TROJAN priestess Cassandra was cursed: she could predict the future, but no-one would believe her. Only fools and horses would try and hang the same soothsaying ability onto Expected Goals, though. That word ‘expected’ flexes too hard, leading many to think that the popular and cool football metric is not only trying to shape the future but is actively trying to replace goals themselves. “We like goals not expected goals,” traditionalists say. “Goals have been around since very start of football.” When was that, they’re asked. “We’re unsure to be honest,” the traditionalists reply. “Despite styling ourselves as defenders of the game’s heritage we’re forced to latch on to a couple of dates in the late 1800s as a deceptive start point from whence to build our commitment to heritage.”
What I’m trying to say is that Brighton and Hove Albion are the unluckiest football team the world has ever seen. You’ve witnessed the evidence, either traditionally with your eyes or on some sort of sprawling spreadsheet. The latest entry to the list is their game with rivals Crystal Palace on Monday, a match in which Brighton had 25 shots to Palace’s three yet still lost. A backheeled goal from Jean-Philippe Mateta and then an injury time winner for the man who replaced him, Christian Benteke, was the sort of thing that led to howls of rage from Pease Pottage to Firle Beacon. Not again, please… not again. Fans of both clubs may now be rebelling against the A23-Derbi moniker the fixture gets but who could help but notice that Brighton’s xG figure was 2.3 higher than Palace’s. And they say there’s no comedy in maths.
If such wastefulness had been confined to a few matches then fair enough, but it’s become so bad it’s almost become Brighton’s trademark style of play. Roll up and see the excellently prepared and tactically astute south coast side dominate the ball and work themselves decent opportunities only to waste them through a combination of [things]. Translate that into Latin and put it on the club badge. In 13 home games in the Premier League this season Brighton have had fewer shots on target than their opponents just twice, yet have won just once there all campaign.
And it’s not just an attacking issue, because as unproductive as they’ve been going forwards, Graham Potter’s team regularly encounter pleasantly surprised opponents scoring at a better-than-normal rate. Only Manchester City (nine home wins) and Chelsea (six home wins) have conceded fewer shots on target at home this season than Brighton (one home win). Albion have allowed nine fewer shots on target at home than Liverpool (seven home wins) and 13 fewer than Manchester United (seven home wins). This isn’t normal; it’s almost like carving their new ground into the chalk depths of the South Downs has permanently prevented Brighton getting the rub of the green.
The Expected Goals model allows us to create a proxy for bad luck by combining the shortfall in attacking output (so how much a team is scoring below their xG rate) with the equivalent at the back. The result is that Brighton are on minus 17.6 this season (10.6 goals short of their xG while conceding 7.0 goals more than their xG conceded). That works out to minus 0.71 per game, which looking at Premier League data back to 2013-14 makes them the unluckiest, or most inefficient, team in the division for almost 10 years. There’s a big gap but the next worse figure is Huddersfield’s -0.57 in 2018-19, followed by Sheffield United this season on -0.56, then 2018-19 Fulham on -0.52 and 2015-16 Aston Villa on -0.51.
Brighton's points dropped with a higher xG this season pic.twitter.com/VdqMktwEM9
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) February 22, 2021
Experts may have already spotted that those other four teams were either relegated or are destined to (Sheffield United), and I suppose that is the beacon of hope for Brighton fans. They are experiencing a huge outlier of a season that would have broken most teams and condemned them to relegation and yet Brighton are still not quite doomed.
Fulham are closing fast but Newcastle in 17th are a reliably unreliable buffer and compare the current reputation Steve Bruce has with Magpies fans to the general positive support Potter retains with Brighton supporters. Once upon a time we’d have had to issue vague sentiments like “Brighton are playing ok, you know… they’re honestly better than they look.” Thanks to xG we can prove that is the case. Brighton need to forget about Cassandra and try and appeal to (Sean) Tyche, the goddess of fortune instead.
