Rousseau

I see the PPV games have been added back on to our other packages. 

BT had the 15:00 and 20:00 games yesterday. 

Today BBC have Fulham-Everton, before three games back-to-back on Sky.

Another full day of football, hopefully sweetened by a Rangers win to kick it off. 

9 hours ago, ian1964 said:

I don't use my mobile to post anything these days ?, my laptop is my access to posting, clearly something wrong with that now I can't embed anything? as I said I just do what I normally do, no idea how to investigate/fix it so hope it corrects itself!.

That's easier: just open the tweet, copy the address bar, making sure to capture the whole number...

like this: https://twitter.com/GersnetOnline/status/1330213078022168578 - you don't need anything after that number

... then paste as plain text, and give it a few seconds to embed. 

1 hour ago, craig said:

3 points now ever more critical to apply even more pressure on Celtic, who are currently 2-0 down at Easter Road (please don't jinx it Craig....) - Jamie Murphy with a goal and an assist. 

1 hour ago, ian1964 said:

No idea why! no idea how to fix it! just need to hope it fixes itself, meantime I can't post tweets ☹️

Make sure you copy the correct tweet address and paste as plain text. 

Just you, @ian1964 ? 

Rangers 1 - 0 Aberdeen

FGS Morelos

I still think this is an exciting prospect. 

2 hours ago, ChelseaBoy said:

Well it was until VAR. Now you are never quite sure if a player is offside, a goal scored will be chalked off or a when is a hand ball - hand ball? The legislators are doing their best to ruin the spontaneity and emotion of the beautiful game.

 

The stats are take it or leave it, i look at some but usually come away from a game with memories of a particular bit of skill or fantastic goal or even a terrible mistake and i wouldn't necessarily dig into the stats other than the usual possession, corners, shots on target etc but appreciate they can be useful. 

I can see the argument for the spontaneity of the game, but I want the correct decisions. I still think there's a better balance to be had.

I don't think VAR is the issue. It's the rules that are the trouble. 

VAR gets most decisions right, IMO. In the moment you can't always see if the goal's offside or not, but with VAR you can. 

I always look at it from Rangers' perspective: if someone scores a goal against us, I would want the decision to be absolutely f*cking correct. Take the League Cup game against them: it was offside; it changes the game otherwise. If we had VAR in that game, it wouldn't have been given. Our Refs are incompetent, but they're not that incompetent (I think?  ). 

It has highlighted how some of the rules now need changed. The hand-ball rule is bonkers. That's not VAR, that's the rules themselves.

12 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

Yes! Kante epitomises this.

 

Average player, in an poor team, but yes, his defensive stats were tremendous. It would be easy for a scout to overlook that. 

 

Idrissa Gueye was similar: not a standout, but had an uncanny knack for interceptions and winning the ball back. He was signed by Villa, moved to Everton, and is now playing for PSG. 

 

They're not brilliant players (I'm not a fan of Kante - even if I think his ball-wining ability is stunning), but they have a superb skill-set that teams can use.  

The Kante one is interesting. 

I can recognise from the stats that he's an incredible ball-winner.

But, for me, his overall game is poor. It's a personal judgement. I wouldn't be using him at Chelsea, unless they want that singular player to win the ball back in big games, etc. 

Teams like Leicester can use him more consistently. 

So, I can use the stats to see what he's good at, but still disagree with someone over Kante's overall merits. Like @DMAA with Hagi.

I was the opposite with Hagi: he wasn't quite doing it, for me, but seeing the assist stats, he's clearly creating chances for our players. He just needs to find the right position, or perhaps only be used in the right games. I think SG is going for the latter, and only using him in certain games. 

Stats are just a tool.

39 minutes ago, DMAA said:

The reason any elite level club make extensive use of stats is because the benefits are proven. Nowhere more so than in recruitment. It has allowed clubs to discover players who would have been really hard to find before, who have the exact qualities they want. I’m pretty sure Kante was a case in point. His defensive stats were off the charts when Leicester found him. Hagi is another one. We had missed a number 10 who can play a killer pass for a long time, and even at Genk where he had struggled his xA, xG, shot assists etc were all significantly higher than Kent and Ojo. We found a player who wasn’t valued highly by his team but who possessed abilities we needed.

Yes! Kante epitomises this.

Average player, in an poor team, but yes, his defensive stats were tremendous. It would be easy for a scout to overlook that. 

Idrissa Gueye was similar: not a standout, but had an uncanny knack for interceptions and winning the ball back. He was signed by Villa, moved to Everton, and is now playing for PSG. 

They're not brilliant players (I'm not a fan of Kante - even if I think his ball-wining ability is stunning), but they have a superb skill-set that teams can use.  

3 minutes ago, Gonzo79 said:

That's cool, Rousseau.  

Cool.

Here's an analysis of our defending:

I'm still worked up!  

