Post-match ranticle
Match day 3 is complete then and we find ourselves in 16th place, 1 point above the relegation zone with a negative goal difference and already find ourselves 5 points behind City and 7 behind league leaders Arsenal. Even United are ahead of us after their abysmal start. Doesn’t make for pleasant reading does it?
Where is it all going so wrong then? There was the usual clamour for signing a new midfielder last night, as if that’s the answer to all our problems. We’re short in midfield yes but a new midfielder wouldn’t have fixed last nights debacle. It wouldn’t have made Trent run harder, wouldn’t have stopped our utterly shambolic defence from being all over the place, or made much difference to our toothless attack. It’s just lazy analysis to say all our problems are down to us not signing a new midfielder. It may help but it’s over-simplistic to suggest that’s the root cause.
What is going on then? Let’s start with the basics. Half the squad is injured without kicking a competitive ball and the other half look knackered, as if it’s the end of a gruelling season, not the beginning of one. This takes me back to a point I’ve been harping on about for a couple of weeks – we’ve overdone it in preseason. The lads had the toughest season possible last time out, they only had four weeks off which they’ll have badly needed for recovery and then we’ve just blown that recovery time out the water by beasting the life out them in hot climates. It makes no sense to me, your fitness levels don’t fall off a cliff in four weeks. I’ve said it before but this beasting the lads in preseason is a dated concept for me. Guardiola seems to have figured that out and I think it’s time we did as well. The results are obvious, Fulham gave us a lesson in intensity on day one and United did the same last night. We look leggy all over the pitch and just can’t match the other team’s intensity and that screams of overtraining to me.
It’s not just that though. I’ve never seen Trent have a worse game than yesterday, his positioning was terrible but even when he was there, at the first goal he just gave up on a basic one-two and just sauntered back into the box. Had he actually run, he could in all likelihood have closed Sancho down and the exact same accusation could be levelled at Van Dijk, who inexplicably just stood rooted to the spot with his hands behind his back for what seemed an eternity. He had more than enough time to close Sancho down and it’s no surprise Milner was furious with him. In fact the defence were shocking throughout, United looked like they’d score every time they went forward, they were going through our defence like they weren’t there. Trent, Gomez and Kostas all guilty of lacking aggression in the challenge and being beaten far too easily in one v ones.
Something else that’s glaringly obvious is our slow starts. This is a problem dating back to last season as well. It started that we seemed to go in 0-0 at halftime frequently and I’d suggested before that it’s as if the team just see out the first half and wait for Klopp to tell them how to win at half time. It’s regressed since then however. We’ve conceded the first goal in our last 7 consecutive games now. That just isn’t sustainable. Apart from anything else, it turns every game into an absolute grind, constantly having an uphill battle to try and get something out the game, rather than having the game killed off by the hour mark, allowing us to rotate and rest players.
As for our midfield, Hendo’s form has been hit or miss for a while now, Harvey struggled with the physicality in the first half, although he had some good moments in an evening of few and Milner seemed to be popping up all over the pitch, from left back to right wing but it wasn’t in a good way, it just seemed chaotic.
Up front we looked toothless. Salah has 2 goals in 3 games which looks great on paper but he’s been largely anonymous throughout and both his goals were more by luck than design. Diaz showed flashes but looked like he would have to conjure something special for himself, as he did against Palace, due to the fact we were really struggling to create any decent chances. As for Bobby, the false 9 has run its course. For every game he’s effective, there’s 10 that he’s not. CB’s have figured out that if you don’t let him drag you out of position, then you deny the space for our wide players to run into and Bobby just ends up playing as another midfielder in an already packed midfield. He was dropping so deep last night, I don’t see how he could have properly linked our attack. I’m interested to see what he can do playing the 10 behind Nunez but the false 9 system is no longer effective and hasn’t been for some time.
