xG and finishing under ETH

[Revan]

Disallowed goals and offside chances don't count, and we were caught 9 times last night.

Probably because if you are offside, it is not a chance. Similar to how falling in the penalty area without no one touching you does not give you a penalty.

Furthermore, the offsides yesterday was not Villa being lucky. It was their plan of defense, playing very high defense and trying to execute the offside trap, which they are masters of. Luckily, we punished them a couple of times.

I think we were marginally the better team, but they could have easily scored 4 (the two goals, the Evans block and Onana's save). They arguably had the better chances in the match, despite us attacking more than them, which kind of reflects in the xG.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

Probably because if you are offside, it is not a chance. Similar to how falling in the penalty area without no one touching you does not give you a penalty.

Furthermore, the offsides yesterday was not Villa being lucky. It was their plan of defense, playing very high defense and trying to execute the offside trap, which they are masters of. Luckily, we punished them a couple of times.

I think we were marginally the better team, but they could have easily scored 4 (the two goals, the Evans block and Onana's save). They arguably had the better chances in the match, despite us attacking more than them, which kind of reflects in the xG.

This. It's like using high possession stats against a counter-attacking team as evidence of having dominated a game.

 

[Chipper]

Creating feck all.

 

[Leftback99]

Shambolic

 

[baskinginthesun]

Creating feck all.

Annoying too. One thing we do well (which isn't much) is win the ball high up the field. Yet, we do nothing with it afterwards. It's so frustrating to see the press actually work and then someone like Anthony dithers and plays a shocking pass or loses possession again.

 

[Leftback99]

Only better than the 3 promoted sides over the last 12 games.

 

[Eddy_JukeZ]

Only better than the 3 promoted sides over the last 12 games.

It's unreal how bad we are, and some on here are just glossing it over.

We were never this bad under Moyes or Ole. ETH has managed a complete disaster of a season.

 

[Baneofthegame]

Only better than the 3 promoted sides over the last 12 games.

Christ, that’s grim reading.

 

[Raw]

Only better than the 3 promoted sides over the last 12 games.

Genuinely woeful, seeing this after seeing Liverpool break the xG record yesterday is just depressing. It all boils down to the manager really.

 

[Revan]

One thing that I do not buy that the players are shit, is that we are overperforming xPTs both this season and the previous one. While I have not backtested this, from giving some thought, I guess there are a few scenarios where you can get some idea if the player or the manager is at fault.

1) The Pep Guardiola scenario - winning while xPTs matches the real points. Pep has done this a few times. This is the ideal scenario, the manager is implementing the play, the player are perfectly executing it. This is the desirable way of winning, not much luck involved, very sustainable, no need for miracles.
2) The Klopp scenario (probably SAF too) - winning while overperforming xPTs. Quite often this is tactical, giving the players more freedom to express themselves, being gung ho. Needs some luck involved, probably need lots of comebacks. Much more exciting than (1) but not as effective, especially if you have an (1) team in the league.
3) The United scenario - not winning while overperforming xPTs. The moments FC that was attributed to Ole. This is really bad. It either means that a) the manager is not good; b) the players just cannot follow the manager's instruction or c) the manager, despite having the right ideas, cannot communicate them clearly to the players. It is not sustainable and it inevitably goes tits up, when the regression towards the mean happens. With the same manager and players, it won't get much better, so I guess you either spend 10m to sack the manager, or half a billion to replace the players.
4) Chelsea current scenario (or Pep on his first year) - not winning while underperforming xPTs. This is kinda exciting, usually happens when the players are young or too many players signed in a short amount of time, or the manager just signed so need some time for him to be in full sync with players. I would bet this was United in 2005-2006 when Rooney and ROnaldo were showing promise, Evra and Vidic were inconsistent but promising. Usually, better days will come.

Other scenarios are not worth to mention (usually winning while undeperforming xPTs does not happen), and not winning while underperfming xPTs is kinda relegation-form, so not relevant for us (at least not yet).

After 1.5 years of overperforming xPTs, I think we are definitely in scenario (3). Either the coach is not good, or the players are not good (or both). It might well be that the players are not good, but the issue is that even when we sign players that were good, they do not play well here. Varane has been good but not great. Casemiro, arguably the best DMF of this century, has not been great. Sancho who was mentioned next to Mbappe and Haaland as the best young player in the world has been awful. Di Mario was world class, looked shit, then looked world class again. Pogba was world class, came here and was just ok, but world class for France. Even the likes of Sanchez/Young/Darmian looked better when they left. When it comes to current crop of players, all of them seemed to have been better in the previous clubs or for NT, so there has to be a coaching issue. Either our players are dumb to follow instructions, or are cnuts to deliberately not follow them, or the manager is not that good. Probably a combination of all, but something is not right.

 

[TMDaines]

It’s incredible that despite how underwhelming Rashford has been this season, he still marginally leads the squad for goal contributions per 90. Even more staggering though is that Casemiro is in joint second with Hojlund. Martial’s returns are almost identical too, along with Bruno, whose numbers would be even lower without the pens. What a mess the entire attack is.

 

[sglowrider]

It’s incredible that despite how underwhelming Rashford has been this season, he still marginally leads the squad for goal contributions per 90. Even more staggering though is that Casemiro is in joint second with Hojlund. Martial’s returns are almost identical too, along with Bruno, whose numbers would be even lower without the pens. What a mess the entire attack is.

United version of Modern Football

 

[Pogue Mahone]

It’s incredible that despite how underwhelming Rashford has been this season, he still marginally leads the squad for goal contributions per 90. Even more staggering though is that Casemiro is in joint second with Hojlund. Martial’s returns are almost identical too, along with Bruno, whose numbers would be even lower without the pens. What a mess the entire attack is.

Yeah, it’s a shambles.

Now remind us all who is the most highly paid player in our front line, at his peak age and expected to be our highest scorer by a margin?

Hint: He missed the best chance of the season so far to improve those stats by going on a Tequila bender the same morning he was supposed to be at training, preparing for said fixture.

 

[Leftback99]

It’s incredible that despite how underwhelming Rashford has been this season, he still marginally leads the squad for goal contributions per 90. Even more staggering though is that Casemiro is in joint second with Hojlund. Martial’s returns are almost identical too, along with Bruno, whose numbers would be even lower without the pens. What a mess the entire attack is.

Until we replace at least 2 of that front line with better players we've got a big problem. Where the goals were going to come from was a glaring issue before the season started.

No amount of having our ball playing centre back back from injury is going to change it.

 

[TMDaines]

Until we replace at least 2 of that front line with better players we've got a big problem. Where the goals were going to come from was a glaring issue before the season started.

No amount of having our ball playing centre back back from injury is going to change it.

