Rousseau

Just got the email -- McKay isn't included in YPOTY list, so it has to be Hyndman, surely?

It is a tad early, but out of interest, who would be everyone's Player and Young Player of the Year?

For me, Clint Hill has been one of the best performers. Does McKay still count as a Young Player? Hyndman also deserves special mention -- incredible to think he only arrived in January!

I always believe that a National side should be composed mainly of players from the best team in the country. As much as it pains me to admit, they are the best at the moment. However, Scotland doesn't have a manager capable of using them. Celtic play good football, their players know their roles; Strachan has them playing completely different football, where they don't seem to know what they're doing. It's the out-dated idea that you only need to get a group of good blokes on the pitch and let them do their thing.

It gives me the boak, but having a core of Celtic players in the Scotland team is a good thing -- at least until we can produce the next core. All we need is a Manager capable of using them properly.

I have a pal who was commentating on the Indian Premier League (it's OK he does real football too ) and he did a game with Trevor Steven co-commentating. At half time Trevor made a comment re the best player and it was a defender who had not touched the ball even once. He explained (sorry I can't recall all the details) about positioning, stepping out and covering off areas where passes would have been attempted and so forth.

 

My pal was intrigued by this and brought up the same subject after the game with another ex player who instantly agreed with Steven. A crude set of stats would have had this player as a nonetity while two ex players thought he was outstanding. (I presume more sophisticated stat systems would reflect things more accurately, however - yes?)

 

 

PS Yes I told my pal to constantly ask Trevor about his time at Rangers and fed him lines to use and questions to ask (most wisely were left unanswered )

The defensive side of the game is relatively under-developed. I only really recall Interceptions -- which would take your example into account, but is not quite right -- Blocked Shots, Clearances, Offsides Won and Tackles. Clearly, a team that makes the most tackles is not the best defensive side -- usually it's the bottom-dwellers because they have to make more tackles. Defensive stats are tricky because defending is more about the team unit rather than individual actions, with positioning key among them. There is Shots Conceded, but that's more of a team stat too.

Again, I never said stats were the be-all and end-all, simply a useful tool that helps to broaden our understanding of the game.

Let me give you an example -a team has a breakaway and the player with the ball makes a forward pass right to a team-mate to keep the move going, who then goes on and shoots on target but the shot is easily saved by the keeper. In stats-world, all is good. The passing player is marked up for good play, the shooting player has a shot on target. What was missed was the player out of shot who was in acres of space and if he had been the recipient of the pass a better chance should have been created. Stats-world is oblivious to this. I leave the match fuming with said player for failing to see the better option, but stats-world has him down as a plus.

You keep taking stats in isolation. Yes, the stat will show the player made a pass; great. But the stats will also show, through the historical data, what you see with your eye in one instance: the stats will show that he's not very productive with his passes if he keeps making the wrong decisions, for his pass completion will be down, and crucially, he'll have fewer assists.

It's not gospel; it never has been. It is simply a tool to broaden our understanding.

"No one is suggesting it's perfect. The elite sides all take into account data analysis because it cuts out as much of the subjectivity as possible, helping them make better decisions. It's certainly not perfect, but it is a useful tool. Surely you would trust a mathematical/scientific model which takes into account the most objective data over someone's opinion? "

 

No, never, not in football!! Football is all about opinions, not emotionless stats.

 

Thanks very much for the explanation, very detailed and fairly common sense for most of it, but it is still very subjective and cannot be taken as gospel. Is each component part of a move that leads to a chance given a score, say out of 100, and then an average, or sum, of all the component parts taken to declare what overall mark a chance is given?

 

Take Miller's last minute miss in the Hogmanay OF game at ibrox that denied us a point. To me that was an absolute sitter, others told me it was a hard chance. Or Holt's chance in the cup semi-final at Hampden? Does the player the chance falls to come into it?

