More Striker = More Goal

[dc_blade]

As others have said, Didzy was the only one who massively under-performed his xG.

On Understat, McBurnie had an xG of about 8 from 36 appearances. Granted, a really top class forward will create more of his own chances...but if we're only supplying our main striker with the chances to score about 8 goals over the season, the problem is at least partly about creativity and ambition at the top end of the pitch.

I'm for signing a new striker, by the way. Just don't expect it to solve all our problems.

 

[Snowflake]

How about a striker that shoots from outside the box with power and accuracy.
I cannot recall more than two or three that we scored last season beyond 18 yards.

 

[Barney]

Less or more margin for error, they'll still miss chances. They're human beings.

Mbappe sliced one straight at Neuer from 8 yards out yesterday in the Champions League final.

My point is our strikers do not get chances created for them. It's so easy to bring up the chances they've missed because we create so few.

Yea, I also agree we don't create as many chances as we should. The point still stands though. Of the chances that do happen to be created, the margin for error on those goes down in the Prem.

Where as in the Championship you might get away with bagging 1 in every 2 good chances, that needs to be improved upon by, say 15-20% in the Premier. That's because of the increased standards of the league, and those that often don't meet them get punished by the rest who do.

 

[Chabuddy G]

Yea, I also agree we don't create as many chances as we should. The point still stands though. Of the chances that do happen to be created, the margin for error on those goes down in the Prem.

Where as in the Championship you might get away with bagging 1 in every 2 good chances, that needs to be improved upon by, say 15-20% in the Premier. That's because of the increased standards of the league, and those that often don't meet them get punished by the rest who do.

Well I for one can't name many missed chances. I'm not going to bother with Didsy because I'll be here until dusk...

McBurnie missed one late on against Liverpool
Sharp missed 2 against Southampton and a good chance when he came on as a sub, can't remember who against
Moose missed a chance to make it 4 against Chelsea
Clarke (lol) missed a glorious chance at home to Liverpool

Apart from that I really am struggling...

It's not like they've missed a glutton of chances is it?

 

[Chabuddy G]

How about a striker that shoots from outside the box with power and accuracy.
I cannot recall more than two or three that we scored last season beyond 18 yards.

We don't play that way, we aim to keep the ball in those areas and create high quality chances instead

It's frustrating but that's how we play and it's hard to argue with

 

[bromtom]

Strikers miss chances, even in the Prem. I hate to be the one to break it to you

You can afford to be profligate if you're making more chances.

When we miss a chance it's more likely to be game defining because we don't make that many. Man City can miss 4 sitters a game and still win 3-0.

 

[Chabuddy G]

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You can afford to be profligate if you're making more chances.

When we miss a chance it's more likely to be game defining because we don't make that many. Man City can miss 4 sitters a game and still win 3-0.

Exactly, but that isn't our strikers fault is it? They play for us, not Man City, for a reason

 

[PokerBlade]

Splitting hairs on the overall point of the thread, but where did you see that? FBref and Understat have our team as a whole as underperforming by about 6-7 goals, almost all of which was McGoldrick (2 goals from 7.1xg of chances). Mousset and Sharp both outperformed their chances according to that, McBurnie was slightly below.

Edit - I see Understat are less charitable Whew, that is a big difference between those two sources though - I'd be hesitant to go overboard with how many more goals our strikers should have scored from that, just to say that they should definitely have scored more. And yes, as others have said, take out McGoldrick's freakishly poor finishing last season and it's not really a big collective problem.

The main issue with XG is how to break the chances down statistically. It works by taking a sample of shots and then saying a shot under these conditions is scored x% of the time. That makes it better that just a straight shot conversion, but it means you have to group the different chances by some criteria. A shot from six yards out with an empty net is different to a shot from six yards out with a defender in tight to you. So you might be tempted to make the conditions really specific, so you know that the chances are truly comparable, but the more granular you make the criteria the fewer samples you'll have of the same (similar) opportunity and so more variance and lower reliability. The interesting thing being that picking out similar chances is the type of thing humans are really good at intuitively but computers are still god awful at.

Conclusion being that XG is a good tool but it's far from perfect and depending on where you get your data from the samples and criteria can lead to very different figures.

 

[Balham]

So you think a better forward doesn't miss the 1 or 2 chances each of the strikers bar McGoldrick has missed?
Joelinton cost 50mil and I'd hate to see his xG

He better get his head on the chopping block ready because 1 or 2 missed chances and we'll threads in here bemoaning him as a waste of money from game 1

Understat has Joelinton at 6.03 xG from 38 appearances. He's not getting many chances - which is a criticism in itself.

