xG and finishing under ETH

evil_geko said:
I am not against it as a whole, but too many people just ignore what they watched and just use numbers and stats for arguments. Numbers will NEVER tell a full story.
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So we should stop counting the points team cumulate over a season? Or the goals a team scores ^^ ?

mav_9me said:
I thought this was a great video.



Apparently one of the comments notes no team ever has come close to xG of 5. Is that true? Fascinating if true.
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Thanks for sharing the video, it really helps to get a feeling what the "value" of a shot is - me personally, I wouldn't even call some of those chances "chances" but it makes sense to do it for the system. And as the system handles every team the same, it still enables you to compare teams in certain aspects.

Iker Quesadillas said:
The issue I have with xG is just the people wanting it to be more powerful than it is.

People want to take an xG value, round it to the nearest integer, call that "the goals you should have scored," and then claim that goals above that are "overperformance" and goals below that are "underperformance." That's not really a sound use of the stat. It's only marginally better than a pundit saying "he should have scored that."
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You are right. But as in many other places, a reality that is "felt", or based on experience has a little less substance than a number that is based on stats that are collected over time. I agree, there are benefits for experience as well, that is why I think, the best understanding of xG is that it is an additional tool in the tool box that is enabling people more insights to performances. As with every stat, when used wrong, it doesn't contribute to a meaningful discussion. But thats on the user, not the tool.
 
Familiar story at home against low blocks. Just have to urgency, quality or desire to break them down.
 
Samid said:
Familiar story at home against low blocks. Just have to urgency, quality or desire to break them down.
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attackers refusing to make runs to overlap/underlaps to destabilize opponent defence, just keep standing still like a statute watch the ball switching between our defenders.
 
Our fullbacks just do not do enough offensively. Keep tucking in instead of making overlap runs and stretching the opposition, makes it much more difficult to break down the opposition.
 
Tough xG day for us.

Leeds 0 (1.86) - 1 (0.54) Arsenal
Villa 0 (1.76) - 2 (1.1) Chelsea
United 0 (0.91) - 0 (0.88) Newcastle
 
bosnian_red said:
Tough xG day for us.

Leeds 0 (1.86) - 1 (0.54) Arsenal
Villa 0 (1.76) - 2 (1.1) Chelsea
United 0 (0.91) - 0 (0.88) Newcastle
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hmm how is our xG only 0.91 today? Surely, the Fred and Rashford chances should put it above 1 at least.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Dude. Let the thread drop away. It’s a completely meaningless observation, trying to draw a common thread between games which could not have panned out more differently.
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What? I'm drawing a common thread between past seasons.

Samid said:
But it's a familiar story at home against parked buses post Fergie. Just having no clue how to put the ball in the net.
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This is very much a familiar story and tweet below backs that up. Under all the previous managers you could argue they were either washed up or just not good enough. But this time we've gone for an upcoming, talented and highly sought-after manager who was trusted with 200m in the summer. And we're still seeing a lot of the same issues.

 
Amarsdd said:
hmm how is our xG only 0.91 today? Surely, the Fred and Rashford chances should put it above 1 at least.
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Different sources have us more or less at 1. Which is fair as we did nothing else but those 2 were both big chances. Even big chances are normally like a 0.5 xg, and the rest of what we did really wouldn't total up to even 0.1 probably.
 
Last season under Rangnick there was a period when we were massively underperforming our xG. Everyone assumed that, eventually, the penny would drop. That it wouldn't be possible for our players to continue to miss the mean. Instead, after the debacle at home to Watford (where we continued to miss easy chances) things got worse.

I look at today's game and the one midweek and I just hope the same thing doesn't happen to Ten Hag. He can't force Fred to score an open goal, or Dalot to shoot when he has space in the box, or Rashford to bury a header from four yards. Ten Hag can't force players to look for anyone but Ronaldo when running at the opposition back line. Sure he can tell them from the sidelines but he's not out there.
 
#07 said:
Last season under Rangnick there was a period when we were massively underperforming our xG. Everyone assumed that, eventually, the penny would drop. That it wouldn't be possible for our players to continue to miss the mean. Instead, after the debacle at home to Watford (where we continued to miss easy chances) things got worse.