1 minute ago, compo said:

And whereabouts can you get a copy of the stats for a game so you can examine them ,

For us fans, it's mostly through Twitter etc. -- and the few @DMAA posts here. 

The data packages that clubs and pundits use are bloody expensive!

3 minutes ago, Gonzo79 said:

That's subjective.  

 

Breaking things down into numbers and diagrams can detract from the overall enjoyment but that depends on the viewer/supporter/fan/critic's point of view and goes for anything artistic/creative (which football can be when it's at its best).  

 

Each to his own.

"The Beautiful game" is still there. We all still get caught up in the emotion of it. 

But then some of us, afterwards, want to look beyond that to see that stats of the game; to see how it really was. 

I was bouncing on Sunday (and sick on the Thursday!). Then on Monday I wanted to look at the stats to see how dominant, or not, we actually were. In the same way people re-watch games, to catch things they missed. 

The hostility to this is embarrassing. It's just ignorance. (Not necessarily here, just in general.)

Those that criticise are the same that'll declaim, "Oh-- he should have scored there! That's a sitter!".

Yes, the xG backs you up on that. It just describes what you intuitively think.

What's wrong with that?

No wonder this country achieves little of any relevance in football: we're still in the dark ages, held back by 'received wisdom', as other countries have modernised and developed and shot past us. 

Rant over.  

Apologies in advance.

9 hours ago, Tannochsidebear said:

I appreciate the explanation but the “fact” remains that whether something is a good chance or a half chance, and whether a team’s play should result in 5 goals or 6 according to xg is based entirely on opinion, and the beauty of our beautiful game is that it is entirely unpredictable and made up of so many parts. Methodology is not facts, it is opinion. 
 

I would perhaps be more swayed if they took a game, say the Hamilton game, and showed us exactly how they got to the xg number, what they counted, what score they gave it, and what they didn’t count. My guess is there would be considerable argument to be had in how they got to that number. 
 

Of course we can all agree that the Hamilton xg was exactly 0.0! No debate to be had there!

You're not getting it.

The 'fact' of "whether something is a good chance or a half chance", to put it your way, is calculated through statistical modelling. 

Opta takes 300,000 shots (what's that 20,000 games, assuming 15 shots per game?), looking a variety of variables (position of the shot, angle, etc. - quite a few) and comparing how many times that shot was actually scored, to get the probability of that type of chance being scored.

So, their model then takes all that data and compares it to a chance that one of our players had on Sunday, to get the probability of that chance being scored. That's what would be 'expected' to score based on 300,000 shots in 20,000 games.

To keep it simple, penalties have an xG of 0.76, meaning they are scored 76% of the time. That's a fact. Better players will exceed that, because they're better players: the xG describes that fact.  

It takes nothing away from "the beautiful game". It's giving us more facts with which to describe the game. 

22 minutes ago, DMAA said:

Morelos leading in xG, but his actual goals trails his xG quite significantly, maybe consistent with a dip in the form for most of the season. 

Clearly a dip in form, but I always thought he wasn't quite getting the quality of chance, but that suggests he is - or at least getting better chances than he's putting away. 

Should be an upturn around the corner. 

xG is based on historical data. 

That's not interpretation. 

Ooh! I found a video, @compo

22 minutes ago, compo said:

Enlighten an older person what's this 6.2og stuff 

"The term xG in football is an abbreviation which stands for 'expected goals'. It is a statistical measurement of the quality of goalscoring chances and the likelihood of them being scored.

An xG measurement can be generated for both teams as a whole and individual players, giving an indication as to how well they should be performing in front of goal.

A number of factors are taken into account when calculating xG. They include: type of assist, whether it was a shot taken with the head or foot, the angle and distance of the shot, and whether it was a big chance.

The context of a scoring opportunity is precisely what informs its xG rating. A rebound falling to a player in front of an open goal six yards out will have a high xG score, but a shot taken from 35 yards at a narrow angle will have a low xG score.

If you see that chance is described as having an xG rating of 0.35 that means a player would be expected to score from the chance 35 per cent of the time - a one in three chance. If a chance is described as 0.5xG it should be scored 50% of the time and so on."

xG is the goals we'd expect to score going by the quality of the chances we've created. 

For our game against Hamilton, the quality of the chances, added up through the game, you would expect to see us score around 6 goals. So, we've actually scored more than that (8), meaning we've scored from more difficult chances. 

We all do it intuitively: we know know when a chance is a half-chance, or if a player should have done better. The xG gives us an actual number. 

Livingston: Bogey team. 

Hamilton had no attempts!

I went for Roofe too: 2 goals, and an assist, but his movement was excellent all game.

Roofe worked well with Defoe: they were interchanging constantly. 

I thought Kent, Arfield and Aribo had good games too. 

Tavernier also got 2 goals and an assist, but one was a penalty so that doesn't count! ?