Creativity & Chance Conversion

[jayramfootball]

81 mins, 24 chances, 7 of which were not absolutely fookin shit chances, 3 of which were rebounds, one was the actual goal and there were 2 decent half chances from Saka. But again I stress, not a single big chance from any of that lot, not a single chance that I would expect a goal to be scored from.

At this point I can say we were crap vs Norwich, Ben White had a good game, anyone criticising Lokonga's performance is blind, Odegaard was meh, AMN needs to give up ambitions of being a CM, for e very good thing he does, he will do 2 absolutely dreadful things. Tomi looked quality, Ramsdale looked good, Pepe was in and out, Saka was in and out, Auba was Auba - not a great game but you felt he would do damage given a chance.

There were 30 shots on goal - you'll just have to rewatch it ( ) as I am going to assume that all the major websites like Sky and BBC who also state there were 30 shots got it right).

4 good / decent chances listed above with video and time stamps.
26 speculative chances

You use the term 'expecting to score'. What does that mean???
You mean would NEVER expect to score? Would you NEVER expect ESR to have put his chance away, or Auba to NEVER score with his left foot with just the keeper to beat, or Pepe to NEVER score from 2 yards out instead of having his shot blocked??? (although 2 of those came after the 81st minute I think)

Or do you mean - on percentages you would expect a miss more often than a goal?

Name one chance where the xG is not accurately reflected.

Your player assessment is similar to what I thought from being there.

[theHotHead]

OK I have completed my video analysis, I totalled 32 attempts at goal, every shot that was on target, wayward or blocked, every header that came from a cross, I wanted to take everything even if it didn't quite look like a bonafide effort to make sure I didn't get to 90 mins way down on efforts, so I would have to re-watch it.

I got 32 efforts including any old rubbish. Jay, I can tell you categorically that if you are championing those 30 attempts on goal, as your friend, as your homie, as your do or die, please stop. Please, I can't help you or support you if you continue this line of argument.

The clearest effort was ESR through on goal, you would expect the net to have bulged for that attempt. The next best effort was Auba with his left footted effort that hit the keeper, it was a decent chance but in no way can you criticise the striker for hitting the keeper. Saka had a decent shot through bodies but I wouldn't say it was a great chance. With luck the game could've ended 3-0, on the balance of the quality of chances I saw 2-0 would've been about right. The overwhelming majority of "chances" were nothing of the sort, speculative efforts, nothing more.

[Power n Glory]

81 mins, 24 chances, 7 of which were not absolutely fookin shit chances, 3 of which were rebounds, one was the actual goal and there were 2 decent half chances from Saka. But again I stress, not a single big chance from any of that lot, not a single chance that I would expect a goal to be scored from.

At this point I can say we were crap vs Norwich, Ben White had a good game, anyone criticising Lokonga's performance is blind, Odegaard was meh, AMN needs to give up ambitions of being a CM, for e very good thing he does, he will do 2 absolutely dreadful things. Tomi looked quality, Ramsdale looked good, Pepe was in and out, Saka was in and out, Auba was Auba - not a great game but you felt he would do damage given a chance.

There were 30 shots on goal - you'll just have to rewatch it ( ) as I am going to assume that all the major websites like Sky and BBC who also state there were 30 shots got it right).

4 good / decent chances listed above with video and time stamps.
26 speculative chances

You use the term 'expecting to score'. What does that mean???
You mean would NEVER expect to score? Would you NEVER expect ESR to have put his chance away, or Auba to NEVER score with his left foot with just the keeper to beat, or Pepe to NEVER score from 2 yards out instead of having his shot blocked???
Or do you mean - on percentages you would expect a miss more often than a goal?

Name one chance where the xG is not accurately reflected.

Your player assessment is similar to what I thought from being there.

Again, find a game from the weekend where a team has had a similar amount of shots on goals with a low xG ratings and scored? It's a rare thing.

Also, Norwich had 10 shots on goal with similar low 0.1 xG scores. Should they have scored a goal against us? The volume of shots argument doesn't make much sense

[jayramfootball]

OK I have completed my video analysis, I totalled 32 attempts at goal, every shot that was on target, wayward or blocked, every header that came from a cross, I wanted to take everything even if it didn't quite look like a bonafide effort to make sure I didn't get to 90 mins way down on efforts, so I would have to re-watch it.