 

Take current players out of it to be less emotional. If a great chance falls to McCoist in his pomp, it mostly goes in, but if it falls to Sebo it mostly doesnt? It is still the same chance, and therefore the same Xg rating? But everyone knows that Ally will score and be amazed if Filip scores? So therefore as supporters we declare the Ally chance as a sitter and the Sebo one as a difficult chance because we have filtered in the player involved.

 

If both me and my mate, sitting side by side with a great view of the Copland goal can have opposing views on the quality of a chance, how on earth can a computer score the chance just using some variables that dont take into account the emotion of it all.

 

Also, a great chance in the 20th minute is not the same as a great chance at 1-1 in the 90th minute. But to Xg it will be? When commentators, managers, players, at the end of the game (without seeing Xg stats) say they had by far the better chances, it comes from a biased emotional viewpoint that on some occasions will be accurate and on others be wrong, but they will believe it no matter what Xg stats say a few days later.

 

MW constantly used stats throughout his tenure to defend a performance that was awful to watch. 70% possession, 20 shots at goal he would cry, but the game and performance was awful. Stats dont tell everything, that is why the game is an emotional rollercoaster that fans have loved for all their lives, and will pass on to the next generation.

 

The only stats that count in games are goals scored/conceded. And overall is 54 titles, 33 Scottish cups, 27 league cups, 1 ECWC, and 4 minor titles/cups.

 

Most fans would say that Murty did a good job steadying the ship for 6 games while the board got round to appointing a replacement to MW. However we dropped 8 points out of 12 in the league under GM, winning only one league game in 4 attempts, leaving us 8 points behind Dolly. Taking stats on their own, and given only one of the 4 games was against a top 6 side, he was an unmitigated disaster, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

Ha! Theoretically, if Sebo and McCoist had exactly the same chance their xG would be the same, yes. However, like I said, this stat is taking the average historical probability; it's not taken in isolation. Firstly, McCoist will have more shots, from better positioning; whereas Sebo would have fewer shots, in worse positions. Then their xG would be compared to their actual non-penalty goals, probably -- for I do not have the data -- showing that McCoist would have done better than his xG, Sebo worse. xG would show that McCoist was a better finisher than Sebo. Similarly, Messi tends to out-perform his xG whereas a defender will under-perform. You're not the first to bring up finishing skill.

xG has to be used in context. I was simply using the team xG to show that we created a good few chances, better than average for us, and took more chances than we usually do.

Football is all about opinions; that will never change. But for me, opinions need to be based on evidence. On the one hand you have guys like Sutton who blow hot air based on nothing but their own ego, then you have guys like Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher who similarly have strong opinions but they are based on fact; the MNF guys always use a variety of stats to defend and back up their opinion. That's the way it should be done.

I've got it on. Brutal.

Incidentally, Crooks looks to be playing in a deeper role. I think he could still do a job for us there -- especially with someone beside him as we now seem to be doing.

Who decides if it is a good chance (and therefore increases the Xg) or a not so good chance. Surely that is subjective, as with most sport?

 

I can (and usually do!!) discuss/argue with my mates about a sitter someone missed that they think is a hard chance or vice versa. I also think defensively some are shouting great save when I think it is routine, and vice versa.

 

If you put 6 football fans in charge of collating these stats you will get 6 different answers as to how big the Xg should be on both sides, making the whole process completely subjective, and therefore, useless?

 

Some of the stats coming out now in football are completely laughable and are being created by the FIFA computer game generation, where a player is known by a code (DM, AM) and a number between 1-100, which in most cases bears absolutely no comparison to their ability to influence football matches or their actual footballing ability, and takes no count of team tactics and how that fits in with the players talents, team/player moral and form. It seems to me this Xg stuff, while a decent debating tool to make interesting threads such as this, are taken far too literally and seriously by some. Watch the game closely, you can tell if the team should have scored 3 or 4 goals without the need of computer graphics.

