The way I understand it, it shows (or it is supposed to show) the difference between relatively "good" and "bad" teams regarding overall performance and created chances, but it ignores the difference between high quality players and average players when it comes to scoring goals and defending in the box. So a better team should have better xG stats than an average team, but would score even more than the xG stat would suggest because they have better than average strikers to finish (for example). So is it normal if a top team have less expected goals than actual goals? Or I misunderstand something. And sorry for the off, we should have another thread for it.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer | W15 D2 L4
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
The way I understand it, it shows (or it is supposed to show) the difference between relatively "good" and "bad" teams regarding overall performance and created chances, but it ignores the difference between high quality players and average players when it comes to scoring goals and defending in the box. So a better team should have better xG stats than an average team, but would score even more than the xG stat would suggest because they have better than average strikers to finish (for example). So is it normal if a top team have less expected goals than actual goals? Or I misunderstand something. And sorry for the off, we should have another thread for it.
Not to mention cup wins away against Arsenal and Chelsea. It's a no brainer.
We did that for the first few games under Ole but every time we ran out of gas by the sixty-seventy mins mark. I don't know if Ole favours that or not. But I think thus far he had has demonstrated pragmatism and adjusted his tactics to suit the team's strength. What really surprised me was the amount of variety of of his approaches to games. He seemed very flexible in that regard.
Excellent point. Agreed. It would show SAFs team quite often outperform
If not knowing whether he has the job or not, negatively affects Poch, I'm all for keeping Ole's appointment secret until we finish above Spurs.
You mentioned McArthur shot as 0.51 in your post and I was having hardest time remembering when he had such a good shot. Even watched highlights again to check what I missed. Is it Townsend's instead? No way it is 0.51 if Lukaku's is 0.29.
Just seen he's the first manager in the history of the club to win eight away games in a row.
Madness
Madness
Which is why using xG for individual games is utterly moronic. For a large sample of games like an entire season it might be okay since it would even out, but the very nature of the stat makes it incredibly unreliable and deceiving when looking at individual games. I'd even argue good old "shots on target" is more accurate since that at least is concrete and you have to get those to get goals. Sure, that too can be inflated by desperate shots from 25 yards out, but its still gives a rough picture of the match.
The next time a "football analyst" uses xG to analyze an individual game, someone should print out that statsheet, find the person behind it and beat them with it
This; flexibility seems to be a very underrated skill in managers. Zidane is a case in point; his detractors keep pointing out to a "lack of clear identity" to his sides. But to me, that was just because he simply chose to adapt each time to the players he had and the opposition / game situation. Playing James and Morata? No worries. Playing BBC? Perfect. Vazquez and Isco? Will make that work too. It's also something that typified Fergie. For all the myth about the United way, Fergie's biggest strength was adaptation and finding a way to win most of the time regardless of resources and opposition. I've always felt that managers who can do this are the only ones that can last (provided they also know squad-building, of course).
Ole's proved that not only are there different ways to skin a cat, but also he can adapt to leverage this to our benefit. Very impressed with his adaptability. He started off playing very high-press, high-tempo and it was immediately obvious that we're too unfit. By 60-65 minutes, the team was huffing and puffing and looking absolutely knackered. Since then, he's not asking for such a high-tempo press (maybe next season? He's referred to the fitness levels and admitted they were low).
No doubts for me; he's the man. Reading that piece on how he changed things at Molde also finally made me understand what is meant by "he gets United". He does. It's not nostalgia with him. Culture is something that goes well beyond tactics and systems. He's shown enough modern thinking and knowledge of the game on the field. It's his work off it that embellishes things and makes his appointment a no-brainer (and also makes the results possible, of course).
Can we have that xG rabble in a separate thread?
Honestly I hope the xG against us declines. But we have the best goalkeeper to play football in the last few decades between the sticks and even if the xG went higher, I don’t think we’ll concede more goals in particular.
I remember us conceding so many chances under LVG but De Gea always came through. It’s not just luck, instead we have a world class keeper. That allows us to play an attacking brand of football.
