Bonjour, you cheese eating surrender monkey.
Although not so much for the ones who don't speak French.
Wibble.
Some of this is pretty interesting:
(I recommend tricky avoids it, as he’ll be infuriated.)
Particularly on what Newcastle did and gives an explanation of why Liverpool kept shooting from way out.
I don't mind it. I find it slightly bemusing the amount of work that people will go to in order to demonstrate, with dubious numbers* a long time after the event, what your eyes could have already told you. But whatever cranks your engine, I suppose.
* As an example. If your analytical model for expected goals (xG) consistently turns out garbage numbers (substantially deviating from '1'). Then you might not be proving anything about footballers. You might just be proving that your statistical model is shit.
But that's not the case at all. Some players outperform their xG, we call them good finishers, many don't, they are bad finishers. All xG does is attaches a number to a phenomenon that is incredibly obvious.
xG on the whole can't produce garbage numbers unless finishing gets much better or much worse because it's just crunching the numbers based on similar chances. (Allowing for the ability of each model to identify what's a similar chance. )
Thanks for the link, but I gave up when their smugness (not Nick Miller though) turned to zone 14, which I guess is something they invented in between doing stints as presenters at CBBC. The whole Xg thing still puzzles me. If it is so accurate then how come ours is low yet we’re third? Seems to me that as a metric it is missing a fair bit. Or other more useful metrics have yet to be identified. Also, I’m not sure who or what has decided what is an expected goal for or against, and using what criteria?
Before xG we'd just count shots - both teams had 10 shots, so it looks like an even game. But we all know that not all shots are equal - a Murillo attempt from the halfway line clearly has less value than a Wood tap in from the edge of the six yard box. Again, xG just puts a number on that obvious fact.
Ours is low but we're third because we (Chris Wood mainly) are really good at taking the chances we get. You'll note we aren't third in goals scored anyway.
The value of each shot is determined by having a big database of all the shots and comparing the shot you've had against that big database.
Simplest case is a penalty. In the big database of shots, 79% of penalties are scored, so a penalty has an xG of 0.79. Just expand that to account for shots any other position and, in the better models, where the defenders are.
This guy isn't as annoying, does a similar job and only mentions xG once: youtu.be/7AmY46IjH-A?si=hXSu3kHK_iGgKhWQ
I am no football tactician but I still didn't learn very much from this.
I guess I would have learned quite a bit if it was about a team I didn't watch regularly, but then again, I wouldn't bother to sit through a YouTube tactics video about Bournemouth or West Ham or Ipswich.
So, in conclusion, 6/10.
I couldn't actually get to the Nick Miller bit because the first 2 were almost supernaturally annoying.
My Arsenal ticket cost £60. If you factor in time spent consuming and disposing Madri that's a £1 a minute.
I think mine was £52.
You will have a better view than me.
Albeit probably obscured by that Madri.
Nice interview with Yatesey on The Sports Agents podcast. Nothing new but he always comes across exceptionally well.
Good article in today's Athletic breaking down how we're using attacking throw-ins effectively.
www.nytimes.com/athletic/6077310/2025/01/23/nottingham-forest-signature-throw-in
Woody new contract confirmed.