 

I didnt see the game on Saturday so cant comment on how the Xg graphic relates to the real game that took place last weekend. Perhaps others who watched it live can comment.

That's the point: it is a very subjective element of the game. The xG stat aims to be as objective as possible, taking into account objective historical data. Some of the data that is used to determine xG is:

"Angle of the shot

 

This should be fairly obvious. The more central a shot is taken, the more of the goal the shooter will have to aim at, and the higher chance he’ll have of scoring.

 

Distance of the shooter from goal

Fairly self-explanatory as well. Shots closer to the goal tend to find the net more frequently than those from outside the area.

 

Part of the body used to shoot

 

In terms of feet, this should be obvious. A player with two identical opportunities is more likely to score with his stronger foot, so this is incorporated into xG calculations. However, xG does not like headers, because they’re far harder to direct and generate power on, meaning that a shot with feet is almost always going to have a higher xG than a header from the same location.

 

Speed of the attack

 

This is partly included because of football’s lack of off the ball tracking data. The general theory behind this is that faster attacks are more likely to result in goals because the opposition’s defence will be unable to get back into defence in a strong defensive shape. Expected goals loves chances coming from counter attacks.

 

Type of assist

 

Perhaps a less obvious factor. Crosses (especially those in the air, leading to headers) are not a great way of generating high-quality chances. Instead, throughballs (because they lead to one-on-ones) and passes from the danger zone (because these leave the defence and goalkeeper out of position for an easy chance) generally result in high quality chances with little defensive pressures, so a chance assisted by one of these passes is given greater xG. Assists (or shots) following a successful dribble give the chance a higher xG because it is assumed (quite fairly) that there is less defensive pressure on the player, giving them room to get a shot away.

 

A few others

 

Individual errors often give sides an easy chance with most of the team out of position, a player rounding the keeper ramps up his shot’s xG and rebounds often give a free shot to an attacker in a good area, resulting in a higher xG for that chance."

No one is suggesting it's perfect. The elite sides all take into account data analysis because it cuts out as much of the subjectivity as possible, helping them make better decisions. It's certainly not perfect, but it is a useful tool. Surely you would trust a mathematical/scientific model which takes into account the most objective data over someone's opinion?

The irony is that everyone uses xG in their opinions after every game when they say, “We created the best chances in the game, but I just didn’t think we got the result that we deserved.” That is xG. That difference is that the above is a subjective judgement, whereas the xG stat takes into account objective data.

is the size of the step on the line related to the opportunity....like big step, big chance

Yes, exactly.

It's just another stat. I think it does a good job of showing how well a team does in creating chances in a game. It's always been very subjective when fans discuss it after games.

so does that graph mean we made 11 chances and took 4 of them ?

The graph does show we created 11 chances, but most were very difficult chances that we were unlikely to score -- the chances of a long range shot or shots from tight angles etc. are very small. Over the course of the game -- averaging it out -- we were expected (xG) to score 3; clearly we did better than that -- which is better than we've done all season.

Really enjoy reading these threads Rousseau. How quickly is this data available to you after games?

I just put a request in to @11tegen11 (11tegen11.net) on Twitter. I asked last week, but he'd only got round to doing it. I think he can do them quite quickly -- some requests were fulfilled the same day. I don't know how hard it is to get the Scottish data, though -- I can never find any!

Incidentally, football shows/games in the American MLS now provide audiences with the xG to show many goals teams should score depending on the chances created. We may see it more often over here soon too.

what's xG and ExpG ?

ExpG or xG stands for Expected Goals. It measures how many goals an average team would have scored with the amount and quality of shots created. Each goal scoring attempt is assigned a number based on the chance that this attempt produces a goal.

It just shows how many goals a team should score for the quality of the chances they've created. Each time the line (blue, from left to right) jumps up indicates where/when we created a chance. Some chances were missed, others taken; some were better quality chances than others.