How to fix it then. First things first, we need some of our players back. Nunez, Jota and Thiago are a huge loss to this team but we need to fix some obvious issues. Almost every goal we concede is nearly identical. Ball over the top down our right hand side or through ball to the runner on our right hand side, Trent nowhere to be seen and if the run is timed correctly then they’re in on goal. Somebody on the thread mentioned we can’t keep expecting Alisson to save 2-3 one v ones every single game, we really need to figure out a way to shore up that right flank. The most obvious is a change in formation. A number of us have been calling for the 4-2-3-1 and with two players in the six, it should provide more cover for the counter attacks. It’s difficult for us to play that way at present however, with both Nunez and Jota out. We could play Mo up top, moving Diaz to the right and bringing Carvalho in on the left but we know Diaz is best on the left and Salah best on the right so do we really want to do that?
Anyway it’s time now for Klopp and his back room staff to earn their money. We have issues all over the pitch at the moment but our main focus has to be on getting our intensity and aggression back. We were second to every ball last night, lost every 50-50 and it was the same against Fulham. We seemed surprised United came tearing out the traps at us last night and for the life of me, I can’t think why. There was always going to be a reaction from them after the Brentford game and it was embarrassing at times, how much more up for it they seemed than us.
Worrying times then. The season is young and in a few weeks when Nunez, Jota, Thiago et al are back from injury, we may wonder what we were so worried about but we’ve put ourselves in the unenviable position of having to hunt other teams down, literally from day one of the season. That’s exhausting for the players, when they look jaded as it is.
We play Bournemouth next then, 3pm Saturday so no excuses about early kick offs or anything like that. I expect a strong reaction from the boys and nothing less than 3 points will do. Anything less and I’m afraid we’re moving into crisis mode. No time to stew on this. Get back on the training pitch and sort it out. To be honest, I could go on and on but I’ll leave any further dissection for the comments section. No deserving candidate for McMOTM so we’ll go with Calvin Ramsay or Ben Doak, you decide 😉. Walk on!
XG Stats from SuperSub
I know there’s at least a couple here, who found some of the xG stuff interesting last season & also there’s been mentions of it in some comments. With xG playing a bigger & bigger part in football overall, the aim here, is to provide some xG stats alongside Jock’s match review. The usual match stats (Opta/BBC) will often give you basic things like possession %, attempts on goal, attempts on target, corners & not much more else really, Some, like the BBC, have started to give the overall xG for the game, but there’s very little discussion about xG coming from the mainstream media outlets.
There’s many reasons why xG stats are so important nowadays, as they can tell you a lot more about a team’s or player’s performance, than the basic stats ever could. XG stats can vary slightly, from site to site (especially the free-to-use one’s) & all stats here are taken from understat.com. Which is free to use……..😁
For those who’ve never come across xG before, here’s a very brief description, from fbfef.com
In a nutshell, xG (or expected goals) is the probability that an attempt will result in a goal, based on the characteristics of that attempt & the events leading up to it. Some of these characteristics/variables include:
- Location of shooter: How far was it from the goal and at what angle on the pitch?
- Body part: Was it a header or off the shooter’s foot?
- Type of pass: Was it from a through ball, cross, set piece, etc?
- Type of attack: Was it from an established possession? A rebound?
Every attempt is compared to thousands of others with similar characteristics, to determine the probability that this attempt will result in a goal. That probability is the expected goal total (xG). An xG of 0 is a certain miss, while an xG of 1 is a certain goal (neither of which are ever given, as there’s no certainties in a game of football). An xG of 0.5 would indicate that if identical attempts were to take place 10,000 times, 5,000 of those would be expected to result in a goal. A penalty kick for example, has an xG of 0.76 & means that there’s an average of a 76% chance, that a penalty will result in a goal.Right, you won’t see all that again, so onto the game itself (as painful as it is).
Right, you won’t see all that again, so on to the game itself (as painful as it is).
What I’ve tried to do here, is to pick out a few of the xG stats, that paint a clearer picture of what actually happened, when compared to the basic stats that you’d generally get & this is just an exercise in digging out information that is often hidden from view, when only looking at the stats from the likes of Opta/BBC etc.
