ucandomagic
Well-Known Member
This is my review of Blades XG performance and general Championship XG stats. The purpose of this is to assess how teams are performing relative to their XG data, as that gives a good indication of their strengths and weaknesses.
In my last XG post I pointed out that Leeds had the best stats for almost everything except goalkeeper, where Meslier had probably cost them 8 or 9 points when compared to a Cooper, Trafford or Johansson. Well, he didn’t let me down and cost them another 2 points on Saturday. Long may he remain, but I’ll be surprised if they aren’t looking elsewhere – apart from the 3 that I mentioned above, Pears (Blackburn) and Cumming (Oxford) look really good.
So, on Saturday 4th January we beat Watford 2-1 at Vicarage Road.
The XG data for the game was Blades 0.8 – Watford 1.3.
Both of our goals were difficult finishes, and emphasised the benefit of pulling the trigger. I’m certain that our overall XG this season is relatively low because we often lose the ball trying for the perfect goal rather than taking a shot. Of course, it depends who’s taking the shot – 20 yards at the edge of the box and a 0.1 XG shot would in reality have been 0.5 for somebody like Bobby Charlton and 0.001 for Conor Salmon!
Graph 1 shows a comparison of the progress of our actual goals for and against with our XG expected goals for and against over our 26 games so far. XG says that over those 26 games we should have scored 33.9 and conceded 25.6 and we have actually scored 36 and conceded 17. So, we are performing slightly above our XG in scoring and much better than average against our XGA in defence for the chances that we are creating and allowing.
Our XG goal difference of 8.3 is significantly less than our actual goal difference of 19. That difference is mostly due to conceding over 8 less goals than XGA, which has gained us at least 8 extra points, without which we would be in 4th place in the actual League Table. (Amazingly, there is currently an 11-point difference between us and “Michael Carrick’s Boro” in 5th!). Putting that into context with other teams, we only have the 11th best XG total but the 3rd best XGA total.
The fact that we have a good XGA and we are significantly outperforming even that, is the major reason for our current league position. (Burnley are even more extreme, being 19th in XG and 2nd in XGA).
Graph 1:
Chart 1 is the XTable - based on both team’s XG’s in matches played – alongside the actual League Table. Blades are 6th in the XTable and 3rd in the actual League table, so our actual results are better than our XG stats would imply. This outperformance is actually even greater, because the XTable does not apply the 2-point deduction. If the deduction were applied we would be 7th in the XTable. As discussed above, our outperformance is driven by having only conceded 17 goals against an XGA of 25.6.
The XTable is become increasingly similar to the actual table – which it should do, as the statistical sample is getting larger. There are now only 4 teams whose places in the XTable are more than 6 different from the actual table. Blackburn are the biggest overperformers here – being 7th in the actual table but 17th in the XTable. Coventry are the exact opposite, being 15th in the actual table but 3rd in the XTable. This reflects the fact that Blackburn have conceded 9.8 less goals than their XGA and Coventry have conceded 8.8 more goals than their XGA.
Chart 1:
So, overall the stats show that our actual results are better than our XG performance. Our actual results represent a likely automatics position and our XG data suggest a playoff position. As mentioned, we are only 11th best in XG, but we are 3rd best in XGA, behind only Leeds and Burnley. Our average XGA of 0.98 goals per game is a fairly good figure, but we are significantly outperforming that by delivering an actual average of 0.65 goals against per game. It is the outperformance of our XGA which leads to our outperforming our XG league position.
For those interested, I’ve put the full footballxg.com table at the bottom of the post. Our only non-green stat in the table is our XG and, as mentioned above, that is even more extreme for Burnley.
Our next game is against Norwich at Bramall Lane. They have scored 12 goals in their 13 away games with an XG of 14.2 and conceded 19 with an XGA of 15.1. Blades have scored 17 in 12 home games with an XG of 17.4 and conceded 5 with an XGA of 10.
So the stats would probably suggest 2-1 Blades, with 1-1 and 1-0 Blades as the next 2 most likely results.