The 3.09 suggests we would've been expected to score 3 goals over the game. Clearly we did better than that last weekend. Generally under MW we've been averaging around 2 per game, but we've really struggled to take our chances so have struggled to score more than 1.

And this is the xG, which shows we consistently created good chances and tended to take the big ones -- and look how little Hamilton did! Perhaps showing how well we closed them down?

Finally got the pass map for the Hamilton game.

The double-pivot is quite striking, with many connections between them and the back-four; Tavernier has a lot of the ball; Hyndman and McKay are narrow, with the width coming from Tavernier and Wallace; and there looks to be a lot of movement from the front-two -- which does look like a front-two, not Miller as No.10, although he drifted about.

We'd maybe hope to see more connections into the front four players in future -- especially from Toral and Holt.

8 points behind aberdeen,would you say this fact is also misleading?

No, that's unacceptable. That's the figure we should be using to criticise the teams performance thus far.

33 points is misleading. Although we are certainly under-performing, they are having an exceptional season. Walter Smiths (2nd spell) best points tally was 93 points, but included 3 draws and 5 defeats. They would need to lose 5 and draw 1 in their remaining 9 games to come up short of that.

Watching the game back and noticed a couple of mins in Tav gets caught on the ball , he then wins it back with no harm done but the camera cuts to PC who is shouting what looks like "I told you two touches maximum" he gestures to him with his hands also. After that I noticed it was all pretty much touch and pass

I remember him losing the ball early, but didn't notice PC's orders; Interesting. It might cut down on Tavernier's mistakes if he can't dally.

I'm not too bothered by BF. He has the knowledge for the role, which is not a coach. It would probably help him if he did want to become a (better) coach. As for going behind the manager's back: PLG was so weak he allowed it; PC does not seem like he would take any sh***. There is an argument against the appointment, but I'm not too concerned; there are far worse appointments.

F*** it! * Ohh Barry Barry... *

It's so nice to be able to take about new things in our tactical approach. MW was a breath of fresh air last season, but it became too idealistic, inflexible and predictable. I hope we can now talk about little tweaks each week instead of the 'same old same old'.

Can you re-size an image using the bb code?

Like:

[*IMG height="100" width="100" *] - src - [*/IMG*]

Incidentally, this is a pass map from earlier in the season against Aberdeen:

The spacing was quite good, with many connections, but Garner is nowhere to be seen and the passing to waghorn is few and far between; it looks quite open at the back; and there are not many out-balls from McKay.

It will be interesting to compare it to Saturdays game. We should see more/better connections up front.

I wanted to include a pass map, but it's taking longer than I thought to get that, so I've just added a rough formation guide. Hopefully I'll get that pass map soon -- it'll be interesting to see the difference.

IBROX -- Pedro Caixinha cut an imposing figure as he emerged in black from the tunnel into the glare of the afternoon sun. Ibrox responded with a customary roar, but a quick raised hand was all before he took up position on the touchline; arms folded, legs apart, he gazed over his new players like a general examining his troops.

I hate to go all 'hipster' this early, but with a new manager comes a new style and philosophy; and two words that have followed Caixinha throughout his career has been Tactical Periodisation (TP). TP is not a philosophy in itself, nor a style of play; it is merely a way of thinking about the game by breaking it into key stages, namely: Defensive Organisation; Offensive Transition; Offensive Organisation; and finally, Defensive Transition.

According to TP, these are the 4 key stages in any game of football. It is then up to the manager to decide how he wants his team to react in each of these stages. Some sides, like Guardiola's Man City want that Offensive Organisation set up before they play out from the back; others like Klopp's Liverpool, prefer to play with pace on the transitions; others prefer to focus on Defensive Organisation, like Simeone's Atletico.

On first look, transitions seem to be the most important aspect of a game to Caixinha. On RangersTV, Tom Miller said that Transition was a new word for the counter-attack. Whilst Tom's not wrong, it's not the whole picture either, because although a team can transition offensively when they win the ball -- the counter-attack -- they also transition defensively when they lose the ball too.