I think it is more a case of a rising tide will raise all ships. The team has looked broken for most of the season, but we still have a lot of good players. If we consistently played the Rashford-Hojlund-Garnacho front three from
now until the end of the season, with a sensible midfield behind them, everybody’s numbers would improve.

 

[Bastian]

bump

what was it tonight?

 

[berbasloth4]

XG is the most pointless stat in football biggest load on nonsense. Stop giving it a thought

 

[Murder on Zidanes Floor]

You can see why we struggle, our passing and decision making is so inconsistent

 

[the hea]

 

[Big Ben Foster]

XG is the most pointless stat in football biggest load on nonsense. Stop giving it a thought

It's not, but like any other stat it shouldn't be looked at in isolation.

 

[bosnian_red]

@bosnian_red

xPts is clearly a pretty meaningless metric when it barely resembles the actual table come the season's end.

We're over a season and a half in here and it's got Newcastle ahead of us the whole time. At what point does that balance out then? We were supposed to finish three places behind them last season, and we finished one above them, and we're currently supposed to be sat six places behind them, when we're actually four above them. For every position it gets right, there's another that's wildly wrong.

xG has it's merits in certain contexts, but given you were waving Everton's 0.1 per chance and West Ham's 0.06 per chance as examples of us being leaky, it's quite clear that you just want to find stats that make us/Ten Hag look extra shit.

As for easily predicting the fall of Newcastle and Brighton, where does the consideration for our fixture congestion and massive injury problems come in?

Of course the likes of Liverpool and City dominate. They're well ran clubs, multiple seasons into their current regime, and have had the time and money to assemble proper squads, and are frequently able to play consistent line-ups, with back-up players not being Anthony Martial or Scott McTominay. We've been a shambles for ten years and have found ourselves heavily reliant on loans and free-transfers to plug gaps in the squad. You're arguing against a straw man by bringing Liverpool up.

For context:

Liverpool have six players with 20 or more PL starts (van Dijk, Alisson, Diaz, Szoboszlai, Mac Allister and Salah). There are a further two with 15 or more (Alexander-Arnold and Nunez).

We have four with 20 or more (Fernandes, Rashford, Dalot and Onana), and a further two with 15 or more (Hojlund and Garnacho).

The only defender that's played with any consistency is a full-back that's ended up covering both flanks, our midfield has been in constant fluctuation, and the attack, as the only consistent element of our squad, is being spearheaded by two under 21s, and yet here you are wondering why we've not pushed on from last season.

As well as these weirdly unfavourable comparisons to the likes of Spurs, Newcastle and Brighton, in which their bad performances are readily dismissed, you're now comparing us to Liverpool, a side that have had the same manager for the past decade, have reached three and won one Champions League final under his leadership, and have been involved in three title races, winning one.

Again, I get we've been crap, and I'll happily agree that we could and should have done better in some games because there are clear issues with the tactical set-up, but what exactly are you expecting results-wise when we're repeatedly having to call upon back-ups to fill the majority of the spots in the starting line-up?

As I said previously, there's a real undertone of "we're Manchester United, we should be winning half our games 5-0 and challenging for the title every year" about a lot of these arguments you're making.

Dragging this convo here and not the general.
@BenitoSTARR

You're misunderstanding the use/value of xPts, xG and the like. It's not telling you where you should finish. It's a representation of the chances you create and concede per game. Logic dictates that better teams create more chances and prevent chances. It's not saying every team must finish there, but it does a decent job of ranking teams in terms of how good they truly are and the level they have reached that season. Newcastle for example, is very inconsistent. But they have performed at a higher level than us on average, even if we have picked up more points. They fully outplayed us when we played them, they have a much better goal differential, they have been more competitive against other big teams until recently than we have been.

The result does not equal the performance. Of course on the day you want to get the result. But what a coach prepares is the performance. The performance is what should be consistent game to game, week to week. The performance is what is more consistent over time. And you would expect that you will get better results the more you have good performances. You would expect bad runs to end if you have good performances. Likewise you expect good runs to end if you have bad performances consistently. All these underlying metrics do is simply point to trends like that. It gives an added layer of analysis, because reading just the end result brings way too much variance on the day and it's easy to have a false position in the league that doesn't represent the level you've actually played at.

Take 19/20. Liverpool won the league by 18 points. Do you think they were a better team than city by 18 points, or did they just go on a really good run of grinding out games and city didn't have some luck in their finishing so they dropped stupid points? It doesn't mean that Liverpool didn't deserve the title, it just means, as we all know, that City on average were still a better side (obviously as they've won every title either side of that season), but that specific season Liverpool went on a hot run and City a cold run. The best team overall doesn't win every competition. There's tons of variance. Underlying metrics do a decent job at cutting through that variance and just representing the actual performances on a weekly basis, looking at the simple stats of creating and preventing chances.

So if my team, United, is 12th in the underlying metrics table, then I am looking at our 6th place position as not entirely a realistic representation of our real level. Maybe there is very little between a few teams and just variance has led to a big discrepancy. But it's not an encouraging sign to say we will be fine long term. If we were 6th in the real table but 2nd or 3rd in the metrics table, I'd be far more encouraged. It would say to me we have been unlucky, that we play well but maybe aren't getting the results our performances deserve.

In terms of giving context to teams, of course it plays a part. You can't look blindly at any stat and post that with no context. I looked past a lot of the shit form last season. The metrics last season had 3rd to 6th or so all very close to each other. So while we were 6th in metrics, it was basically 1 or 2 games difference which is nothing over 38 games, and it said that Brighton, Newcastle, United and Liverpool all played at a similar level. That's pretty fair IMO. And context within that, if 2 of those had no congestion and we had loads of congestion, then it was a big positive and leaned our way. On the other hand .. United now, don't have a specific fixture list any worse than the competition. Spurs and Chelsea have no congestion, but Liverpool, Arsenal, city, Brighton, villa, Newcastle all have European competitions like we did this season. So there's no use of saying fixture congestion as an excuse this season.

Ultimately though. No I'm not expecting a title challenger. I'm expecting competent performances against the sides who are clearly worse. I'm expecting, when we play teams like Newport, Forest, Luton, Bournemouth, Fulham, etc that we control those games. I'm expecting to not concede 20 shots per game against relegation fodder. I'm expecting us to create chances against these teams. Because that's what decent to good sides do, at least once in a while. If we never do it, then it just says we aren't a good side. And if we aren't a decent to good side, then that is on the manager. Because other managers are getting far more out of their players than our manager is getting out of ours. I'm not expecting us to dominate the bottom half sides every game. But we should do it far more than the *never* that we see now. I'm not expecting us to dominate Liverpool or Arsenal or city. But I do expect us to not get battered, to not be played off the park every time we play, to not look like we are playing a different sport to them or basically just park the bus in our box as our only chance at getting a result.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

Dragging this convo here and not the general.
@BenitoSTARR

You're misunderstanding the use/value of xPts, xG and the like. It's not telling you where you should finish. It's a representation of the chances you create and concede per game. Logic dictates that better teams create more chances and prevent chances. It's not saying every team must finish there, but it does a decent job of ranking teams in terms of how good they truly are and the level they have reached that season. Newcastle for example, is very inconsistent. But they have performed at a higher level than us on average, even if we have picked up more points. They fully outplayed us when we played them, they have a much better goal differential, they have been more competitive against other big teams until recently than we have been.

