NEXT month marks two years since Arsene Wenger used Expected Goals to defend an Arsenal performance, and two years since the Soccer Saturday panel subsequently reacted in fury.
It’s not all bad news for Manchester United, though. Heading into matchweek nine they have the best performing defence in the Premier League on Expected Goals (6.91 xG conceded, with visitors Liverpool second on 7.76. A fixture that ended 0-0 last season, in a stadium at which Jurgen Klopp has never won as Liverpool boss, screams defensive battle and the numbers suggest that this would absolutely be the wisest approach for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s troops to take.
Tight At The Back
It’s not all bad news for Manchester United, though. Heading into matchweek nine they have the best performing defence in the Premier League on Expected Goals (6.91 xG conceded, with visitors Liverpool second on 7.76. A fixture that ended 0-0 last season, in a stadium at which Jurgen Klopp has never won as Liverpool boss, screams defensive battle and the numbers suggest that this would absolutely be the wisest approach for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s troops to take.
In contrast, the two teams with the most generous defences belong to Bournemouth (15.37) and Norwich (15.35) with those two meeting on the south coast on Saturday in what should be a game saturated with goals. The bottom of England has already seen the fastest hat-trick in Premier League history (Sadio Mane at St Mary’s) and the only game to see more than 10 goals (Portsmouth 7-4 Reading at Fratton Park). Could we be about to see more history created on the storied edge of the English Channel?
(Over/Under)Performers
Only two players have accumulated chances worth more than 2.00 xG and failed to score this season. One of those is Sheffield United’s David McGoldrick (2.27) and the other is Southampton’s Che Adams (2.05). At the other end of the scale, Tammy Abraham and Jamie Vardy have the biggest differentials so far with the Chelsea man 3.54 up on his xG and the Leicester forward +3.03.
Three of Abraham’s eight goals came away at Wolves and that match also contained the goal with the lowest xG value so far this season, Fikayo Tomori’s fizzer from long range that not only had an xG of around 1.3% (so around half that of Vincent Kompany’s goal against Leicester last season) but was also the first shot he had ever hit in the Premier League. You can have all the models in the world, sometimes art just outstrips science.
Vincent Kompany 18-19: "so we're playing Watford at home in March, and he takes some nonsense of a long range shot from just right of centre that hits the defender and frankly he needs to cut that out" pic.twitter.com/fSaPzMASjf
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) July 19, 2019
Finally, there’s no dataset that ranks facial anger in football matches but one shorthand could be to search goals with extremely high xG values. My reasoning: in the Premier League this season the highest xG for a goal belongs to Dominic Calvert-Lewin for Everton against Manchester City at Goodison Park, as he nodded home with the ball only a handful of centimetres from passing over the line.
It had an Expected Goals value of 0.98, but it left Seamus Coleman looking 110% angry as he feared that not only had his team-mate stolen a certain goal from him, but that Calvert-Lewin may very well have been offside. Anguish was also present amid the goal with the second highest xG value this season, Neal Maupay’s header (0.93) for Brighton past a mid-dislocation Hugo Lloris. When your xG strays into the 90s, someone is going to be upset.
