Mikel Arteta: Managerial Royalty

[rich 1990]

I can imagine Rich being the villain in one of the Fast & Furious movies.

Vin Diesel and them man teaming up to stop his plan to destroy every calculator on earth.

I'd never do that to you Trills.

 

[Toby]

Literally sent you a link that answers all your questions and numerous posters have tried to explain to you..do you have a problem with the stat or do you have a problem with the stat exposing Mikel?

Obviously he does not understand what stats are per se.

 

[Trilly]

Obviously he does not understand what stats are per se.

Well I’ve given the benefit of the doubt and offered a full explanation so let’s see

 

[AbouCuéllar]

It's so frustrating when people can't accept that a) xG is not a perfect stat and b) it's a useful stat at the same time.

What was that stuff about negative capability and the definition of intelligence from Fitzgerald?

 

[Toby]

How does xg work in case of rebounds? For example, auba pen vs villa. Does it add for both the pen and the rebound he got? If it does, then so many rebounds will be incorrectly adding on to the xg showing the team created an extra chance.

If the guys doing the analyzing are to be taken seriously they have to explain how they got to certain values via their methods. So they should either say they take pen and rebound as two different chances or they create some sort of pen rebound stat, etc. etc.

That's also the next level farzazzazazadada yadda yadda doesn't get. There might be different xG values for one team, but if you look up their methods which they should explain then anyone can make up their mind on what to do with it or how to take those stats.

It's just the same with e.g. any institution that does surveys. Two institutions might do surveys on the same topic/question but will get to different results - the difference being made by their methods. That may or may not devalue the use of the survey, but usually it doesn't take away from the scientific baseline.

Regarding footie stats like xG this might result in some differences cause company A looked at games 1 to 1000, while company B looked at games 500 to 1500 and company C at 1000 to 2000, so they will definitely get a little different data resulting in company A saying chance for a corner flag shot goal is 0.1%, company B saying it's 0.3% and maybe company C saying it's 2% because randomly a **** ton of them happened in games 1000 to 2000 and especialy in games 1500 to 2000 which no other company evaluated. But usually you'll still see similar values, especially in something like football over a massive sample size.

 

[Fewtch]

A-M when I post a simple xG chart:

*Posts a simple xG chart*
AM old farts:

 

[Paperino]

Lovely thread title as per Eduardo Hagn.

 

[Toby]

I don’t want you to get frustrated if I don’t agree with you after you explain it

"I'll act open minded and listen to what you have to say but if it doesn't fit my worldview/agenda I'll just deny it, even if it's 1+1=2."

 

[Farzad]

Basically those four different sites all use a different set of probabilities. Website 1 might say you have a 10% chance of scoring from the edge of the box, website 2 might say 5% and the last two might both say 7%. That’s why each site is different.

As for where the numbers come from, they aren’t made up. They’re from taking every shot ever taken (since records began) looking at where the shot was taken from and how many of those shots were a goal. So website 1 looked at 1000 shots taken from that location, saw that 100 went in and decided that you have a 10% chance of scoring if a player takes a shot from there.

The reason each site is different is because they calculate their numbers differently, but they’re usually similar anyway. If they were just making stuff up the numbers wouldn’t align across all the different websites like they do.

Hope that clears things up.

That is the problem it is not a minor difference saying a shot at edge of the box is worth 5 percent or 10, plus not every shot from same location from different players is equally dangerous. By the way there are huge swings between the numbers of the various sites. It is at best an opinion generated by accepting their underlying assumptions which are over simplifications based on a player X shooting from point Y. If Ronaldo is shooting edge of the box is there more expectation than let’s say Elneny?

 

[Farzad]

"I'll act open minded and listen to what you have to say but if it doesn't fit my worldview/agenda I'll just deny it, even if it's 1+1=2."

You build beautiful straw men the numbers you keep bandying about are not an indication of very much or worth much. Do you believe we were lucky to beat Sp**s that is what one of these ****** analyzed the game as? Quality of chance has a lot of subjective elements

 

[BigPoppaPump]

This forum needs to be closed during international breaks.