I look at today's game and the one midweek and I just hope the same thing doesn't happen to Ten Hag. He can't force Fred to score an open goal, or Dalot to shoot when he has space in the box, or Rashford to bury a header from four yards. Ten Hag can't force players to look for anyone but Ronaldo when running at the opposition back line. Sure he can tell them from the sidelines but he's not out there.
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Quite a bit different. Under Ralf, the Greenwood thing rattled the squad, we lost narrowly in the CL and then had nothing really to play for under a manager who wanted to throw everyone under the bus with half the squad wanting to leave.
 

Looks much better here. Pretty much 50/50 chances wise up until the 2 late chances here.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
There’s not even a common thread between today’s game and the one when you started this thread. So feck knows how you’ve extrapolated from that to previous seasons.
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Really struggling to see what your point is here. The common thread is we aren't scoring enough goals in these games against low blocks. This is an issue we have had for years.

If you're satisfied with United scoring 1 goal in 180 minutes against Omonia and Newcastle at home, that's totally fine. Let others who aren't happy with that discuss why we aren't scoring more goals.
 
2 huge chances and a clear penalty not given. Rashford miss just hard to believe is possible.

We're clearly playing better and more controlled under ten hag but our finishing is appalling. That's 7 times now we've scored none or one this season
 
Samid said:


Can we just learn to kill the fecking games already?
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It's not really a valid comment after Newcastle game though? It's not like we created loads of good chances and accumulated high xG (like previous game).

We dominated them but I feel like opposition dropping deep will be a tactic to use against us this season, and we have to do better.
 
With Ronaldo likely gone, and Greenwood out the picture, having to rely on Rashford/Martial for our strikers is always going to lead to a problem like this. Granted others need to chip in too (and many have) such as Bruno, Sancho, Antony, Eriksen etc, you can't really bank on Rashford or Martial to get 12+ PL goals a season and that is going to be a problem when chasing top 4. Just look at 21/22 top scorers... Son(23), Salah (23), KDB (15) Jota (15) Zaha (14) even Madison got 12!!! I've missed a few out here but you get the picture.
 
ten Hag needs to sack Benni Mccarthy and find a better finishing coach. The amount of clear cut big chances we miss or mess up every game is criminal.
 
Samid said:
ten Hag needs to sack Benni Mccarthy and find a better finishing coach. The amount of clear cut big chances we miss or mess up every game is criminal.
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Have Rashford and Martial ever been good at finishing? We don't really have a striker.
 
Tyrion said:
Have Rashford and Martial ever been good at finishing? We don't really have a striker.
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Agreed neither are clinical. Rashford's movement is fantastic but all his goals he uses a the same technique that knuckle ball shot he doesn't caress the ball into the goal which limits his goal threat. I think a clinical striker makes a huge difference to this team.
 
It's getting a bit over the top this narrative. Other teams miss chances too. Watch another football match and clear-cut chances are routinely missed. Stats will tell you we're one of the teams doing best compared to our xG this season.
 
Samid said:
ten Hag needs to sack Benni Mccarthy and find a better finishing coach. The amount of clear cut big chances we miss or mess up every game is criminal.
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Eh, we're pretty much right at xG for the season.
 
Vapor trail said:
Agreed neither are clinical. Rashford's movement is fantastic but all his goals he uses a the same technique that knuckle ball shot he doesn't caress the ball into the goal which limits his goal threat. I think a clinical striker makes a huge difference to this team.
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He does the same with his free kicks. He either sends it straight into the wall or straight into the stands.
 
bosnian_red said:
Eh, we're pretty much right at xG for the season.
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Yep, we currently rank 8th in the PL for xG. We don't create enough chances. It would be nice if we could significantly over-perform our xG, and generally speaking top teams do over-perform their xG, but you don't want to rely on it. Our attacking play simply hasn't been good enough. Too many long range pot shots, poor decisions in the final 3rd, cowardly wide players playing it safe, poor crossing, not enough movement in the box, not utilising overlaps effectively.

It's a shame because our defence and midfield are looking a lot better, our final 3rd play just lets us down massively.

If we extrapolate current rate to the full season we'd score 55 goals which is pretty bad.
 
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