Offensive Transitions

Our offensive transitions were a breath of fresh air. We moved the ball up the pitch quickly, whether with pacey, short one-twos, or with longer balls into space. Hamilton couldn't deal with the pace of our transitions at times. We also mixed up our transitional play with some longer balls into space, which were crucial in giving Hamilton something different to think about; both Waghorn and Miller were constantly looking to run in behind into the spaces, stretching play.

Offensive Organisation

The offensive organisation was slightly different to what we've been used to too. There were rumours that the width in Caixinha's teams come from the Full-backs, and this looks to be true. Instead of both wingers hugging the touchline, which too often saw our forward isolated, both "wide-midfielders" (McKay and Hyndman) played narrow. This gave space for Tavernier and Wallace to stretch the play.

We've seen our Full-backs bomb forward a lot this season, causing untold damage to our defensive stability. The difference on Saturday was the double-pivot; both Toral and Holt took up sitting positions to guard the back-four and support the rampaging Full-backs, and both were effective in their roles.

Ironically, our pitch geography -- a staple under our last manager -- was rather good: we created impressive overloads in key areas. Defensively, the double-pivot created a box-like formation at the back, allowing us to overload any Hamilton counter. Conversely, on the flanks we had 4v2 overloads, with Tavernier, Hyndman and Miller on the right-flank, with Holt supporting.

Defensive Transition

Those overloads also helped our defensive transitions. As soon as we lost the ball several players instantly press the ball and the passing options with an intensity that has been missing for far too long. The 'hunting-in-packs' approach allowed us to win the ball back quickly, and initiate offensive transitions.

It's no surprise that Tavernier -- like the rest of the back four -- had his best game in quite some time, because he was actually supported on the defensive transition instead of being left to do it himself; he's not a natural defender, his first instinct is to go forward, so he needs help. Holt was constantly by his side, applying pressure, with Hyndman supporting too. Tavernier's pace and energy always suited the intense press, but now that he has support, we should see him become a more consistent performer.

Defensive Organisation

Although our first instinct was to press on the defensive transition, there was a period towards the end of the game when we set up defensively in a low block, with two banks of four and a forward drifting to fill in gaps. Caixinha has said previously that if the press fails, then he wants his teams to be compact defensively. It's not something we want to see too often, but there will be times when we need to sit in. It was therefore pleasing that we didn't look troubled as Hamilton dominated possession and territory in this short spell.

Another pleasing sight was our variation in set-pieces. Over the last couple of games we've seen a revival in goals scored from set-pieces, and a lot of credit has to go to Graeme Murty for this -- the banner thanking him was a nice touch, and fully deserved. On the rare occasion when we crossed the ball, it was usually Tavernier hitting out-swingers; they were generally easy to defend against. On Saturday we saw Toral -- who had an impressive game all-round, distributing the ball with crisp accuracy -- deliver some delightful in-swingers; Clint Hill's goal came straight from such a delivery.

The game felt a lot more satisfying offensively. Too often we've seen possession for possession's sake, without creating too many chances. On Saturday it felt like the directness and pace of our attacks contributed to a lot more chances -- and better quality chances at that. The stats seem to back that up.

According to The Back Pass Rule, our average expected goals (xG -- a metric measuring how many goals an average team would have scored with the amount and quality of shots created) is 1.87 -- that's under 2 goals per game. Saturday saw that figure rise to 3.33 xG. The graph shows that we regularly created good chances throughout the game, and generally took them.

It's easy to get over excited, but we have to remember that this is just one game; Caixinha's first, against a struggling club. Nevertheless, it looks like we will have a team that is well-drilled, intense in the press, able to attack with variation, and able to defend compactly when the situation arises. Caixinha now has an international break in which to work with his new players. It is just one game, but the signs are positive.