The result does not equal the performance. Of course on the day you want to get the result. But what a coach prepares is the performance. The performance is what should be consistent game to game, week to week. The performance is what is more consistent over time. And you would expect that you will get better results the more you have good performances. You would expect bad runs to end if you have good performances. Likewise you expect good runs to end if you have bad performances consistently. All these underlying metrics do is simply point to trends like that. It gives an added layer of analysis, because reading just the end result brings way too much variance on the day and it's easy to have a false position in the league that doesn't represent the level you've actually played at.

Take 19/20. Liverpool won the league by 18 points. Do you think they were a better team than city by 18 points, or did they just go on a really good run of grinding out games and city didn't have some luck in their finishing so they dropped stupid points? It doesn't mean that Liverpool didn't deserve the title, it just means, as we all know, that City on average were still a better side (obviously as they've won every title either side of that season), but that specific season Liverpool went on a hot run and City a cold run. The best team overall doesn't win every competition. There's tons of variance. Underlying metrics do a decent job at cutting through that variance and just representing the actual performances on a weekly basis, looking at the simple stats of creating and preventing chances.

So if my team, United, is 12th in the underlying metrics table, then I am looking at our 6th place position as not entirely a realistic representation of our real level. Maybe there is very little between a few teams and just variance has led to a big discrepancy. But it's not an encouraging sign to say we will be fine long term. If we were 6th in the real table but 2nd or 3rd in the metrics table, I'd be far more encouraged. It would say to me we have been unlucky, that we play well but maybe aren't getting the results our performances deserve.

In terms of giving context to teams, of course it plays a part. You can't look blindly at any stat and post that with no context. I looked past a lot of the shit form last season. The metrics last season had 3rd to 6th or so all very close to each other. So while we were 6th in metrics, it was basically 1 or 2 games difference which is nothing over 38 games, and it said that Brighton, Newcastle, United and Liverpool all played at a similar level. That's pretty fair IMO. And context within that, if 2 of those had no congestion and we had loads of congestion, then it was a big positive and leaned our way. On the other hand .. United now, don't have a specific fixture list any worse than the competition. Spurs and Chelsea have no congestion, but Liverpool, Arsenal, city, Brighton, villa, Newcastle all have European competitions like we did this season. So there's no use of saying fixture congestion as an excuse this season.

Ultimately though. No I'm not expecting a title challenger. I'm expecting competent performances against the sides who are clearly worse. I'm expecting, when we play teams like Newport, Forest, Luton, Bournemouth, Fulham, etc that we control those games. I'm expecting to not concede 20 shots per game against relegation fodder. I'm expecting us to create chances against these teams. Because that's what decent to good sides do, at least once in a while. If we never do it, then it just says we aren't a good side. And if we aren't a decent to good side, then that is on the manager. Because other managers are getting far more out of their players than our manager is getting out of ours. I'm not expecting us to dominate the bottom half sides every game. But we should do it far more than the *never* that we see now. I'm not expecting us to dominate Liverpool or Arsenal or city. But I do expect us to not get battered, to not be played off the park every time we play, to not look like we are playing a different sport to them or basically just park the bus in our box as our only chance at getting a result.

I mostly agree, but I'll push back on the idea that xG represents chance creation. If you're creating good chances but not taking shots (i.e., dribbling or passing in the box when you should be shooting), that's not going to show up in the xG stats.

 

[bosnian_red]

I mostly agree, but I'll push back on the idea that xG represents chance creation. If you're creating good chances but not taking shots (i.e., dribbling or passing in the box when you should be shooting), that's not going to show up in the xG stats.

Yeah that is true. But it does a decent job at it. Can look at other stats like box entries for and against like this below and see how efficient you are at turning box entries into shots or chances. There will be correlation, but not necessarily exact. You can't fully "statify" football anyway. All used in collaboration with watching it and just an extra layer of analysis though.

 

[Alex99]

Dragging this convo here and not the general.
@BenitoSTARR

You're misunderstanding the use/value of xPts, xG and the like. It's not telling you where you should finish. It's a representation of the chances you create and concede per game. Logic dictates that better teams create more chances and prevent chances. It's not saying every team must finish there, but it does a decent job of ranking teams in terms of how good they truly are and the level they have reached that season. Newcastle for example, is very inconsistent. But they have performed at a higher level than us on average, even if we have picked up more points. They fully outplayed us when we played them, they have a much better goal differential, they have been more competitive against other big teams until recently than we have been.

The result does not equal the performance. Of course on the day you want to get the result. But what a coach prepares is the performance. The performance is what should be consistent game to game, week to week. The performance is what is more consistent over time. And you would expect that you will get better results the more you have good performances. You would expect bad runs to end if you have good performances. Likewise you expect good runs to end if you have bad performances consistently. All these underlying metrics do is simply point to trends like that. It gives an added layer of analysis, because reading just the end result brings way too much variance on the day and it's easy to have a false position in the league that doesn't represent the level you've actually played at.

Take 19/20. Liverpool won the league by 18 points. Do you think they were a better team than city by 18 points, or did they just go on a really good run of grinding out games and city didn't have some luck in their finishing so they dropped stupid points? It doesn't mean that Liverpool didn't deserve the title, it just means, as we all know, that City on average were still a better side (obviously as they've won every title either side of that season), but that specific season Liverpool went on a hot run and City a cold run. The best team overall doesn't win every competition. There's tons of variance. Underlying metrics do a decent job at cutting through that variance and just representing the actual performances on a weekly basis, looking at the simple stats of creating and preventing chances.

So if my team, United, is 12th in the underlying metrics table, then I am looking at our 6th place position as not entirely a realistic representation of our real level. Maybe there is very little between a few teams and just variance has led to a big discrepancy. But it's not an encouraging sign to say we will be fine long term. If we were 6th in the real table but 2nd or 3rd in the metrics table, I'd be far more encouraged. It would say to me we have been unlucky, that we play well but maybe aren't getting the results our performances deserve.

