xG and finishing under ETH

sullydnl said:
Going into today we had scored 23 goals from 21.3 xG. So it remains the case that our aggregate finishing had been fine.

The issue is reflected in the xG itself, where we were 9th in the league going into today.

Hopefully we'll create more as we get to actually use our first-choice attack which we've rarely been able to this season.
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And that is the topic we should be focusing on now. Our finishing this season has been fine, or more than fine. I don't recall games in which we've lost points because of underperforming to accumulated xG (in Europa League I think it might have happened). We definitely had games where we over performed.

Football world is obsessed with finishing every chance that arrives, but to be honest I don't see us improving significantly in this regard unless we do get top level striker (but that seems unlikely at the moment).

I'm not particularly impressed with xG we accumulate in games, but that undoubtedly is being tackled now.
 
Borys said:
And that is the topic we should be focusing on now. Our finishing this season has been fine, or more than fine. I don't recall games in which we've lost points because of underperforming to accumulated xG (in Europa League I think it might have happened). We definitely had games where we over performed.

Football world is obsessed with finishing every chance that arrives, but to be honest I don't see us improving significantly in this regard unless we do get top level striker (but that seems unlikely at the moment).

I'm not particularly impressed with xG we accumulate in games, but that undoubtedly is being tackled now.
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Yeah I think we are steadily creating more chances, and even if Martial is meh, we still create far more with him in the side. Getting everyone fit and firing and more time will help, but undoubtedly we'll need a top tier attacker to help be a difference maker for us and that's the next step.
 
Borys said:
And that is the topic we should be focusing on now. Our finishing this season has been fine, or more than fine. I don't recall games in which we've lost points because of underperforming to accumulated xG (in Europa League I think it might have happened). We definitely had games where we over performed.

Football world is obsessed with finishing every chance that arrives, but to be honest I don't see us improving significantly in this regard unless we do get top level striker (but that seems unlikely at the moment).

I'm not particularly impressed with xG we accumulate in games, but that undoubtedly is being tackled now.
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Don't care to look for stats but would be surprised if stamford bridge wasn't one of them, should have won that match in the first half just to rescue a point in the dying minutes. I mean there was several clear cut chances like Garnacho had yesterday alone.
 
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Borys said:
And that is the topic we should be focusing on now. Our finishing this season has been fine, or more than fine. I don't recall games in which we've lost points because of underperforming to accumulated xG (in Europa League I think it might have happened). We definitely had games where we over performed.

Football world is obsessed with finishing every chance that arrives, but to be honest I don't see us improving significantly in this regard unless we do get top level striker (but that seems unlikely at the moment).

I'm not particularly impressed with xG we accumulate in games, but that undoubtedly is being tackled now.
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Chelsea away and Newcastle at home come to mind.
 
Basa1987 said:
Chelsea away and Newcastle at home come to mind.
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Newtonius said:
Don't care to look for stats but would be surprised if stamford bridge wasn't one of them, should have won that match in the first half just to rescue a point in the dying minutes. I mean there was several clear cut chances like Garnacho had yesterday alone.
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Purely by what stats say, we had xG=0,8 in both games, so you could make a case for Newcastle game (goalless draw), not so much for Chelsea (I remember we had some decent chances, 1-1 final score).

Anyway, I didn't have a feeling we fully deserved to win those games as in both cases the opponent had similar xG or higher.

Actually we seem to be performing pretty close to accumulated xG game to game, so we should definitely be focusing on improving chances creation rather than clinical finishing.
 
Samid said:
What is our highest xG ever in the league?
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It's only been tracked post Sir Alex really so can't say before he retired. The 9-0 vs Southampton under Ole though had 5.03 on understat so probably that
 
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Chipper said:


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I expected we'd be on 5 by the end of the game but I think headers don't count for a lot in xG.

We had the Martinez bar header, Dalot miss, the Weghorst miss, the Sancho miss and the Rashford miss where he really should have scored another individual goal but he went for power, instead of placing it.
 
14 games in 2023, all but one we have score 2 goals or more. 3 goals in 6 of them.

