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On understat, they are 9th on expected points, the lowest of 3 teams (City, Newcastle, Forest) on 31. Their xG is 30.49 compared to 29 goals scored, while xGA is 24.71 compared to 19 goals conceded. On xGA they are 3rd behind Liverpool and Arsenal, though 4 xG difference. In terms of goals conceded, currently joint 2nd, one goal behind Arsenal. Their individual results don't look that fortunate to me, only the wins against Liverpool and United are a big surprise relative to the xG. A couple of other wins, the margin is much greater than the xG would suggest.
I think there's a few other games where you can look at xG and see they've not necessarily got totally lucky but that things have at least gone nicely for them.
A very rudimentary way of doing it, but I think if 2 teams play a match and are within 0.50 xG of each other then it's not a clear cut and obvious win should either side get the victory. This is just my own way of looking at that in shorthand terms, nothing statistical about it. My reasoning behind that is that if there's less than a goal between the teams on xG, even when rounding up then there's likely to be less than a goal between them on the actual scoresheet too, i.e. a draw.
So if a team registers 0.85 more than their opponent I'd be saying it's near enough to 1 so a one goal win seems about right, but if they got 0.3 more than opponent it's closer to a draw.
Anyway - based on this shitty "model" if you can even call it that,
Bournemouth H = -0.67 xG, closer to losing than drawing +1 point
Liverpool A = -0.58 xG, won when they were more likely to lose +3
Chelsea A = -0.61 xG, closer to losing than drawing +1
United A = -0.82 xG, won they were closer to losing +3
Brentford A = +0.19 xG, won when they were closer to drawing +2
Tottenham H = +0.24xG, won when they were closer to drawing +2
All the other games were within line of what that extremely basic way of looking at it might expect. There have been zero games where they've registered more than 0.50xG than their opposition and failed to win in the way Chelsea and Bournemouth did against them. There have been zero games where their opponents have beaten them when the xG was within 0.50 like they did to Brentford and Spurs. There has been nothing at all going against them to extent that the United/Liverpool matches went for them.
Actual expected points doesn't work like that of course, it looks at every individual shot rather than cumulative xG.
Still, I don't think it's completely awful, my method would put them on an overachivement for sure and it would highlight teams that have done that where it's been obvious. It's exaggerated compared to the expected points when done properly but it would be as it's so basic. A 12 point gain on my simple method, 8.67 with what I trust is the proper way of doing it on Understat.
You can definitely say that at least one of the Brentford or Spurs wins could have been a draw, won the "xG battle" both times but only very narrowly. There's no great injustice, just 2 tightly fought wins there. Or perhaps one of the Chelsea/Bournemouth draws could have been a loss, again nothing shocking, but on another day they very much could have lost either or both.
They're the ones you could perhaps look at to add to the more obvious United/Liverpool matches where they were fortunate to get as many points as they did.
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