In terms of giving context to teams, of course it plays a part. You can't look blindly at any stat and post that with no context. I looked past a lot of the shit form last season. The metrics last season had 3rd to 6th or so all very close to each other. So while we were 6th in metrics, it was basically 1 or 2 games difference which is nothing over 38 games, and it said that Brighton, Newcastle, United and Liverpool all played at a similar level. That's pretty fair IMO. And context within that, if 2 of those had no congestion and we had loads of congestion, then it was a big positive and leaned our way. On the other hand .. United now, don't have a specific fixture list any worse than the competition. Spurs and Chelsea have no congestion, but Liverpool, Arsenal, city, Brighton, villa, Newcastle all have European competitions like we did this season. So there's no use of saying fixture congestion as an excuse this season.

Ultimately though. No I'm not expecting a title challenger. I'm expecting competent performances against the sides who are clearly worse. I'm expecting, when we play teams like Newport, Forest, Luton, Bournemouth, Fulham, etc that we control those games. I'm expecting to not concede 20 shots per game against relegation fodder. I'm expecting us to create chances against these teams. Because that's what decent to good sides do, at least once in a while. If we never do it, then it just says we aren't a good side. And if we aren't a decent to good side, then that is on the manager. Because other managers are getting far more out of their players than our manager is getting out of ours. I'm not expecting us to dominate the bottom half sides every game. But we should do it far more than the *never* that we see now. I'm not expecting us to dominate Liverpool or Arsenal or city. But I do expect us to not get battered, to not be played off the park every time we play, to not look like we are playing a different sport to them or basically just park the bus in our box as our only chance at getting a result.

I understand it fine.

There are clearly flaws in these metrics when, using Newcastle and us as the examples, they routinely suggest that one is outperforming the other, when the reality has been the exact opposite.

I understand your points about Newcastle's best performances being better than our best performances, them being better than us in the most recent head-to-heads, and even their performances against the "big" sides (although they've been beaten by Liverpool and City twice, and 4-1 by both Spurs and Arsenal this season), but the reality is that we won more games than them last season, and have won more games than them this season, even if the xPts, xG and xGA stats say things should have been different.

I get that consistently good performances are more likely to lead to consistently good results (and we're definitely not putting in consistently good performances), but these metrics are quite clearly not measuring good performances as they are regularly completely unrepresentative of the actual results (or indeed performances).

To give you some other examples, by xPts:

• This season, Brentford (who are 16th) should be ahead of us, and Bournemouth (who are 15th) just behind.
• Last season, Leicester (who were relegated in 18th) should have finished comfortably mid-table (in 12th) while Wolves (who finished 13th) should have finished 19th.
• In 2021/22, Palace (who finished 12th) and Brentford (who finished 13th) should have finished above us (in 6th and 7th respectively)
• Also in 2021/22, Leicester (who finished 8th), Newcastle (who finished 11th) and Wolves (who finished 10th) should have finished just above the relegation zone (in 15th, 16th and 17th, respectively)
• In 2020/21, we should have finished 4th (not 2nd), and Brighton (who finished 16th!) should have been just behind us in 5th.
• In 2019/20, Newcastle (who finished 13th) should have been relegated in 20th, and Spurs (who finished 6th) should have been 12th, while Southampton (who finished 11th) took 7th and Everton (who finished 12th) took 8th, ahead of Arsenal (who actually finished 8th) in 9th.
• Also in 2019/20, Watford and Bournemouth (who were relegated in 19th and 18th respectively) should have finished in 14th and 15th.

The final example (as you touched on it yourself): according to xPts, Liverpool should have finished 2nd, around 12 or so points behind City, in 2019/20. They apparently achieved nearly 25 points more than they should have, while City fell around 6 short. Liverpool (begrudgingly) were quite clearly the best team that season, but going by xPts, they got extremely, extremely lucky. Even Leicester weren't that far off the xPts winners in 2015/16.

How can this daft metric be remotely reflective of average performance levels when it's so regularly wrong about what the "average" performance gives a team? If Manchester United are regularly attaining more points than we apparently should have (we're currently over 10 for this season, and apparently had 8-9 more than we should have last season - you also have to go back to 2019/20 for the latest season in which we had fewer points than xPts), while Newcastle and Brighton are regularly attaining fewer actual points than xPts, then it seems likely that it's a metric missing some some factor(s) when it's being calculated.

About the only thing it seems to give you is a broad idea of the very best teams, and the very worst teams (and even then it can be wildly inaccurate). It struggles with basically every team that's not either consistently very good or consistently quite shit. The fact that you've basically acknowledged that it doesn't really take "grinding out games" into consideration, a key part of winning titles and establishing yourself as one of the best teams, says it all.

xG and xGA have their own flaws. Chiefly, that they're cumulative measures and can be warped by one team having loads of speculative shots (as you managed to accidentally highlight when you brought up Everton having 22 low quality chances against us), and that they don't reflect excellent goal scoring opportunities in which an attempt on goal doesn't take place (e.g. a player fecking up a square ball for an open goal tap-in).

These metrics, with a lot of other context, can probably help paint a nice broad picture, but that's not how you (or pretty much anyone else on here) are using them, even if you keep harping on about them showing signs of progression or average performance levels.

I'd also like to see us play games with more control and comfort, but as someone who has repeatedly dismissed our injury woes, you're failing to acknowledge that our disjointed line-ups, that frequently feature a majority of second and third choice players, means we haven't actually managed to consistently field "a decent to good side".

As I mentioned in the post you've quoted, we've been completely unable to put out a consistent side.

In defence, Maguire, Lindelof and Evans have just one fewer league appearance than Varane, and twice as many as Martinez. Dalot has twice as many Shaw, who has the same number as Wan-Bissaka.

In midfield, McTominay has nearly three times as many appearances as Mount and ten more appearances than Casemiro, who has just one more than Mainoo and Amrabat.

Our forward line has been about the only consistent feature, and that's reliant on two under 21s, as Rashford and (more so) Antony aren't pulling their weight.

For some extra context, here are the players with 20+ league appearances for the clubs in the top six:

Liverpool (11 players) - Alisson, Gomez, van Dijk, Alexander-Arnold, Elliott, Mac Allister, Szoboszlai, Salah, Gakpo, Diaz, Nunez
City (9 players) - Ederson, Walker, Dias, Ake, Rodri, Silva, Foden, Haaland, Alvarez
Arsenal (12 players) - Raya, White, Gabriel, Saliba, Zinchenko, Odegaard, Havertz, Rice, Saka, Martinelli, Nketiah, Trossard
Villa (12 players) - Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Digne, Torres, Luiz, McGinn, Kamara, Bailey, Tielemens, Watkins, Diaby
Spurs (10 players) - Vicario, Romero, Porro, Udogie, Hojberg, Sarr, Kulusevski, Son, Richarlison, Johnson
United (8 players) - Onana, Dalot, Fernandes, McTominay, Rashford, Antony, Garnacho, Hojlund

We've got the lowest of all of them. Half of ours are attackers. There's one defender, and that's a right-back that's also had to cover at left-back, and one of the two midfielders is Scott McTominay. That doesn't even mention the number of players those other teams have with 18-19 appearances, while only Varane (with 17) separates Jonny Evans from the above in terms of appearances made.

