ucandomagic
Well-Known Member
I have continued to plot graphs and charts for my own amusement, as I have done for years but, to date, I thought it best to keep my head under the sheets with regard to posting them this season, as our results were bad enough without me pointing out the obvious. However, with our recent improvement, I have had several requests to post something, so let’s see how they’re looking.
Cal O’Hare has been a shining light this season, and his terrier-like “leader-of-the-press” is now being enhanced with some superbly delicately-played passes and assists.
Japh Tanganga has been his rock-solid self all season, blocking everything in sight, and this continued against Pompey, but with the added bonus of effectively winning the game for us at the other end. A powerful header punched off the line for Sydie’s penalty and another header crashing off the bar for Big Pat to score with some part of his anatomy on the rebound!
As usual, Graph 1 compares our progress against 3 benchmark sets of results. I've taken each of our 46 matches and created 3 sets of results to achieve 3 points totals, which should approximate to Automatic Promotion, Playoff Certainty and Playoff Possibility. My benchmarks take account of who our opponents are each week.
Graph 1:
Compared to my benchmarks, we are now about 14 points behind my Playoff Possible line (11 points behind the actual current 6th place). Obviously, of course, end-of-season 6th place points, in particular, do vary significantly from year to year. Our recent improvement has seen us at least not losing ground to the target line – however, I should add a word of caution here. If you look at the current League Table below, and where the greens and yellows of our positive results are, you can see that we’ve not managed to do anything at all this season against top half teams. The upcoming Stoke and Birmingham games will tell us if we have really turned a corner.
League Table:
Graph 2 compares this season against some recent Championship seasons. These earlier season results are the results from the same game day – not the same opponents. The comparisons are fairly self-explanatory, but it is interesting to note that after 17 games Slav had 19 points and finally handed 23 points over to Hecky after 19 games. Hecky then went on to 5th place on 75 points – so good things are still possible.
Graph 2:
I’ve also been keeping an eye on our general XG performance, and our performance has certainly been better than our results. While we were in the bottom 2 of the actual League Table, we were typically 14th or 15th in the XTable, produced from both teams’ XG’s in all fixtures. Graph 3 shows our actual goals for and against compared to our XG goals for and against – and clearly our actual goals for and against have been worse than would be expected from the chances that we have created and allowed. Graph 3 does show, however, that we have very recently been achieving goals for and against that are as good or better than would be expected from the chances that we are creating.
Graph 3:
The footballxg.com Matchday 17 XGTable below came out today, and recent performances mean that we now lie a very creditable 6th on XG performance (compared to 21st in the actual League Table). Another indication of our uptick in performance as well as in results.
Matchday 17 XTable:
So, Leicester and Stoke coming up with, surprisingly, Leicester looking the weaker of the 2 at present. The recent stats would suggest a couple of draws, but let’s hope for 4 points from the 2 games.
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
Cal O’Hare has been a shining light this season, and his terrier-like “leader-of-the-press” is now being enhanced with some superbly delicately-played passes and assists.
Japh Tanganga has been his rock-solid self all season, blocking everything in sight, and this continued against Pompey, but with the added bonus of effectively winning the game for us at the other end. A powerful header punched off the line for Sydie’s penalty and another header crashing off the bar for Big Pat to score with some part of his anatomy on the rebound!
As usual, Graph 1 compares our progress against 3 benchmark sets of results. I've taken each of our 46 matches and created 3 sets of results to achieve 3 points totals, which should approximate to Automatic Promotion, Playoff Certainty and Playoff Possibility. My benchmarks take account of who our opponents are each week.
Graph 1:
Compared to my benchmarks, we are now about 14 points behind my Playoff Possible line (11 points behind the actual current 6th place). Obviously, of course, end-of-season 6th place points, in particular, do vary significantly from year to year. Our recent improvement has seen us at least not losing ground to the target line – however, I should add a word of caution here. If you look at the current League Table below, and where the greens and yellows of our positive results are, you can see that we’ve not managed to do anything at all this season against top half teams. The upcoming Stoke and Birmingham games will tell us if we have really turned a corner.
League Table:
Graph 2 compares this season against some recent Championship seasons. These earlier season results are the results from the same game day – not the same opponents. The comparisons are fairly self-explanatory, but it is interesting to note that after 17 games Slav had 19 points and finally handed 23 points over to Hecky after 19 games. Hecky then went on to 5th place on 75 points – so good things are still possible.
Graph 2:
I’ve also been keeping an eye on our general XG performance, and our performance has certainly been better than our results. While we were in the bottom 2 of the actual League Table, we were typically 14th or 15th in the XTable, produced from both teams’ XG’s in all fixtures. Graph 3 shows our actual goals for and against compared to our XG goals for and against – and clearly our actual goals for and against have been worse than would be expected from the chances that we have created and allowed. Graph 3 does show, however, that we have very recently been achieving goals for and against that are as good or better than would be expected from the chances that we are creating.
Graph 3:
The footballxg.com Matchday 17 XGTable below came out today, and recent performances mean that we now lie a very creditable 6th on XG performance (compared to 21st in the actual League Table). Another indication of our uptick in performance as well as in results.
Matchday 17 XTable:
So, Leicester and Stoke coming up with, surprisingly, Leicester looking the weaker of the 2 at present. The recent stats would suggest a couple of draws, but let’s hope for 4 points from the 2 games.
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
