Opposition fans back from the game

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Snowflake Royal
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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Snowflake Royal » 28 Oct 2020 13:27

Mid Sussex Royal All pretty harmless and shows how much everyone is now obsessed by match stats which are used to justify all the "they can't be that good" comments

I'm pretty sure we were the same on here last season (Charlton) and was it Bolton the year before? Admittedly their runs were only for half the amount of games at best though.

Charlton cost me money :twisted:

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by CountryRoyal » 28 Oct 2020 13:31

Snowflake Royal
Mid Sussex Royal All pretty harmless and shows how much everyone is now obsessed by match stats which are used to justify all the "they can't be that good" comments

I'm pretty sure we were the same on here last season (Charlton) and was it Bolton the year before? Admittedly their runs were only for half the amount of games at best though.

Charlton cost me money :twisted:


8)

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Brum Royal » 28 Oct 2020 13:41

tidus_mi2 Speaking of xG, as I said, I like it but look at the xG table and it's all over the place, I think with xG you can only gauge whether a team creates/concedes high quality chances, which are both low for us but we have a quality keeper to save those high quality chances and clinical finishers to put away our chances.

here is the table:



Is anyone making the same arguments about Watford? Look at their numbers in that table: -15 places, -8 points, should have shipped 5 more goals. They're 3rd in the real table. It's not just us at it.

The joys of being tinpot. So easy to wind up everyone else.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Stranded » 28 Oct 2020 13:48

Mid Sussex Royal All pretty harmless and shows how much everyone is now obsessed by match stats which are used to justify all the "they can't be that good" comments

I'm pretty sure we were the same on here last season (Charlton) and was it Bolton the year before? Admittedly their runs were only for half the amount of games at best though.


I guess the main difference with Charlton and Bolton comparisons is they were never 7 points clear with the best goal difference, best defence and 2nd highest scorers.

Who knows what will happen but any slip from us on current form seems likely to see us slip into a play off finish. Even a slip of 1 PPG from now gets us close to 90pts.

Finishing way down in mid-table now would almost need relegation form.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Stranded » 28 Oct 2020 13:49

Brum Royal
tidus_mi2 Speaking of xG, as I said, I like it but look at the xG table and it's all over the place, I think with xG you can only gauge whether a team creates/concedes high quality chances, which are both low for us but we have a quality keeper to save those high quality chances and clinical finishers to put away our chances.

here is the table:



Is anyone making the same arguments about Watford? Look at their numbers in that table: -15 places, -8 points, should have shipped 5 more goals. They're 3rd in the real table. It's not just us at it.

The joys of being tinpot. So easy to wind up everyone else.


No, because they aren't 7 points clear.


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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by WestYorksRoyal » 28 Oct 2020 14:19

Stranded
Mid Sussex Royal All pretty harmless and shows how much everyone is now obsessed by match stats which are used to justify all the "they can't be that good" comments

I'm pretty sure we were the same on here last season (Charlton) and was it Bolton the year before? Admittedly their runs were only for half the amount of games at best though.


I guess the main difference with Charlton and Bolton comparisons is they were never 7 points clear with the best goal difference, best defence and 2nd highest scorers.

Who knows what will happen but any slip from us on current form seems likely to see us slip into a play off finish. Even a slip of 1 PPG from now gets us close to 90pts.

Finishing way down in mid-table now would almost need relegation form.

The other difference is we have better players. Taylor is the only Charlton player who'd have got into our team last season. We've got some real talent in this team, and should be able to keep up top 10 form throughout the remainder of the season, which will get us in the playoffs given our start.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Sutekh » 28 Oct 2020 17:08

SouthDownsRoyal
WoodleyRoyal Brighton north stand chat

I hope they fall away. No doubt some of their nobhead fans are already wondering how to reword their poncy 'record' chant.


Brighton :| yawn


At least we’ve got a record to have a chant about.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by muirinho » 28 Oct 2020 17:48

Pepe the Horseman
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Pepe the Horseman Yeh, that's the thing. If people had watched our games, they'd know this is the case. But instead they see the stats and assume it's all luck.

Not sure what algorithm the bookies use, because we're still 8/5 to beat Cov, whereas going by respective form and league position we should be odds on.

Long may that attitude continue. I never want us to be favourites, I welcome other supporters and clubs thinking it is just dumb luck we are where we are. The more the underestimate us the more that plays into our hands.

Ya man Gabriel Sutton is a perfect example of this. He was saying after the first few games that despite the results Reading's performances weren't impressing him. Someone questioned whether he'd actually watched the games, and he admitted he hadn't :|


Good grief, how would you even have the confidence to open your mouth..... :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Pepe the Horseman » 28 Oct 2020 17:55

muirinho
Pepe the Horseman
Old Man Andrews Long may that attitude continue. I never want us to be favourites, I welcome other supporters and clubs thinking it is just dumb luck we are where we are. The more the underestimate us the more that plays into our hands.