It's all well and good saying you want occasional dominance against "sides who are clearly worse" but how many of those sides have we actually been up against, given the line-ups on the day? Slightly worse for some of the bottom sides, I'll give you that, but I imagine if you actually looked at the eleven we've fielded, none of the Premier League sides we've faced have been "clearly worse".

You seem to view us by how strong we should be on paper, rather than how strong we actually are, which I suppose tracks with your obsession of xPts and xG rather than actual points and goals.

Again, I get the frustrations. I get that we've had crap results and performances regardless of the wider circumstances, but this idea that we should have been showing real signs of progress from last season when we're 26 games into a league season and are still having to patch together the defense and midfield out of whoever can sort of play there and happens to be fit is a clear mitigating factor that you're repeatedly ignoring. There are tactical issues and possibly even training issues, but these are separate to this constant barrage of "but the stats say..." that you keep bringing up. Even a solid tactical set up would fail to show any sign of progression when it's having to include Lindelof at left-back and McTominay anywhere on a regular basis.

 

[Red in STL]

I understand it fine.

There are clearly flaws in these metrics when, using Newcastle and us as the examples, they routinely suggest that one is outperforming the other, when the reality has been the exact opposite.

I understand your points about Newcastle's best performances being better than our best performances, them being better than us in the most recent head-to-heads, and even their performances against the "big" sides (although they've been beaten by Liverpool and City twice, and 4-1 by both Spurs and Arsenal this season), but the reality is that we won more games than them last season, and have won more games than them this season, even if the xPts, xG and xGA stats say things should have been different.

I get that consistently good performances are more likely to lead to consistently good results (and we're definitely not putting in consistently good performances), but these metrics are quite clearly not measuring good performances as they are regularly completely unrepresentative of the actual results (or indeed performances).

To give you some other examples, by xPts:

• This season, Brentford (who are 16th) should be ahead of us, and Bournemouth (who are 15th) just behind.
• Last season, Leicester (who were relegated in 18th) should have finished comfortably mid-table (in 12th) while Wolves (who finished 13th) should have finished 19th.
• In 2021/22, Palace (who finished 12th) and Brentford (who finished 13th) should have finished above us (in 6th and 7th respectively)
• Also in 2021/22, Leicester (who finished 8th), Newcastle (who finished 11th) and Wolves (who finished 10th) should have finished just above the relegation zone (in 15th, 16th and 17th, respectively)
• In 2020/21, we should have finished 4th (not 2nd), and Brighton (who finished 16th!) should have been just behind us in 5th.
• In 2019/20, Newcastle (who finished 13th) should have been relegated in 20th, and Spurs (who finished 6th) should have been 12th, while Southampton (who finished 11th) took 7th and Everton (who finished 12th) took 8th, ahead of Arsenal (who actually finished 8th) in 9th.
• Also in 2019/20, Watford and Bournemouth (who were relegated in 19th and 18th respectively) should have finished in 14th and 15th.

The final example (as you touched on it yourself): according to xPts, Liverpool should have finished 2nd, around 12 or so points behind City, in 2019/20. They apparently achieved nearly 25 points more than they should have, while City fell around 6 short. Liverpool (begrudgingly) were quite clearly the best team that season, but going by xPts, they got extremely, extremely lucky. Even Leicester weren't that far off the xPts winners in 2015/16.

How can this daft metric be remotely reflective of average performance levels when it's so regularly wrong about what the "average" performance gives a team? If Manchester United are regularly attaining more points than we apparently should have (we're currently over 10 for this season, and apparently had 8-9 more than we should have last season - you also have to go back to 2019/20 for the latest season in which we had fewer points than xPts), while Newcastle and Brighton are regularly attaining fewer actual points than xPts, then it seems likely that it's a metric missing some some factor(s) when it's being calculated.

About the only thing it seems to give you is a broad idea of the very best teams, and the very worst teams (and even then it can be wildly inaccurate). It struggles with basically every team that's not either consistently very good or consistently quite shit. The fact that you've basically acknowledged that it doesn't really take "grinding out games" into consideration, a key part of winning titles and establishing yourself as one of the best teams, says it all.

xG and xGA have their own flaws. Chiefly, that they're cumulative measures and can be warped by one team having loads of speculative shots (as you managed to accidentally highlight when you brought up Everton having 22 low quality chances against us), and that they don't reflect excellent goal scoring opportunities in which an attempt on goal doesn't take place (e.g. a player fecking up a square ball for an open goal tap-in).

These metrics, with a lot of other context, can probably help paint a nice broad picture, but that's not how you (or pretty much anyone else on here) are using them, even if you keep harping on about them showing signs of progression or average performance levels.

I'd also like to see us play games with more control and comfort, but as someone who has repeatedly dismissed our injury woes, you're failing to acknowledge that our disjointed line-ups, that frequently feature a majority of second and third choice players, means we haven't actually managed to consistently field "a decent to good side".

As I mentioned in the post you've quoted, we've been completely unable to put out a consistent side.

In defence, Maguire, Lindelof and Evans have just one fewer league appearance than Varane, and twice as many as Martinez. Dalot has twice as many Shaw, who has the same number as Wan-Bissaka.

In midfield, McTominay has nearly three times as many appearances as Mount and ten more appearances than Casemiro, who has just one more than Mainoo and Amrabat.

Our forward line has been about the only consistent feature, and that's reliant on two under 21s, as Rashford and (more so) Antony aren't pulling their weight.

For some extra context, here are the players with 20+ league appearances for the clubs in the top six:

Liverpool (11 players) - Alisson, Gomez, van Dijk, Alexander-Arnold, Elliott, Mac Allister, Szoboszlai, Salah, Gakpo, Diaz, Nunez
City (9 players) - Ederson, Walker, Dias, Ake, Rodri, Silva, Foden, Haaland, Alvarez
Arsenal (12 players) - Raya, White, Gabriel, Saliba, Zinchenko, Odegaard, Havertz, Rice, Saka, Martinelli, Nketiah, Trossard
Villa (12 players) - Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Digne, Torres, Luiz, McGinn, Kamara, Bailey, Tielemens, Watkins, Diaby
Spurs (10 players) - Vicario, Romero, Porro, Udogie, Hojberg, Sarr, Kulusevski, Son, Richarlison, Johnson
United (8 players) - Onana, Dalot, Fernandes, McTominay, Rashford, Antony, Garnacho, Hojlund

We've got the lowest of all of them. Half of ours are attackers. There's one defender, and that's a right-back that's also had to cover at left-back, and one of the two midfielders is Scott McTominay. That doesn't even mention the number of players those other teams have with 18-19 appearances, while only Varane (with 17) separates Jonny Evans from the above in terms of appearances made.

