Liverpool FC Forum

Hopefully you can read this - good news for the Reds:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... anchester/

Any chance mate you could copy the full article here. Can't be bothered to register.

Reg » Tue Dec 04, 2018 1:58 pm wrote:Hopefully you can read this - good news for the Reds:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... anchester/

sorry Reg, Can't read the full article without registration, something I don't wanna do 

Think this is something similar to what Reg posted. This is from August so Reg's could be an update ? https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/f ... d-15022174

Expecting them is one thing and converting them is something else. Lost count of the amount of chances we have spurned from 13 yds or less already.

xG secrets: Arsenal are wildly over-performing, and Mo Salah is having a great season

Top Guns: Arsenal are nine points ahead of themselves, so to speak, according to 'expected goals' comparison  CREDIT: PA

4 DECEMBER 2018 • 10:23AM

We have reached an interesting stage of the 2018-19 Premier League season. Now slightly more than a third of the way through, we have a large enough sample size of matches to properly assess how well teams and players are performing.

One of football's newer statistics - expected goals, or xG for short - shines particularly brightly in this scenario because it can expose themes you cannot spot from simply looking at the league table.

For those new to the term - or in need of a refresher - expected goals is a measure of how likely a player is to score from their shooting position. This is calculated by working out the conversion rate of every player who has previously taken a shot from that position, as well as the position of other players on the pitch at the time.

For instance, if 800 out of 1,000 players scored from a given spot on the pitch that would be a conversion rate of 80 per cent, or 0.8 expected goals per shot.

It is not a perfect measure, but at this stage of the season it can hint as to whether a team's position in the table is flattering - i.e. they are scoring more goals than xG suggests they should be - or whether their good work is actually going unrewarded - i.e. they have scored fewer goals than xG suggests they should have done.

So, without further ado, here are seven xG secrets that you might not otherwise have spotted.


1. Salah is having a great season
There have been mutterings during this campaign that Liverpool's Mohammed Salah is not living up to the formidable reputation he established for himself last year.

While it is true that he has not reached quite the goal-scoring heights of last season, he is second in Europe this year in terms of creative output.

When adding up his expected goals (8.15) and expected assists (3.7) - the sum of the xG values of shots that players took after Salah passed to them -  Salah comes out ahead of the likes of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. Only Cristiano Ronaldo has a higher score.

Salah has an xG per 90 minutes of 0.61 this year which is a reduction on last year's 0.77, but his expected assists score (xA) is up by about 50 per cent this season to 0.34 per 90 minutes.


2. Arsenal are wildly over-performing
Both Arsenal and Chelsea fans have been harbouring fears that their strong starts to the season have been to some extent illusory, hiding structural flaws that are bound to be found out sooner or later.

Expected goals can be used to explore whether these fears could be founded by looking at how many points each team would have if games were decided on expected goals rather than actual ones.

Arsenal are wildly over-performing based on this comparison, with 9.4 points more than they would have if expected goals had been the deciding factor. Chelsea are also over-performing but by far less, with 2.1 points more than expected.


3. Fraser leads the continent
Bournemouth's Ryan Fraser has been having an excellent year, with hugely influential performances for both club and country.

However, the true extent of his genius is better appreciated when looking at his expected assists figures.

Out of all the superstar players in Europe's top five leagues nobody has a higher xA score than Fraser, putting him up their with the likes of Neymar, Eden Hazard and David Silva in terms of chance creation.


4. Ronaldo takes a lot of shots
CR7 emerges as the clear leader in Europe when it comes to his total expected goals tally but this is in large part due to the extremely high number of shots he takes.

Ronaldo had taken 91 shots in Serie A this year when we extracted the data, 65 per cent more shots than the next most prolific shooters - Sergio Aguero, Lille's Nicolas Pepe and Napoli's Lorenzo Insigne.

A lot of these shots might be described as speculative at best. Ronaldo's average xG per shot is, at 0.12, considerably lower than other elite goalscorers. For instance, Edison Cavani has an average xG of 0.26 per shot this year.


5. Jesus is the most creative player in Europe
While Ronaldo leads the continent in terms of cumulative expected goals and assists, he only just makes the top 10 when that figure is adjusted for time on the pitch.

When it comes to players who have played at least 270 league minutes this season, Manchester City's Gabriel Jesus comes out on top for xG plus xA per 90 minutes played.

This should give City fans confidence that Jesus will be able to do an effective job if Guardiola decides to increase his workload.


6. Silva's team-mates are letting him down
Of course, a player's expected assists score relies largely on the person he's passing to. It does not matter how many amazing chances you set up for your team-mates if they cannot stick the ball in the net.

Manchester City's David Silva finds himself in this situation with the biggest deficit in assists compared to expected assists for any player in Europe.

Had Manchester City's other players finished the chances Silva has created this season "as expected" then Silva would have 5.3 assists this year. In reality he only has two, a piffling tally for somebody as influential as the Spaniard.


7. Nelson could be just what England need
England fans have enjoyed an optimistic 2018 with a World Cup semi-final finish and victory in their Nations League group against Spain and Croatia.

However, one recurrent criticism of England's players during this period has been of an inability to take chances in key moments.

Reiss Nelson, an Arsenal player on loan at Hoffenheim, could be precisely is required with one of the best finishing records in Europe this year.

Nelson has scored six goals in the Bundesliga this year but has an xG score of just 1.8, meaning he has scored 4.2 more goals than would be expected from the average player taking the same shots. Only five other players are ahead of him on this score, none of whom play in England.


All the figures used in this article were taken from understat.com on 28 November 2018

Sorry lads the diagrams didnt copy over.

I hope i dont come off as impatient, im just curious when the next non-beta version might come out.