Ya man Gabriel Sutton is a perfect example of this. He was saying after the first few games that despite the results Reading's performances weren't impressing him. Someone questioned whether he'd actually watched the games, and he admitted he hadn't :|


Good grief, how would you even have the confidence to open your mouth..... :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

He's the personification of xG.


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From Despair To Where?
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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by From Despair To Where? » 28 Oct 2020 18:00

muirinho
Pepe the Horseman
Old Man Andrews Long may that attitude continue. I never want us to be favourites, I welcome other supporters and clubs thinking it is just dumb luck we are where we are. The more the underestimate us the more that plays into our hands.

Ya man Gabriel Sutton is a perfect example of this. He was saying after the first few games that despite the results Reading's performances weren't impressing him. Someone questioned whether he'd actually watched the games, and he admitted he hadn't :|


Good grief, how would you even have the confidence to open your mouth..... :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:


I have absolutey no idea who Gabriel Sutton is or whether his opinion matters but a brief Google search suggests he's a bedwetting nonce magnet.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Brain Traysers » 28 Oct 2020 18:21

Some good discourse here around the merits of xG as a statistic. Good to see most are correctly understanding its limited explanatory power, and key caveats (gamestate and variance). At no point has anyone (competent) claimed it's the be all and end all.

A couple of applied points

Stranded
WoodleyRoyal so humour me here, are 'expected goals' supposed to predict the amounts of goals you are going to score before the game has even kicked off?


All they show is if your strikers we're perfect in a game then given where each shot was taken from, how many of those should have resulted in a goal. So for example a penalty is "worth" 0.7 goals, as a penalty is scored 70% of the time. So 7 shots where you have just 10% chance of scoring are worth 1 penalty - so in short, it is likely the more shots you have the higher your xG even if all your shots were from distance and frankly non-threatening.

According to here: https://experimental361.com/2020/10/28/ ... -oct-2020/

we were lucky to score even 1 last night where as Blackburn should have definitely scored at least 1 given their chances.


This is a good summary of how its measured, but missing a key point on 'variance'. xG doesn't 'add' up, its multiplies (probabilistically), so it's naïve to say you would expect goals scored/conceded to equal the rounded sum of xG.

Here is a tool to play around with turning xG numbers its distributions, allowing a much more informed interpretation of the stat. Its pre-loaded with the (obviously incorrect) numbers from the Blackburn game.


(Confusingly, Red = Blackburn, Blue = RFC)

Picking up on the specific points made by Stranded:
- "we were lucky to score even 1 last night" - given the shots we had, we would have expected to score >0 goals 63% of the time, so would have been quite unlucky not to score.
- "Blackburn should have definitely scored at least 1"- given the shots they had, Blackburn would have expected to score >0 goals 83% of the time, so I think that assessment was fair.

Based on those numbers, we had a 18% probability of winning that game, so unlikely, but far from a robbery. This overly simplistic point also misses the fact that we were leading for all but 12 mins of the game; that subtlety is also missing from the xG => xP style analyses such as the Experimental 361 tables. But we also know those numbers (via Opta) are wrong. If we say Meite's open goal was actually 0.8xG (rather than the 0.27 which doesn't account for the lack of defenders or goalkeeper), we get these distributions. In that case the probability of winning has almost doubled to 31% (vs losing at 37%, a near toss-up). Then take into account that the model missed one near certain OG (as no shot was recorded). The model quality is limited to the quality of it's input data after all

WestYorksRoyal If you replaced Aguero at City with Puscas, would it still show the same xG for chances they get? That clearly shows the fallacy of xG if so. Would you say City's or Spurs' xG figures are unsustainable because Aguero and Kane are outperforming their xG? Obviously not.

I don't see why Joao and Meite can't keep this form up based upon what I've seen, so why can't we continue outperforming xG?