I remember us conceding so many chances under LVG but De Gea always came through. It’s not just luck, instead we have a world class keeper. That allows us to play an attacking brand of football.
Ole went on the Men in Blazers podcast and discussed everything about taking over as manager for Man United. It's a good listen, and Rog does very well to keep the conversation interesting and flowing.
It would be insane not to give Ole the job at this point. There is nothing left for him to show, most points, goals, wins, etc. Hardly ever does an opportunity to freely audition a manager like this happen. Basically half a season of little expectation at a club the level of United that Ole has turned on its head. The expectations that exist now (top 4 namely) has only been created due to Ole's superb job to this point. I don't think it matters if he gets top 4; he's proven he is the right fit for this club, unlike Moyes, LVG, and Jose.
It doesn't make sense to take a chance on someone like Poch anymore, who although has done a fantastic job at Spurs, still has a lot of questions.
It has to be Ole's job at this point. The club is just waiting until this summer to finalize it, which is a move I agree with. No real rush to get a deal done immediately, other than doesn't the Norwegian league start up at the end of March or first part of April? That may be the driver that reveals the board's hand if we have to pay out a fee to Molde to keep Ole.
It doesn't make sense to take a chance on someone like Poch anymore, who although has done a fantastic job at Spurs, still has a lot of questions.
It has to be Ole's job at this point. The club is just waiting until this summer to finalize it, which is a move I agree with. No real rush to get a deal done immediately, other than doesn't the Norwegian league start up at the end of March or first part of April? That may be the driver that reveals the board's hand if we have to pay out a fee to Molde to keep Ole.
Wonder how the poor Molde fans are feeling now? They know he's not coming back
Many of them wanted him sacked halfway through last season. No sympathy from my side.
Tbh, 18% of the 11 games has been against top 6 sides. Over a full season, it is 26%.
Thanks for that. A very good, insightful interview.
Really appreciate you posting this. Half an hour later and I'm convinced he is the only man we should give the job to. Humble, inspiring and bleeds the club.
My single concern is that he understands the need is still there to bring real quality in this summer if we're going to compete, but one senses he knows that. Hopefully he's given the opportunity and resources to do it.
Aye, McArthur assisted it, my mistake.
I think we should never announce him as manager and keep him interim. Since Sir Alex has retired, the managerial spot seems to be cursed just like that 7 shirt when Ronaldo left.
I actually had been meaning to post for a a few days about our xG under Ole and having come here to do so, it seems others already had!
I think the metric is a good way of adding some nuance towards assessing our performance under Ole so far. Essentially so far, I think:
- Ole has demonstrably improved the team. We're scoring more (goals), creating more/getting more chances (xG), conceding less (goals against) and giving fewer chances away (xG against)
- Ole has demonstrably improved the mood of the club and the players. This is important. Aren't happy players more likely to play well? They'll have more confidence to convert chances and fight that little bit harder at the back to make it more difficult for the opposition. The manager is making his own luck here.
- Ole has perhaps been fortunate to get the points he has done so far. We're walking away with three points from very close matches more often than we could normally expect. We need to start beating lesser teams in a more convincing fashion, where we can expect to win a greater percentage of the time. We're winning a lot of games by the odd goal, where a bad referee decision or an individual error would cost us. We need to mitigate the potential impact of that variance. If we'd otherwise win 3-0, we don't care if the referee fecks up once. Dropping points means a whole lot more than it used to for chasing a league.
I don't however think United are at City or Liverpool's level week in and week out, and we would still have to improve a lot to expect to challenge for the title next season. Otherwise, we would need a whole lot of luck.
Note: With xG, reading the narrative of a match is so important. xG is less effective at telling you who should have won a particular match, but is better at assessing whether a team were effective in a given scenario. For example, if a side is 2-0 up after 10 minutes away from home against City, and they only concede 0.6xG for the whole match, they deserved to win and defended really well. It doesn't matter if they only 0.3xG themselves. They were 2-0 up and needed to not just concede.
