Football thread 2022/23

[Scruff]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

West Ham can create history tomorrow. Apparently.

 

A useless 'stat' has come to light. Aston Villa have never lost a PL game on August 28th. We've played 5 games on that date, won 4 and drew 1.

 

Tomorrow, West Ham will end that completely useless piece of trivia.

 

I hope so! I hope the players have had a rocket up their arses for their lacklustre display against Brighton (we were unlucky against Forest and the first game was Man City) and are buoyed by the Paqueta signing. Plus, in a completely selfless light, I think Gerrard  needs binning for the sake of the fans and another loss will put more pressure on him.

 

I hope Scamacca starts. He's looking really good so far.

[Chindie]

When Gerrard loses tomorrow the pressure will have got to the point he's not surviving. Even a win might only delay the inevitable as we're so bad at the moment, and everyone can see it, and we've got Arsenal and Citeh next after that.

 

Our record this year is diabolical.

[SeanR]

Fulham are going to nick this…

[wev]

2 minutes ago, SeanR said:

Fulham are going to nick this…

It does have a feeling of Wenger-ball about it

[wev]

Has Guardiola launched his own fashion line?

[SeanR]

Who saw that coming?

 

oh, everyone?

[wev]

Just now, SeanR said:

Who saw that coming?

 

oh, everyone?

Typical Arsenal 😂

[Hamus]

See that Liverpool scored nine.

Knew Salah was starting.

He's your fantasy football captain!

Check your score.

Drop Salah from your fantasy team.

 

[englishbob]

MOTD deconstructing the Liverpool Bournemouth game and missing the point that Bournemouth were terrible and that's all you can say. Can't believe it was the first game shown tonight, watching it didn't even feel like a gane of football, Christ knows what the full 90 minutes felt like

[hmm]

I think the Liverpool xG was less than 3! Not that I'm exactly upset about it.

 

Mind you, at least 3 of City's goals had the same sense of the other team just letting it happen. And quite what was wrong with Palace's 3rd goal, to potentially put them 3-0 up, I'm not sure.

[Chindie]

XG is stupid.

[hmm]

Sort of. Depends what you expect it to measure. It does give a reasonable summary of how much effective attacking a team has done. The disparity between Liverpool's xG and goals scored seemed roughly reflective of the match to me. We had 12 shots on target and scored 9! I've seen 0-0s with more.

[bradigor]

24 minutes ago, hmm said:

I think the Liverpool xG was less than 3! Not that I'm exactly upset about it.

 

Mind you, at least 3 of City's goals had the same sense of the other team just letting it happen. And quite what was wrong with Palace's 3rd goal, to potentially put them 3-0 up, I'm not sure.

 

Ah yes. All I've heard is moaning about how the Madrid goal against Karius counted and this didn't. 

 

Meh.

[Naysonymous]

There are several different methods to calculate xG.  Understat have it at 4.86 .  The own goal counts as 0.00 , Alexander-Arnold’s is 0.02 , Harvey Elliott’s is 0.06 and, well, you can read the rest for yourselves.  We do tend to overestimate the odds of things going in though, even Van Dijk’s header from a corner.  We see a couple every week across the league but they come from umpteen corners. 

[bradigor]

Imagine using xG to separate league positions at the end of a season. 

 

Everton got relegated by 0.04xG. Because they got desperate on the last day and took 30 shots from the wing, whilst Fulham took two shots from inside the 6-yard box.

 

Actually that would be pretty funny.

 

 

 

[FalconGR]

Does anywhere which computes xG give a sense of the variance of it? Roughly speaking general maths expectations are that in a low scoring game like football with few chances per game there will be large fluctuations from the average in any given match. In contrast in basketball where there are order 100 shots per game stats and percentage makes should be far more accurate at predicting the score. 

 

Of course the other issue with xG is it ignores the fact that taking your chances is one of the most important skills in football. 

[Yobo Ahoy]

I do love to see Bournemouth get humped. Parker will get found out soon, they basically bought their way out of the championship by hoovering up every other championship team's half decent players in January and are now playing the pauper underdog card. 

[Hamus]

16 hours ago, bradigor said:

 

You're the only one I've seen say that

 

Let's be fair. When Liverpool actually win a trophy you immediately say "they're not going to win it!" and then forever predict losses and they'll never win anything again 😅

[Stig]

10 hours ago, bradigor said:

 

Ah yes. All I've heard is moaning about how the Madrid goal against Karius counted and this didn't. 