WYR is right to say it seems odd that 'finishing skill' isn't accounted for, and yes the same xG would be awarded regardless of whether the player taking the shot was Aguero, Puscas, or even Rafael, which does seem bizarre on the face of it. But finishing skill doesn't seem to hold up in the long term. Very few players consistently outperform their xG numbers even though they are considered 'elite' finishers. Understat.com has xG figures going back 6 seasons for the top 5 leagues, so we can try to find this 'finishing skill'. Here we see:
- Messi - 202 goals vs 169 xG, and outperforming in 5/6 full seasons. Truly the GOAT, with good evidence he is better-than-modelled finisher
- Ronaldo - 189 goals v 182xG, pretty much bang on apart from one season of massive outperformance in 14/15 (he exceeded xG by 8.6). Loves a shot, but so many go high and wide...
- Lewandowski- 172 goals vs 175 xG, a tiny underperformance despite being regarded as one of the best finishers in the world
- Aguero 128 goals v 122xG
- Kane- 145 goals v 121xG, outperforming in every season, potentially an elite finisher
- Neymar- 107 goals vs 113xG

My interpretation is that its overly simplistic to distill an elite striker into an ability to finish well - ALF could finish very well, yet wasn't an 'elite' striker. Instead, the top strikers have other skillsets that allow them to consistently generate shooting opportunities, such positioning, anticipation, balance and strength. How about instead of calling Lewadowski a lethal finisher, we talk about how good he is at making space and being in the right place to consistently score so many goals?

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Snowball » 28 Oct 2020 18:31

Seems odd the xg doesn't use the striker's quality, and form.

I remember a LONG sequence where Noel Hunt and Shane Long were partners up-front and one or both of them scored virtually every game... or Blackman's purple patch... and some "striker" eg Baldock are not prolific, but others (like Long in his best season) seem to score so often.


I remember too, me complaining about Siggy. Great player, scored great goals, but he had a LOT of shots high, wide or saved

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Simmops » 28 Oct 2020 18:34

Sorry but stats are mostly meaningless and xG is the biggest pile of meaninglessness shite about. Do you get points for it? No. So it can oxf*rd off.


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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Simmops » 28 Oct 2020 18:34

Snowball Seems odd the xg doesn't use the striker's quality, and form.

I remember a LONG sequence where Noel Hunt and Shane Long were partners up-front and one or both of them scored virtually every game... or Blackman's purple patch... and some "striker" eg Baldock are not prolific, but others (like Long in his best season) seem to score so often.


I remember too, me complaining about Siggy. Great player, scored great goals, but he had a LOT of shots high, wide or saved


Quality is subjective depending on countries and division. Forlan in la liga was amazing. Torres before his injury was amazing

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Brain Traysers » 28 Oct 2020 18:43

Snowball Seems odd the xg doesn't use the striker's quality, and form.

I remember a LONG sequence where Noel Hunt and Shane Long were partners up-front and one or both of them scored virtually every game... or Blackman's purple patch... and some "striker" eg Baldock are not prolific, but others (like Long in his best season) seem to score so often.


I remember too, me complaining about Siggy. Great player, scored great goals, but he had a LOT of shots high, wide or saved


That's probably a shot position thing - nearly all long range shots are high/wide/saved.
Same site shows Gylfi at 46 goals vs 41xG. Partly through set pieces where he is 6 goals vs 3.6 xG. Overall he is a potentially significantly above average at long range shooting, with 17 goals from outside the box vs 9.6 xG.

But the same criticism is true for Benhrama, who is undoubtedly a good player who earned his move to the prem. But anyone labelling him an elite finisher clearly only watched a YouTube compilation of his goals and failed to notice his many many wayward long shots


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From Despair To Where?
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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by From Despair To Where? » 28 Oct 2020 19:06

Simmops Sorry but stats are mostly meaningless and xG is the biggest pile of meaninglessness shite about. Do you get points for it? No. So it can oxf*rd off.


I wouldn't say they are mostly meaningless but there is a trend towards over analysis for analysis sake that IMO doesn't add enough clarity. I would definitely put xG in that category.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Royality creeps In » 28 Oct 2020 19:08

I am sure you and others love all these stats, charts and images. I'm sure there must be a place for it.

However, its slightly off topic and I have to ask, what on earth has this got to do with Oppo fans? :roll:

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by From Despair To Where? » 28 Oct 2020 19:11

Because a lot of oppo fans are using xG as evidence to suggest we're winging it and will drop back when our luck runs out, having not seen how we play.

Stats can be useful but do not tell the whole story.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by TiagoIlori » 28 Oct 2020 19:17

You can’t just dismiss a stat because you don’t like what it’s saying, it’s been proven to be fairly accurate in reflecting how the team is doing in terms of chances. As long as you understand what it shows and it’s limitations then you can use that stat the way it’s supposed to be used.

You obviously can’t judge a team completely based on that stat alone.

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Re: Opposition fans back from the game

by Brain Traysers » 28 Oct 2020 19:21

TiagoIlori You can’t just dismiss a stat because you don’t like what it’s saying, it’s been proven to be fairly accurate in reflecting how the team is doing in terms of chances. As long as you understand what it shows and it’s limitations then you can use that stat the way it’s supposed to be used.

You obviously can’t judge a team completely based on that stat alone.


THIS

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