As a team the chance creation has really gone up a level.
 
RedStarUnited said:
14 games in 2023, all but one we have score 2 goals or more. 3 goals in 6 of them.

As a team the chance creation has really gone up a level.
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And that one game when we scored one (Wolves away), we really should’ve had two, the disallowed goal on Rashford was extremely ridiculous.
 
We're getting a bit good. Doing all of this while missing several first team players as well!
 
NLunited said:
We need to create and finish more chances. Our development is stalling :(. But, we are winning :D.

I’m not confident now we will keep improving.
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Replying to myself because it seems we have turned a page. Ironically it coincides with Ronaldo leaving and Weghorst getting in. That is not a coincidence.

Also: Antony, Garnacho getting better incrementally and Sancho back in the team doing ok ( and hopefully improving going forward).

If we ‚stall‘ again I‘m now confident Ten Hag will address it.
 
Now xG is outperforming our actual goals. Which is quite good actually. Means we are consistently creating chances and will score eventually.
Exciting!
 
Chipper said:


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Leicester had 1.51/1.40 and you'd think all of it came in between 8th and 21st minute with those 2 big chances being main moments for them. No wonder ten Hag was angry about it, we looked like last season United giving away those kind of chances in space of 10-15 minutes. Everything after that was much better though but no question there's room for improvement.
 
BorisManUtd said:
Leicester had 1.51/1.40 and you'd think all of it came in between 8th and 21st minute with those 2 big chances being main moments for them. No wonder ten Hag was angry about it, we looked like last season United giving away those kind of chances in space of 10-15 minutes. Everything after that was much better though but no question there's room for improvement.
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Yes.

First 20 minutes = 0.17 - 1.06
Rest of match = 4.08 - 0.34
(Understat)

It wasn't even the whole of the first 20 when those chances came for Leicester like you said, more like a 15 minute period.
 
We're a really good team now. Probably only two or three players away from being a title winning team.
 
First let's just get out of the way that losing 7-0 is always a fluke in terms of finishing. You never concede that much actual chances. They absolutely did batter us, but if you look at our other domestic big away games, it wasn't any different (which is the bigger problem than an individual 7-0).

  • Liverpool 2.78 - 0.82 United
  • Arsenal 3.25 - 0.36 United
  • Man City 3.3 - 1.67 United
Frankly, Arsenal battered us the most, and it probably makes it worse that the game was close the whole time but they battered us in performance. City and this one we got battered but also stopped playing while they went off on us, which contributes to some of those totals. There's not 1 person to blame, but between player mentality, tactics, in game changes, it very clearly all needs to change in these big away games. We're fine at home..but you just can't approach the away games in the same way. They have equal if not better squads, equal if not better (or more proven) managers and coaching, and are all big clubs. We need to be more clever than what we have been in big games.
 
bosnian_red said:
First let's just get out of the way that losing 7-0 is always a fluke in terms of finishing. You never concede that much actual chances. They absolutely did batter us, but if you look at our other domestic big away games, it wasn't any different (which is the bigger problem than an individual 7-0).

  • Liverpool 2.78 - 0.82 United
  • Arsenal 3.25 - 0.36 United
  • Man City 3.3 - 1.67 United
Frankly, Arsenal battered us the most, and it probably makes it worse that the game was close the whole time but they battered us in performance. City and this one we got battered but also stopped playing while they went off on us, which contributes to some of those totals. There's not 1 person to blame, but between player mentality, tactics, in game changes, it very clearly all needs to change in these big away games. We're fine at home..but you just can't approach the away games in the same way. They have equal if not better squads, equal if not better (or more proven) managers and coaching, and are all big clubs. We need to be more clever than what we have been in big games.
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Definitely a learning curve for ETH. With the City game we were blown away in the first half and I think it's fair to say that in the Arsenal and Liverpool games we've performed much better in the first half of the other two games games.

It would be interesting to see the xG for each half as I imagine in the Arsenal and Liverpool games it will show that we've been destroyed in the 2nd half in particular, creating next to nothing.
 
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