It's all well and good saying you want occasional dominance against "sides who are clearly worse" but how many of those sides have we actually been up against, given the line-ups on the day? Slightly worse for some of the bottom sides, I'll give you that, but I imagine if you actually looked at the eleven we've fielded, none of the Premier League sides we've faced have been "clearly worse".

You seem to view us by how strong we should be on paper, rather than how strong we actually are, which I suppose tracks with your obsession of xPts and xG rather than actual points and goals.

Again, I get the frustrations. I get that we've had crap results and performances regardless of the wider circumstances, but this idea that we should have been showing real signs of progress from last season when we're 26 games into a league season and are still having to patch together the defense and midfield out of whoever can sort of play there and happens to be fit is a clear mitigating factor that you're repeatedly ignoring. There are tactical issues and possibly even training issues, but these are separate to this constant barrage of "but the stats say..." that you keep bringing up. Even a solid tactical set up would fail to show any sign of progression when it's having to include Lindelof at left-back and McTominay anywhere on a regular basis.

This should be quoted on every post that brings up stats without any proper context

 

[bosnian_red]

This should be quoted on every post that brings up stats without any proper context

Not really. It entirely ignores that there is a lot of variance in football. You can get battered all game, your goalkeeper make great saves or their team miss tons of chances, and you score 2 screamers from range and you win 2-0. Doesn't mean you are a better team, but you got 3 points on the day. Football is such a low scoring sport that the end result quite often doesn't reflect the overall performance, and variance on the day has a huge role to play. Brighton were 16 or whatever that one season. XG gave many reasons to have faith that they were doing things the right way and they weren't relegation fodder. That proved to be true, as they stuck with it and then started pushing up the table. That's not to say that xG and whatever is everything, but it is important without a doubt, it definitely is not meaningless, and there is a lot to read into. Especially when real clubs like Brighton come out and say they use this data all the time.... Not sure how anybody can discount it

The injury excuse very quickly dies down. Other teams get injuries too. Fulham had 1 away win all season, and then came to Old Trafford making 6 changes to their side with a bunch of key injuries... and fully outplayed us. Or banging on about Lindelof at left back... why doesn't Ten Hag just... not play him there? Play Dalot at left back, where he played an entire season on loan at Milan? And multiple very good performances here. Lindelof can just go at right back, where he has also played plenty and would be far more of a natural than LB.
And that's also ignoring that there is a very strong likelihood that our injuries are directly related to Ten Hags training methods, his playing style, or both. And aside from all that... we didn't even control a game against fecking Newport. They're a 4th division side ffs. If the same thing happens against Luton, Newport, West Ham, Fulham, Wolves, Copenhagen, Galatasaray, anyone else no matter if we actually play with martinez/shaw or others in there... well wake up people. Time to accept that it's not down to injuries and it's far more due to coaching.

 

[Alex99]

Not really. It entirely ignores that there is a lot of variance in football. You can get battered all game, your goalkeeper make great saves or their team miss tons of chances, and you score 2 screamers from range and you win 2-0. Doesn't mean you are a better team, but you got 3 points on the day. Football is such a low scoring sport that the end result quite often doesn't reflect the overall performance, and variance on the day has a huge role to play. Brighton were 16 or whatever that one season. XG gave many reasons to have faith that they were doing things the right way and they weren't relegation fodder. That proved to be true, as they stuck with it and then started pushing up the table. That's not to say that xG and whatever is everything, but it is important without a doubt, it definitely is not meaningless, and there is a lot to read into. Especially when real clubs like Brighton come out and say they use this data all the time.... Not sure how anybody can discount it

Brighton probably aren't just looking at individual metrics like xPts and xG like you are.

Also noted that you ignored the 30 point swing between xPts and actual points in the 2019/20 title race.

Yes, actual data analysts at actual clubs probably have uses for these numbers. You (or I) don't.

For someone talking up the "variance" in actual football you're very much wedded to the idea that these metrics are infallible, despite their being a fair amount of evidence to support them being highly flawed, at least in the way you're using them.

Newcastle have been worse than us overall for 64 league games now, but the xPts say otherwise so, for some reason, you're sat there still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Everton had 22 largely speculative shots, we had fewer, far better chances, yet your reading of the xG was that the 3-0 wasn't remotely comfortable for us. Their best chance (which massively boosted their xG) came in the 94th minute, when we were 3-0 up and the game was dead, but because they'd failed to get into our box and spammed a dozen shots from distance, your view of the game was that it was much closer than it actually was.

Additionally, we don't need xG or xPts to know that we've not progressed from last season because far more simple, and far more tangible stats/measures/metrics and the simple eye test reveal as much. We're sixth, with a load of defeats and a goal difference of zero. We comfortably finished third last season.

Likewise, I don't need to know Liverpool's "box entry %" or any other underlying stat to know that they've been very good. They win most of their games, have most of the ball in those games, and are sat top of the league.

As I said, it's quite obvious that the tangible and highly useful ability to regularly grind out a result is not reflected in these metrics. Top clubs sign top players that are capable of scoring "low quality" chances or stopping "high quality" chances with a higher frequency than worse players at worse clubs. Again, this is not reflected in these metrics. These are just two examples, and I'm sure there are many more.

You're needlessly overcomplicating things to show we've been bad (duh!) and confusing whatever point it is you're trying to make in the process with stats and metrics you obviously don't fully understand.

Yeah, we've been shit, but as I've pointed out to you (and as you've repeatedly ignored), it's quite evident that our injury issues have been a fairly large contributing factor to that. This is far more pertinent than xG and xPts when assessing our season.

 

[bosnian_red]

Brighton probably aren't just looking at individual metrics like xPts and xG like you are.

Also noted that you ignored the 30 point swing between xPts and actual points in the 2019/20 title race.

Yes, actual data analysts at actual clubs probably have uses for these numbers. You (or I) don't.

For someone talking up the "variance" in actual football you're very much wedded to the idea that these metrics are infallible, despite their being a fair amount of evidence to support them being highly flawed, at least in the way you're using them.

Newcastle have been worse than us overall for 64 league games now, but the xPts say otherwise so, for some reason, you're sat there still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Everton had 22 largely speculative shots, we had fewer, far better chances, yet your reading of the xG was that the 3-0 wasn't remotely comfortable for us. Their best chance (which massively boosted their xG) came in the 94th minute, when we were 3-0 up and the game was dead, but because they'd failed to get into our box and spammed a dozen shots from distance, your view of the game was that it was much closer than it actually was.

Additionally, we don't need xG or xPts to know that we've not progressed from last season because far more simple, and far more tangible stats/measures/metrics and the simple eye test reveal as much. We're sixth, with a load of defeats and a goal difference of zero. We comfortably finished third last season.

Likewise, I don't need to know Liverpool's "box entry %" or any other underlying stat to know that they've been very good. They win most of their games, have most of the ball in those games, and are sat top of the league.