So…. Xg for the match itself. 2.02 – 1.52. man u scoring what you’d expect them to really & us underperforming (by approx 33%), in relation to what would be expected, with the chances created. It’s actually fairly rare, from what I’ve seen, for a side to actually ‘out perform’ their xG stats.
All stats that follow, will be given in % chance of a goal being scored, according to xG.
To get the more painful stuff out of the way. For their goals, Sancho’s was a 29% chance & Rashford’s was 47 %. Their ‘biggest’ chance missed, was from our arl mate Bruno in the 60th min, with a 45% chance of scoring. Whining little bugger.
The best chance that we missed, came from Luis Diaz, in the 54th min, which was 61%.
& the next clearest after that, was from Fabio Carvalho, in the 76th min & that was given as a 12% chance of scoring. Apart from those two, every other attempt we had, was given a rating of 10% or under, with Mo scoring from what was seen as a 4% chance, or 0.04 xG.
Funnily enough, I did some of this for the Palace game (but sent it to Stu too late) & very similar stats came up there too, for both the chances created & the goal itself. The vast majority of our 24 attempts against Palace, were given an xG of 10% or less. Plenty of attempts on goal, but very few chances that could ever be described as ‘clear-cut’. Diaz’s goal, was given an xG of 0.03 (3%).
One thing that could potentially be deduced from this, is that one of the main problems right now is less ‘we’re not taking chances’, & more ‘we’re not creating clearer ones’. But that’s where it gets subjective & then opens itself up to debate on how to address that etc etc, & that’s not the purpose here (plenty of room for that below), so on we go with the boring stuff.
Another area where xG stats are useful & differ greatly from The basic Opta stats, is with ‘expected assists’ (xA). For example; player A makes a great cross from the wing, which beats the defenders & GK & lands right in front of player B, standing 6 yds from an open goal. Let’s give this chance for player B an xG of 85%. Player B then slices the ball wide, so not only does he not get credit for a goal, but player A also doesn’t get any credit (stat wise) for the great chance that he set up.
In the world of xG tho, it’s not about the number of goals that are scored, it’s about the number of goals that we’d expect to be scored, given the chances created. In xG world, player A gets the credit he deserves & is given an xA of 0.85 (85%). It’s stats like this, that come more into play, when using this kind of data for finding profitable betting opportunities, or for scouting new players. Brentford FC – 101.
In the man u game, that 61% chance that was missed by Diaz, will still result In Milner being credited with an Xg of 0.61 for his role in that passage of play.
One (brief) final one for now, which isn’t really xG as such, but it’s the type of stat that some of the more details sites look at, is PPDA (Passes Per defensive Action). PPDA only applies inside the opponent’s half of the pitch & basically it’s the average number of passes that were made by the attacking side, before there was a defensive ‘action’, that interrupted the run of passes.
Against Palace, our PPDA was 41.27 (theirs was 3.41). Against man u, our PPDA was only 6.58 and theirs was 17.70. I’m not gonna go into it here in any detail, but just these stats alone, can give you a bit of an idea of how a match was played to a certain extent, even if u hadn’t seen it. Who was sitting back, who was pressing harder etc etc.
The deeper we dive into the world of xG, we can see a clearer picture of what happened during a football game, outside of the basic stats that we usually see.
There’s loads more of this kind of stuff, including heat maps (always a winner) & other weird & wonderful things, but I don’t wanna make this first one too long & bore everyone to tears……Not just yet anyway..
I’ll finish with the xG map for the man u game from understat and, if you can be bothered enough to go to the website, you can hover your cursor over each ‘attempt’ & see the relevant xG stats for each chance created. https://understat.com/match/18231
I’ve sent this in & obviously have no idea what Jock’s written above, tho it’s fair to say that it wouldn’t be hard to guess. Maybe it’s good to have a little dispassionate sift thru some stats, to go alongside whatever Jock comes out with here. Which won’t be too complimentary I predict. Maybe we’ve found our Yin & Yang…..😂
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