Likewise, if we go down 1-0 to Southampton early on Saturday, and then create 2.8 xG over the course of the game whilst giving away little at the back, it will show that we would have deserved to and expected to have scored and probably won the game, regardless of whether we did or not.
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Fortunate to win 12 out of 14? right okay. Also who exactly haven't we beaten convincingly ? before Spurs finally started to get through us after 70 fecking mins we should have been 3-0 up. Liverpool were shite against us with all our injuries and we still should have won! we've spanked almost everyone, if convincingly means the opposition never enters our half for 90 mins I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed every game.
Yeah, I think we have been fortunate to win 12/15 so far. I think we have been more "lucky" than "unlucky" under Ole. I don't think you could ordinarily expect to get 15 points from Palace away, Leicester away, Fulham away, Spurs away and Newcastle away with the performances we did.
I'm pleased with how it's going, but I think there is still room for improvement. Our current performances won't win us a league, they won't leave us particularly close even, but thankfully the manager knows all this too. He says as much in his press conferences and post-match interviews. he frequently infers that there is more to come and a lot of scope for improvement. He's had to pick up a team mid-season, and has been trying to change the style of play on the fly. That's not easy.
You can enjoy the wins and still analyse how they came about. That's the job of the manager and his wider team.
We've been the best team in the league since December, scored the most, conceded the least and gained the most points, as well as the best goal difference, people have posted the Ole table 100 times in the forum check it out. There's always room for improvement of course but to say we're lucky is not right. Winning 8 away games in a row for the first time in our history is not luck whatsoever. We've been the best we've ever been since 2013, good teams/managers make their own luck. Feck xG too, complete garbage, if we've use xG to analyse a whole 38 game season then it may be accurate, but individual games its completely diluted and out of context.
Which part of discuss it in another thread is confusing? Also unless someone shows that xg and actual goals are in the similar range for clubs over the course of the season, this metric is completely useless to judge someone's luck.
If we did, I didn't see DdG leave his line enough to make it work effectively. But perhaps that's not a necessity. I seem to recall Spain got annihilated in the World Cup trying a high press with de Gea not pushing out.
You remember this lads? Move xG talk to a different thread.
Great listen. Thanks for posting.
Spurs is the only game where we gave up a ton of chances and should have conceded, but didn't. Lucky is if we get a ton of decisions our way, or penalties, or like that season under SAF where our top scorer was our opponent's own goals for awhile. We earned those wins with Ole.
I am assuming the request is on the theory of xG and not actually using the widely used metric to evaluate the performance of the manager so far.
What is it people want to do in here otherwise? Just celebrate the cult of Ole?
Sign an interim no. 7 too?
Can ole do it a cold night in stoke? He hasnt proven himself until he does imo.
This is great, nice one.
If we had to play Stoke in a fixture, I’d be more worried about what league we were in!
Nominated again for manager of the month, but I think Pep deserves it more.
I'd be up for that. Loan Sancho for 10 years.
Why is emery even nominated?
Good grief. Wind your neck in.
Yes, I think you’re right about me finding that too reductionist. I think most managers with success to begin with try to develop one clearly defined main style, but then will find that you’ll need plan B and C to develop beyond certain limitations. I think Klopp’n’Pep are two of the most radical proponents of Plan A style football leadership around, yet both have shown in England that they have developped in order to succeed further. Klopp’s high-press direct attack football yielded many big wins and also many big losses due to leaving defence vulnerable, leading people to write him off as having no plan B as recently as last season.
Alisson and VVD have bolstered their defence, but the biggest change his how much they now vary between direct attack and possession, and between a high line and falling back at times during games.
Pep last year took the consequences of not having as totally superior ball players as he had at Barca and Bayern, and the frantic and physical around the box defending in England, to introduce a more counter attacking orientation and more focussed on getting to the line and cutting back than playing through the middle.
I think Solskjær learned at Molde, winning two leagues with possesion football (and locally very good players) but not getting results in Europe, so when he came back to a weaker and younger Molde team, he introduced a more direct attacking style that would alternate between laying low and pressing high. With this he made great strides in Europe against much superior teams, and also in the end dominating the domestic games.