

If the point you wanted to make was that positioning or timing your runs or whatever was more important than being good at hitting the target past the keeper then sure, a lot of people would agree.

A striker who can get in good positions constantly and is a below average finisher will score more than a great finisher who can never time his runs well enough to get opportunities.

If you can never find space in midfield then it doesn't really matter how well you strike passes. Being a good passer does still matter, the best midfielders can do both and the best strikers can time their runs, find good positions and finish the ball.

There is no point to be had here I'm afraid.

 

[Annihilate Now!]

This thread sounds like someone had an argument with their partner and came here to vent

Monogamy isn't really a thing.

 

[OverratedOpinion]

This thread sounds like someone had an argument with their partner and came here to vent

It culminated with her dramatically shouting "We're finished!" Before slamming the door.

Didz quietly grumbles "finished ay? We'll see about that."

 

[giorno]

Monogamy isn't really a thing.

been saying that my whole life!

 

[JPRouve]

Within the group of "top goalscorers", do you not think that the ability to finish chances will be a separating factor between a fair few, given that they're all presumably benefiting from a similarly high volume of chances?

That is what the bold refers to, yet you keep completely disregarding finishing ability as something that could be a distinguishing factor between strikers.

For example, Cavani is a "top goalscorer", notorious for his wastefulness, absolutely propped up by the number of chances he had to score, but by the end of their careers, he will almost certainly behind other "top goalscorers", such as Kane, precisely because of his poorer finishing ability.

I see but that's a totally different context to one you responded to and argued against. But yeah anything can separate each individuals within that group, finishing included.

 

[space]

Nonsense

 

[Red in STL]

Monogamy isn't really a thing.

Maybe not in the sheep world, but in the human world not practicing it is likely to be a very painful experience in more ways than one