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Expected Goals stats after Newcastle 1 Chelsea 0 – Always makes for a good debate…

4 years ago
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Expected Goals is widely agreed to be the best way of measuring how well Premier League clubs play in any particular game.

To get a better look at how sides are doing, the Expected Goals (xG) metric allows you to get a better picture of just how teams are performing.

Expected goals (xG) is a statistic used to work out how many goals should be scored in a match.

With every single shot awarded an xG value based on the difficulty of the attempt, with factors including distance from goal, type of shot and number of defenders present affecting the value.

The higher the xG of a particular shot, the more likely a goal should be scored from that shot.

The xG value of every shot in a game is then used to calculate the expected goals in a particular match.

So rather than just the usual basic statistics of how many shots each team has, Expected Goals factors in where shots were taken from and how good a chance was and whether defenders in the way etc.

These are the weekend’s Premier League Expected Goals stats (actual final scoreline in brackets) by Understat:

Saturday 18 January 2020

Watford 2.15 v 1.85 Tottenham (0-0)

Arsenal 1.23 v 0.92 Sheffield United (1-1)

Manchester City 2.46 v 0.59 Crystal Palace (2-2)

Brighton 1.20 v 0.56 Aston Villa (1-1)

Norwich 1.74 v 0.55 Bournemouth (1-0)

Southampton 0.80 v 2.26 Wolves (2-3)

West Ham 1.61 v 1.34 Everton (1-1)

Newcastle United 0.84 v 1.81 Chelsea (1-0)

Sunday 19 January 2020

Burnley 1.20 v 2.07 Leicester (2-1)

Liverpool 2.01 v 1.42 Manchester United (2-0)

As you can see, in the vast majority of games, the results tend to be generally in tune with the Expected Goals stats.

The team that works the best chances most often in a match, gives itself the best chance of winning.

So Norwich, Wolves and Liverpool were very much deserving of their wins on balance of play/chances.

The draws at Watford, Arsenal and West Ham were also pretty fair results based on chances created at both ends.

However, Burnley clearly carried the luck in winning against Leicester, Palace got a draw against the odds and chances at Man City, whilst Villa maybe a little bit fortunate to get a draw at Brighton.

As for Newcastle United, yet again we have a win that was very much against the balance of play and chances.

The expected goals stats showing 0.84 for Newcastle and 1.81 for Chelsea.

However, this actually is one of the less extreme sets of stats for NUFC, last week the 1-1 draw at Wolves saw Newcastle with a 0.18 expected goals rating and the home side 2.06 as Martin Dubravka made some stunning close range saves.

Chelsea might have had pretty much total control of the game but the NUFC defence kept them largely way from Dubravka’s goal and the blue didn’t have loads of chances from great shooting positions. Plus of course despite minimal attacking Newcastle did hit the bar as well as getting the goal, plus Fernandez had a decent heading opportunity which he got totally wrong.

Steve Bruce’s luck was still there, just not quite as extreme as we have seen at times this season.

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