 

Meh.

 

I mean, there's zero point comparing it to that but the refereeing at City yesterday from was a joke.

 

Palace's 3rd goal disallowed for no good reason. Ederson fucks up his distribution, theres zero contact made between the player & keeper and they disallowed it. Why are keepers wrapped in cotton wools because of their own fuck ups? Also see, Keeper coming flying out of his 6 yard box, diving into a player, fucking up the clewrance but someone getting a foul against him 🤷‍♂️

 

Haaland also kicks someone in the head with a very high boot, something we've seen players get red carded for and he doesn't even get a yellow. 

 

Oh and of course he goes on to win to game for them 🙄 

Call it bias, incompetence or inconsistency, either way it was shite.

 

I know as a Liverpool fan many might be saying pot, kettle, black here but the blatant obvious things they've got away with over the last few seasons, even with VAR is a piss take.

[Naysonymous]

2 hours ago, FalconGR said:

Does anywhere which computes xG give a sense of the variance of it? Roughly speaking general maths expectations are that in a low scoring game like football with few chances per game there will be large fluctuations from the average in any given match. In contrast in basketball where there are order 100 shots per game stats and percentage makes should be far more accurate at predicting the score. 

 

Of course the other issue with xG is it ignores the fact that taking your chances is one of the most important skills in football. 

 

 

xG is more about long term trends and is more useful in scouting than, say, trying to write a narrative over 90 minutes.  The best players will outperform xG, much like the best players will be in the highest percentiles for progressive passes, tackles, interceptions or whatever else gets recorded.  In theory even good players being dragged down by bad teams can get spotted this way.   

[Oh Danny Boy]

Just saw that ‘disallowed’ Palace goal. There’s bad officiating and then there’s outright protecting teams. I’d be fuming if I was Palace. 

[bradigor]

2 hours ago, Hamus said:

 

Let's be fair. When Liverpool actually win a trophy you immediately say "they're not going to win it!" and then forever predict losses and they'll never win anything again 😅

 

I do my bit. Besides I've got a spot on prediction record this week

[FalconGR]

1 hour ago, Naysonymous said:

 

 

xG is more about long term trends and is more useful in scouting than, say, trying to write a narrative over 90 minutes.  The best players will outperform xG, much like the best players will be in the highest percentiles for progressive passes, tackles, interceptions or whatever else gets recorded.  In theory even good players being dragged down by bad teams can get spotted this way.   

Sure, I understand that, I am just curious as to what the typical variation in a game is. When tv is saying xG is say 3.2 vs 2.3 in a game it would be helpful to state what the typical size of the errors bars are - is it order 1 or 0.1, I would guess the former. 

[Naysonymous]

I’d imagine the margin of error is fairly high considering how data is collected and the heavy emphasis on the importance of large sample sizes.  As far as I can see it’s main use is in measuring trends because you’d assume the margin of error is the same throughout any given period and the longer the period the less significant anomalies become.  It’s fun just to see what an xG is for an individual game when someone has been battered or someone has been jammy but you can’t draw any meaningful conclusions on 90 minutes. That’s not really the point though. 

[Chindie]

Nice to see Villa getting screwed over leads to a 'revisit' of the rules again, it appears.

 

Digne has a ludicrous penalty given against him for handball last week, yesterday Manchester United play hot potato in their box and it's fine.

[SMD]

I see a lack of critical analysis over the third Palace goal that was disallowed and Haaland's high boot that didn't get him sent off. Ah well, I'm sure it's not something worth looking into.

[Mike1812]

Can we just spare a thought for poor little Cristiano?

 

[Chindie]

Horror show incoming at Villa Park. The only defender we've got that's good in the air, Mings, is ill. We're playing narrower than the eye of a needle. Width is reliant on the fullbacks, but with Mings out and CB thin at the club we're paying with what would probably be our last choice partnership, with tactics that completely expose them.

 

Sigh. We're rolling the dice hoping for double sixes, where any other roll loses the game.

[Fry Crayola]

Dundee United there, the Bournemouth of the North.

[bear]

Duncan Castles has been a bit of a joke for a while because writing puff pieces like that but why are the Times publishing it?