 

[derryblade]

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You can afford to be profligate if you're making more chances.

When we miss a chance it's more likely to be game defining because we don't make that many. Man City can miss 4 sitters a game and still win 3-0.

Looked at that site you can filter it by club, and it says we missed 48 big chances Mcgoldrick and McBurnie wih 25 between them.

 

[PokerBlade]

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You can afford to be profligate if you're making more chances.

When we miss a chance it's more likely to be game defining because we don't make that many. Man City can miss 4 sitters a game and still win 3-0.

I think the thing to take from it is that being a good striker is less about your shooting prowess and more about your ability to get into scoring positions. The ability to lose your marker, or to turn/beat a defender, gain that yard of space to get a shot away, is where strikers are made.

But people can go overboard with the stat stuff. It's also obviously true that Lys Mousset can hit a ball much harder and more accurately than I can. But at the elite level, the difference there seems to be minimal.

 

[bromtom]

Exactly, but that isn't our strikers fault is it? They play for us, not Man City, for a reason

Quite. I'm just saying, even "world class" strikers miss a load of quality chances, but being world class means you're usually in a team with other world class players who provide you enough service that you can get away with it.

Our strikers aren't world class, but they'd certainly be elevated with a decent creative midfielder behind them.

 

[bromtom]

I think the thing to take from it is that being a good striker is less about your shooting prowess and more about your ability to get into scoring positions. The ability to lose your marker, or to turn/beat a defender, gain that yard of space to get a shot away, is where strikers are made.

But people can go overboard with the stat stuff. It's also obviously true that Lys Mousset can hit a ball much harder and more accurately than I can. But at the elite level, the difference there seems to be minimal.

Yeah that's probably 75% of it. It's harder for our strikers to find space though because of how laboured our build up can be. A creative spark to see something that's on before a defence can get into position would improve us no end.

Our strikers make plenty of runs, if you watch a match you'll see them just making runs for a ball that never comes as Baldock and Lunny pass it around to each other on the wing or something.

Keith Edwards is always on about it too when he's on commentary.

 

[Chabuddy G]

Looked at that site you can filter it by club, and it says we missed 48 big chances Mcgoldrick and McBurnie wih 25 between them.

Fucking hell

 

[Cheesebored]

yep. Just imagine a forward with 9xg created by other players and who, shock horror, will also shoot from distance and run at goal on his own.

10 goals would be easy for such a player.

Don't be stupid. It's ridiculous to shoot from distance, I've read it on here.

 

[Snowflake]

We don't play that way, we aim to keep the ball in those areas and create high quality chances instead

It's frustrating but that's how we play and it's hard to argue with

Perhaps because we have no one with that ability ?

 

[Kanye]

I wish we didn't all have to have such a binary view, both sides of the argument have merit: Better strikers would have probabaly scored more goals with the chances we had and we need the midfield and wing-backs to create more chances, regardless of who plays upfront.

I would be absolutely blown away if Wilder wasn't addressing both. Calm needed.

 

[PokerBlade]

Yeah that's probably 75% of it. It's harder for our strikers to find space though because of how laboured our build up can be. A creative spark to see something that's on before a defence can get into position would improve us no end.

Our strikers make plenty of runs, if you watch a match you'll see them just making runs for a ball that never comes as Baldock and Lunny pass it around to each other on the wing or something.

Keith Edwards is always on about it too when he's on commentary.

It's a tough balance to strike. Wilder's way since League One has been about creating good opportunities. Fewer chances, higher conversion rates. One potential benefit of that is consistency over variance. We won't have many games where we score three or more goals, but we might have fewer games where we'd score 0.

You could do some ev calulations to figure out how many more chances you'd have to create to make to compensate but you'd still have the variance issue. Example, for sake of easy maths, if you create one 100% likelihood of scoring, you'd need two 50% chances to be as well off overall, but you'd now not score in some games and score two in others. If it drops below 50% then you're worse off for creating the extra chance. So the key would be to make more chances while keeping the quality high enough to be better off e.g. you make 2 chances a game but with a 60% chance of scoring.

That's before factoring in whether you expose yourself to conceding more, which is a real possibility if you sacrifice a good defensive player like Lundstram. Point is, the maths is kind of simple, actually applying it to your game isn't, and when you've had a top half Prem finish it all comes down to "We could do with a world class midfielder". Which I think we all agree with. They can just be a bit hard to get hold of.