Here’s to singing “Playing Football the Norwich Way” at the end!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
Full Footballxg.com Table:-
In my last XG post I pointed out that Leeds had the best stats for almost everything except goalkeeper, where Meslier had probably cost them 8 or 9 points when compared to a Cooper, Trafford or Johansson. Well, he didn’t let me down and cost them another 2 points on Saturday. Long may he remain, but I’ll be surprised if they aren’t looking elsewhere – apart from the 3 that I mentioned above, Pears (Blackburn) and Cumming (Oxford) look really good.
So, on Saturday 4th January we beat Watford 2-1 at Vicarage Road.
The XG data for the game was Blades 0.8 – Watford 1.3.
Both of our goals were difficult finishes, and emphasised the benefit of pulling the trigger. I’m certain that our overall XG this season is relatively low because we often lose the ball trying for the perfect goal rather than taking a shot. Of course, it depends who’s taking the shot – 20 yards at the edge of the box and a 0.1 XG shot would in reality have been 0.5 for somebody like Bobby Charlton and 0.001 for Conor Salmon!
Graph 1 shows a comparison of the progress of our actual goals for and against with our XG expected goals for and against over our 26 games so far. XG says that over those 26 games we should have scored 33.9 and conceded 25.6 and we have actually scored 36 and conceded 17. So, we are performing slightly above our XG in scoring and much better than average against our XGA in defence for the chances that we are creating and allowing.
Our XG goal difference of 8.3 is significantly less than our actual goal difference of 19. That difference is mostly due to conceding over 8 less goals than XGA, which has gained us at least 8 extra points, without which we would be in 4th place in the actual League Table. (Amazingly, there is currently an 11-point difference between us and “Michael Carrick’s Boro” in 5th!). Putting that into context with other teams, we only have the 11th best XG total but the 3rd best XGA total.
The fact that we have a good XGA and we are significantly outperforming even that, is the major reason for our current league position. (Burnley are even more extreme, being 19th in XG and 2nd in XGA).
Graph 1:
Chart 1 is the XTable - based on both team’s XG’s in matches played – alongside the actual League Table. Blades are 6th in the XTable and 3rd in the actual League table, so our actual results are better than our XG stats would imply. This outperformance is actually even greater, because the XTable does not apply the 2-point deduction. If the deduction were applied we would be 7th in the XTable. As discussed above, our outperformance is driven by having only conceded 17 goals against an XGA of 25.6.
The XTable is become increasingly similar to the actual table – which it should do, as the statistical sample is getting larger. There are now only 4 teams whose places in the XTable are more than 6 different from the actual table. Blackburn are the biggest overperformers here – being 7th in the actual table but 17th in the XTable. Coventry are the exact opposite, being 15th in the actual table but 3rd in the XTable. This reflects the fact that Blackburn have conceded 9.8 less goals than their XGA and Coventry have conceded 8.8 more goals than their XGA.
Chart 1:
So, overall the stats show that our actual results are better than our XG performance. Our actual results represent a likely automatics position and our XG data suggest a playoff position. As mentioned, we are only 11th best in XG, but we are 3rd best in XGA, behind only Leeds and Burnley. Our average XGA of 0.98 goals per game is a fairly good figure, but we are significantly outperforming that by delivering an actual average of 0.65 goals against per game. It is the outperformance of our XGA which leads to our outperforming our XG league position.
For those interested, I’ve put the full footballxg.com table at the bottom of the post. Our only non-green stat in the table is our XG and, as mentioned above, that is even more extreme for Burnley.
Our next game is against Norwich at Bramall Lane. They have scored 12 goals in their 13 away games with an XG of 14.2 and conceded 19 with an XGA of 15.1. Blades have scored 17 in 12 home games with an XG of 17.4 and conceded 5 with an XGA of 10.
So the stats would probably suggest 2-1 Blades, with 1-1 and 1-0 Blades as the next 2 most likely results.
Here’s to singing “Playing Football the Norwich Way” at the end!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
Full Footballxg.com Table:-