As I said, it's quite obvious that the tangible and highly useful ability to regularly grind out a result is not reflected in these metrics. Top clubs sign top players that are capable of scoring "low quality" chances or stopping "high quality" chances with a higher frequency than worse players at worse clubs. Again, this is not reflected in these metrics. These are just two examples, and I'm sure there are many more.

You're needlessly overcomplicating things to show we've been bad (duh!) and confusing whatever point it is you're trying to make in the process with stats and metrics you obviously don't fully understand.

Yeah, we've been shit, but as I've pointed out to you (and as you've repeatedly ignored), it's quite evident that our injury issues have been a fairly large contributing factor to that. This is far more pertinent than xG and xPts when assessing our season.

Where am I saying that I am wedded to them or that they are everything? I am just saying they are very useful to look at. And they are useful to bring up in arguments of "what do the metrics say about our performances". You are misunderstanding what I am saying. But whatever, I've said my bit, can't be arsed going in a circle about this.

Everton had 24 shots. The first half they had an xG of 1.43 from 10 shots. 2nd half yes was much better from us, even if they had 14 shots in that half. I said it at the time. Our first half was horrid where we scored an overhead kick and then got dominated, our 2nd half was good and comfortable. That's not a complete performance. That's a good 30 minutes or so. That's my memory of it, that's what I said at the time. We had a good 30 minutes where we were clinical, they weren't clinical when they were dominant for a much larger period of the game. Play that same game other times and they score from some of their first half chances and we don't score a worldie in the 1st minute and it's drastically different. That's the issue and why the performance is far more important for a team in development rather than just staring at an end result and thinking all is rosy.

Honestly don't know what the feck you are trying to say or even trying to argue at this point. Pretending like the stats are meaningless, is a bit stupid. It is very easy to bring them into arguments in a reasonable and logical way, trying to discredit somebody else explaining them actually only shows that you don't really understand them. But whatever. That's fine. Can't be arsed to convince somebody that there is a lot of value in metrics and analytics in football, and that no you don't have to work at a football club to make use of them. If you want to go ahead and thinking conceding 20 shots per game is fine, being mid table or relegation fodder in other metrics is fine because "we are only 6th in goals conceded", then you go right ahead.

Edit: Ah I remembered. We were arguing on how a team with better underlying metrics would give more hope to go forward and more belief that we are doing things correctly, and you disagreeing and thinking that it wouldn't mean anything to the fanbases belief in Ten Hag because we would be 6th anyway. Yeah I think that's complete bollocks tbh. If you mix in convincing results and performances with some shit games, then at least you have something to go back on. 3-0 to Everton where we are thoroughly outplayed for 60 minutes of the 90 does not count as a convincing enough performance for this to counted. XG, shot totals, whatever, is a very easy tool to use to discredit that. So that's how we got here. Anyway. I'm done with it.

 

[Alex99]

Where am I saying that I am wedded to them or that they are everything? I am just saying they are very useful to look at. And they are useful to bring up in arguments of "what do the metrics say about our performances". You are misunderstanding what I am saying. But whatever, I've said my bit, can't be arsed going in a circle about this.

Everton had 24 shots. The first half they had an xG of 1.43 from 10 shots. 2nd half yes was much better from us, even if they had 14 shots in that half. I said it at the time. Our first half was horrid where we scored an overhead kick and then got dominated, our 2nd half was good and comfortable. That's not a complete performance. That's a good 30 minutes or so. That's my memory of it, that's what I said at the time. We had a good 30 minutes where we were clinical, they weren't clinical when they were dominant for a much larger period of the game. Play that same game other times and they score from some of their first half chances and we don't score a worldie in the 1st minute and it's drastically different. That's the issue and why the performance is far more important for a team in development rather than just staring at an end result and thinking all is rosy.

Honestly don't know what the feck you are trying to say or even trying to argue at this point. Pretending like the stats are meaningless, is a bit stupid. It is very easy to bring them into arguments in a reasonable and logical way, trying to discredit somebody else explaining them actually only shows that you don't really understand them. But whatever. That's fine. Can't be arsed to convince somebody that there is a lot of value in metrics and analytics in football, and that no you don't have to work at a football club to make use of them. If you want to go ahead and thinking conceding 20 shots per game is fine, being mid table or relegation fodder in other metrics is fine because "we are only 6th in goals conceded", then you go right ahead.

Edit: Ah I remembered. We were arguing on how a team with better underlying metrics would give more hope to go forward and more belief that we are doing things correctly, and you disagreeing and thinking that it wouldn't mean anything to the fanbases belief in Ten Hag because we would be 6th anyway. Yeah I think that's complete bollocks tbh. If you mix in convincing results and performances with some shit games, then at least you have something to go back on. 3-0 to Everton where we are thoroughly outplayed for 60 minutes of the 90 does not count as a convincing enough performance for this to counted. XG, shot totals, whatever, is a very easy tool to use to discredit that. So that's how we got here. Anyway. I'm done with it.

Well, the point I'm making is that you clearly don't understand these underlying metrics because you're only ever using them in weird isolation to prove something that's completely observable without them. You're wedded to them because you keep repeating that "they have value" without actually offering anything more than a superficial explanation of what the value actually is. Yes, consistent good performances will generally produce consistently good results. These consistently good performances that produce consistently good results will be reflected with consistently positive stats. However, we (as two fans behind keyboards on the internet) don't need xG, xPts, "box entry %", or any other underlying metric to observe that Liverpool have been very good, Manchester United have been quite shit, or that the best performances of Newcastle/Spurs/Brighton have been better than our best performances. It's also perfectly observable that these metrics really struggle with inconsistency (at least on a superficial level), as they only ever regularly reflect the most consistently good teams and most consistently shit teams with any accuracy (and even then they can be out).

This started because people (of which you were one) kept making weird comparisons to Brighton, Newcastle and Spurs and being overly dismissive of our good performances. You literally said in the other thread "it's been 20 months, where are the good performances?" which is why I brought up Everton (among others). Regardless of whether it was "complete", it is one of (depressingly few) good performances this season, and a game in which we ran out as very much deserved winners. We weren't "thoroughly outplayed for 60 minutes" and it's just daft to suggest we were. They barely threatened, their best chance by far (by xG) came right at the death when the game was well out of their reach, and we created (by xG) more, better goal-scoring opportunities, while even their best first-half chances (when they were supposedly at their most dominant) were speculative, half-chances. Even Everton's own highlights package, which you would expect to be as glowing as possible for them, only show them having a couple of chances in each half, at least one of which was a punt from distance that drew a decent save from Onana.