 

[drippin]

"1+1=2."

In real life, 1+1 can be 3.

 

[Toby]

the numbers you keep bandying about are not an indication of very much or worth much.

And because they are so useless that's why every club has started hiring analysts, is relying on data, has started partnerships with data analyzing companies and the face of football has changed over the last 10 years to exactly a more methodical, mathematical iteration?

If that's good or not, or to your liking or not is one thing - and imo it has surpassed a limit where I'd say it's too much especially in terms of how it influences "the game" or singular players - but it changed the game and is important and thus of worth.

And btw that wasn't a strawman. Don't use terminology you don't understand.

 

[Trilly]

*Posts a simple xG chart*
AM old farts:

Yoooo I’m crying

This @rich 1990 and @Jury link up is the pinnacle of yer da football posting.

 

[Trilly]

That is the problem it is not a minor difference saying a shot at edge of the box is worth 5 percent or 10, plus not every shot from same location from different players is equally dangerous. By the way there are huge swings between the numbers of the various sites. It is at best an opinion generated by accepting their underlying assumptions which are over simplifications based on a player X shooting from point Y. If Ronaldo is shooting edge of the box is there more expectation than let’s say Elneny?

There are answers to every question you just asked me on the link I shared with you earlier.

But yeah xG is based on the average player, that sample of one million shots or whatever will contain shots from Ronaldo and shots from Elneny. It all averages out, the sample sizes are huge. The numbers aren’t based on over simplifications at all, criteria is usually v.complex and I simplified it to explain to you.

Look it’s all very legit, there’s a reason why it’s one of the only new age stats to go mainstream. They show xG on match of the day, sky sports etc. This isn’t some dodgy stat that was invented last month.

If you’d rather ignore it then fair enough, those of us who like stats will continue to talk stats. Let’s stop spamming the thread with this now!

 

[AbouCuéllar]

The thing is no one did this for Emery when he had City and Chelsea back to back to start the season as well.

Tbf, Em*ry was on 18 (15.98 xPTS) pts after 13 matches. Arsenal is currently on 20 (15.54) after 11 matches. So that kind of explains why people do that...

Can I ask what the chart you posted was that sparked the current argument? I looked for it in your posts but couldn't find it!

 

[A_G]

Tbf, Em*ry was on 18 (15.98 xPTS) pts after 13 matches. Arsenal is currently on 20 (15.54) after 11 matches. So that kind of explains why people do that...

Can I ask what the chart you posted was that sparked the current argument? I looked for it in your posts but couldn't find it!

The debate over analytics actually started with this rather than xG:

 

[AbouCuéllar]

The debate over analytics actually started with this rather than xG:

Not surprising, this graph. We are really quite poor systematically in both of these facets. Something Arteta really needs to improve upon in the remaining 27 league matches this season if I am to feel he deserves another season.

 

[Rex Stone]

The debate over analytics actually started with this rather than xG:

Does this come in crayon for Rich?

 

[AbouCuéllar]

The debate over analytics actually started with this rather than xG:

The thing I don't get with people's great grievances with these stats also is that they almost always are just telling us common sense things.

Anyone who was watching Arsenal with anything resembling an idea for detail and understanding about football in 13/14 first half or 19/20 first half of the season could tell that we were grinding out victories and getting victories in an unsustainable fashion, ie that our results level was far exceeding our performance level, and that we were in for a regression to the mean. This was represented by xG. Same as anyone who was watching Brighton last season could tell that there was more to that team than its place in the table, also represented in xG.

Same as anyone who is watching Arsenal with something resembling an idea for detail and understanding about football will watch us and see that we are deficient in resisting the press and in pressing. And lo and behold it shows up in the metrics. You look at our pt tally of 20 and our xG of 15.54 and it also is telling us just the story we're watching: a team at a relatively mediocre performance level who is having a decent to good results level.

I don't understand why people try to make football statistics and what they are telling us out to be some kind of nerd rocket science; they are just giving us objective measures of what people who understand something about football and are looking at things in something of a balanced way are seeing. It's really rather prosaic and common sense in the end.