 

[Chabuddy G]

I wish we didn't all have to have such a binary view, both sides of the argument have merit: Better strikers would have probabaly scored more goals with the chances we had and we need the midfield and wing-backs to create more chances, regardless of who plays upfront.

I would be absolutely blown away if Wilder wasn't addressing both. Calm needed.

I think it is a valid point, but replacing our strikers with better ones would be a lot more expensive than trying to solve our issue with creation of chances, imo

Plus like I said I think it's hard to judge most of our strikers on chances missed because there really isn't that many (hence why we can recall most of them) apart from Didsy of course.

 

[Cheesebored]

It's not like they've missed a glutton of chances is it?

 

[Davalon]

We need better creators and better strikers.

We may get through this season with what we have, we may not.

Anyone who thinks Sharp and Didzy are sufficient back ups beyond that are just being sentimental.

 

[Chabuddy G]

We need better creators and better strikers.

We may get through this season with what we have, we may not.

Anyone who thinks Sharp and Didzy are sufficient back ups beyond that are just being sentimental.

Didsy has not looked out of his depth in this division at all, he's one of our best players. The job he does linking the play is outstanding. Missed chances aside he's one of the best all round forwards I've seen all season when he's been on it.

 

[Kozzy_is_my_Dad]

Tell you what isn't out of the school of scoranomics?

More horny = more score. Abject failure in Flares on a Satdi neet is evidence of that.

 

[Kozzy_is_my_Dad]

I think we have to look at both. It depends what you mean by more creativity, but finding that in players who can play the flat midfield 3 simultaneously is incredibly rare and probably expensive. It'll mean either a shift to wide men, or a reverting to the Duffy role. As its stands, most of our creative freedom came via Stevens and Baldock, hence if they weren't at it, neither were we.

I'd like to see a bit of creative influence signed (Swift) and our own used properly (Freeman) with some of the budget used on a striker upgrade (but I don't know who).

 

[RedandWhite]

That's how it works right?
Straight out of the Neil Warnock school of scoranomics

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Let's become a little more expansive and sign a bit more creativity and see if the current batch are good enough shall we? I suspect if they weren't feeding off scraps in 25 or so games last season our goals scored column would be a fair bit higher.

Harry Kane and Robert Lewandowski would have struggled to reach double figures for us last season.

Buendia or Jed Wallace for me please Chris...

Completely disagree with the Harry Kane quote. Later in the season we did fail to create chances, 2/3 of the season we created so many chances that were missed.

 

[McNulty's Lollipop]

The main issue with XG is how to break the chances down statistically. It works by taking a sample of shots and then saying a shot under these conditions is scored x% of the time. That makes it better that just a straight shot conversion, but it means you have to group the different chances by some criteria. A shot from six yards out with an empty net is different to a shot from six yards out with a defender in tight to you. So you might be tempted to make the conditions really specific, so you know that the chances are truly comparable, but the more granular you make the criteria the fewer samples you'll have of the same (similar) opportunity and so more variance and lower reliability. The interesting thing being that picking out similar chances is the type of thing humans are really good at intuitively but computers are still god awful at.

Conclusion being that XG is a good tool but it's far from perfect and depending on where you get your data from the samples and criteria can lead to very different figures.

First poster here, I think this is bang on the money.

 

[Chabuddy G]

Completely disagree with the Harry Kane quote. Later in the season we did fail to create chances, 2/3 of the season we created so many chances that were missed.

Don't know where

 

[S40BLADE]

Strikers bad we need new. Mousset and McBurnie out.

 

[Kanye]

I think it is a valid point, but replacing our strikers with better ones would be a lot more expensive than trying to solve our issue with creation of chances, imo

Plus like I said I think it's hard to judge most of our strikers on chances missed because there really isn't that many (hence why we can recall most of them) apart from Didsy of course.

You might be right in terms of cost, and I agree that we dont need to necessarily replace our starting strikers, rather replace the backups, like Clarke/Zivkovic/Robinson.


I don't judge our strikers on the chances they missed, I do expect them all (Mousset, McGoldrick & McBurnie specifically) to score more and generally be more clinicial and dangerous though. Every player in the 11 should be looking to improve on last season.

 

[Davalon]

Didsy has not looked out of his depth in this division at all, he's one of our best players. The job he does linking the play is outstanding. Missed chances aside he's one of the best all round forwards I've seen all season when he's been on it.

I was clearly talking about the season after next not the preceding two.