I'm not saying that metrics and analytics have no value to the actual professionals using them within the elite clubs. I'm saying they have no real value to laymen like me and you because we're only ever using them extremely superficially. You can try and convince yourself otherwise, but you obviously haven't the foggiest what you're actually using them for, hence why you couldn't even remember what point you were trying to make and why all you can really do is parrot "they have value!" over and over and repeat Everton's xG and Newcastle's xPts. You're spamming these things and repeating that they have value when they're not even needed to prove the points you're using them to make. Yes, Newcastle beating Villa 5-1 and even Arsenal 1-0 were more impressive results/performances than when we beat Everton and West Ham 3-0, and their fans probably are far more optimistic about their future under Howe than we are about ours under Ten Hag. I don't need xPts to see that, and it completely ignores the respective histories and statures of each club, and how their fans respond to negative results compared to how our fans do when you're suggesting we'd be happier in their position because of the underlying metric and big wins.

As I've said, we're over a season and a half, and 64 games into xPts putting Newcastle ahead of us, and yet the reality is that they're consistently behind us, having lost more games, and having won less. It's a shit metric that obviously doesn't take into account some important factor(s), which is why it had a team that actually won the league at a canter, finishing 18 points clear of the runners-up, finishing second by 12 points, and why it had a team that actually finished 16th, finishing 5th, just a few points shy off the Champions League places. Additionally, if we take xPts to be "a measure of progress" or whatever you want to call it, Spurs, one of the other teams that kept being mentioned, are supposed to be 9th by xPts, rather than 5th. They finished 8th last season, their worst finish since 2008/09, so how exactly do the metrics suggest they're making the progress people are making out?

To repeat myself, there's a massive amount of "grass is greener" when looking at these other teams and these metrics and stats are being used at the expense of actual league position and points when comparing us to Newcastle/Brighton, while being ignored in favour of actual league position and points when comparing us to Spurs, all in aid of saying "we've been disappointing this season". Well, duh! Additionally, you've repeated things like "being a top side" and "competing for top honours" (despite us quite clearly not being a top side or being in a position to compete for top honours), which stinks massively of "we're Manchester United, we should win half of our games 5-0 and compete for the title every year".

I'm on board that we've been massively disappointing. I'm on board with the idea that Ten Hag's tactics have played a fairly large part in our poor performances, even with the other circumstances. However, you're repeatedly banging on about consistent performances, progress, being a top side and competing for honours, while also ignoring the massive fecking elephant in the room that is the ridiculous injury crisis that is still very much plaguing us with just 12 games left of the league campaign. I'd even be onboard with suggestions that the training and last season's lack of rotation could be big contributing factors to some of those injuries. It's quite clear though, that with the injuries meaning Scott McTominay and Jonny Evans are among our highest appearance makers, we've simply not been in a position this season to look like a team with much potential to achieve anything more than scrap for fourth, at the very best.

The actual argument here was that I believe that it's absolute bollocks that the (online) fanbase as a whole would be satisfied with our current, actual results (i.e. points on the board and league position) if only the underlying metrics were better and if only we'd stuck six past Luton, even if you might be. The fact is that Joe Unitedfan is still annoyed that we're 6th when we comfortably finished 3rd last season, still annoyed that we've lost to a number of "lesser" teams, and still annoyed that we got binned out of the CL group stages (again, underlying metrics, big wins and decent league finishes weren't enough to stop vast swathes of the online fanbase calling Solskjaer a PE teacher). I'm not even arguing that we should have faith in Ten Hag (which is basically the basis of any "look at what Newcastle/Brighton/Spurs are doing with the xPts/xG" argument), because, as I've said, I'm happy for him to get sacked (even if I have no clue who we'd replace him with and that it's not a great look for INEOS to pull the trigger so soon).

It's just daft to use these metrics, in an entirely superficial manner, as the foundation of an argument for us to have little faith in him, when there are far more tangible concerns, such as us having lost 10 games already, finished bottom of a fairly weak CL group, continued our woeful form away from home against the better sides, have a goal difference of zero while being on course to barely scrape 50 goals this campaign, and keep persisting with a formation and tactic with obvious flaws, that create a far more compelling argument for us to bin him. It's also daft to use these metrics to prove that we're not a "top side" and haven't kicked on from last season when a) that's perfectly observable without them and b) we've been absolutely decimated by injuries all season, meaning we'd have likely struggled to do either regardless of the obvious tactical issues.

 

[jadajos]

Obviously this whole "x"Anything should always be taken with a grain of salt, but I didn't know United are only ahead of Sheffield, Luton, Burnley and Wolves in expected points (xPTS) this season according to unterstat: https://understat.com/league/EPL
Even accounting for the debatable margins of those metrics and how they are calculated - for United to come out 16th and with half the expected points of Arsenal in almost a full season is pretty mind-boggling.

 

[thisisnottaken1]

Obviously this whole "x"Anything should always be taken with a grain of salt, but I didn't know United are only ahead of Sheffield, Luton, Burnley and Wolves in expected points (xPTS) this season according to unterstat: https://understat.com/league/EPL
Even accounting for the debatable margins of those metrics and how they are calculated - for United to come out 16th and with half the expected points of Arsenal in almost a full season is pretty mind-boggling.

That is absolutely shocking and a sackable offence.

 

[Samid]

Has our finishing ever been worse? Thought we'd improve in this department with Ruud, not get worse.

 

[FrankDrebin]

We've got a bunch of young forwards uptop tbf.

 

[Leonzo1]

Has our finishing ever been worse? Thought we'd improve in this department with Ruud, not get worse.

While I'm as frustrated as you with this game but it's kind of an odd observation after we scored 10 goals in the last week.

 

[Adisa]

Has our finishing ever been worse? Thought we'd improve in this department with Ruud, not get worse.

Forget the coach, a poor finisher is a poor finisher.

 

[Hammondo]

While I'm as frustrated as you with this game but it's kind of an odd observation after we scored 10 goals in the last week.

Yes but look who against.

 

[flameinthesun]

Has our finishing ever been worse? Thought we'd improve in this department with Ruud, not get worse.

There's only so much you can improve someone or else every attacker when moving to a top club would be scoring loads. If we keep creating chances throughout the season and the forward line still don't take the chances then it's a sign we need to find more clinical attackers in the summer window.

 

[ifightdragons]

You can't really coach finishing to such a big degree. That's something you're either born with or you adapt to on your own.

You can certainly give helpful tips as a coach. But in the end a player has to unlock those abilities himself in the end.

 

[doubleohseven]

Can't blame ten Hag for players constantly spaffing chances.

Many will, and wonder why the problem never recedes with a new manager.

Getting worried the players will lose focus as theybfail to win matches, get the manager sacked, play well for five matches then revert to type.

Sickening feeling.

 

[Leonzo1]

Yes but look who against.

Finishing is finishing. The quality of the opposition doesn't make a big difference. Getting those chances is much easier yes, but scoring them is an instinct.