I got 32 efforts including any old rubbish. Jay, I can tell you categorically that if you are championing those 30 attempts on goal, as your friend, as your homie, as your do or die, please stop. Please, I can't help you or support you if you continue this line of argument.

The clearest effort was ESR through on goal, you would expect the net to have bulged for that attempt. The next best effort was Auba with his left footted effort that hit the keeper, it was a decent chance but in no way can you criticise the striker for hitting the keeper. Saka had a decent shot through bodies but I wouldn't say it was a great chance. With luck the game could've ended 3-0, on the balance of the quality of chances I saw 2-0 would've been about right. The overwhelming majority of "chances" were nothing of the sort, speculative efforts, nothing more.

I am not championing 30 shots. Once again the data is the data. We had 30 shots. It's not an opinion, it's a fact.
In that there were 4 good or decent chances, the rest not good chances.

You've counted a goal , an ESR chance where you 'expected the net to bulge' and a chance from Auba you thought was a decent chance (by the way xG measured that at a 0.09 level)
You missed Pepe's shot from 2 yards out which was blocked by the defender. Those efforts go in over 50% of the time.
You also highlight chances from Saka and you are correct in that they do no not often go in but they do sometimes...like in the Everton game we just saw a very low percentage chance bulge the back of the net.

You say that the game should have ended 2-0 and with luck 3-0.
The xG is 2.7.
That is about correct.

All you have done is validate that data from eyeballing the game with the data in mind - and also validated that anyone who says we created no chances has not watched the game.
Thank you.

[theHotHead]

Most of the efforts you wouldn't expect to yield a goal PnG, the chances were rubbish. But this is where stats out of context paint an entirely different picture and I know I am gonna regret doing this.

I will say the vast majority of efforts were terrible chances, but you can say the following is true; there was the shot for the goal, 3 rebound shots, 2 initial shots on goal that caused the rebounds pinball, ESR's big chance, Auba's good chance on his left foot, Auba's decent chance from Odegaard's long ball. Thats 8 decent chances - that makes Jay's argument actually legit (hence why I said I would regret doing this). If you look at the numbers in isolation "8 decent chances" is a pretty good return. HOWEVER - not watching the game and seeing those 8 chances out of context gives a totally false narrative ! Taking into account the context of each chance having watched the game in my opinion only 3 decent chances in the entire game, from the 30 (32 I counted) so-called chances that occurred.

[jayramfootball]

Most of the efforts you wouldn't expect to yield a goal PnG, the chances were rubbish. But this is where stats out of context paint an entirely different picture and I know I am gonna regret doing this.

I will say the vast majority of efforts were terrible chances, but you can say the following is true; there was the shot for the goal, 3 rebound shots, 2 initial shots on goal that caused the rebounds pinball, ESR's big chance, Auba's good chance on his left foot, Auba's decent chance from Odegaard's long ball. Thats 8 decent chances - that makes Jay's argument actually legit (hence why I said I would regret doing this). If you look at the numbers in isolation "8 decent chances" is a pretty good return. HOWEVER - watching the game and seeing those 8 chances in context gives a totally false narrative ! Taking into account the context of each chance there were in my opinion only 3 decent chances in the entire game, from the 30 (32 I counted) so-called chances that occurred.

It's like I have said - the data is what it is.
It's fairly accurate in giving a picture of how many goals we should have scored given the chances we had.
Also in every single game played in the PL this year, by every team, the vast majority of chances are ones where you would not expect them to yield a goal. That's just how football is - and has always been.

That data on chances and xG does not mean we played well or poorly or anything else. (As it happen, for the first 25 we were decent, then dropped off before picking it up again significantly when ESR and Partey came on).
It simply means based on the chances we had, given PL norms for chances taken we should have scored 2-3 goals.

This season, given PL norms, we should have scored 4-5 goals, but have only scored 1.
We are therefore performing below PL norms (in fact we're the worst in the league) at converting chances.

Also to be absolutely clear I am not making an argument.
Several pages I made a statement which reflects the data and it remains factual and objective about the season to date.
Read it again.

We create a lot of chances, but those chances on average are not great chances. However, we create so many we'd have reasonably expected to score 4-5 goals, but because our finishing is the worst in the league, we've only scored 1.

[theHotHead]

So people don't think something funny is going on I edited my previous post it seems when Jay posted his reply quoting my unedited post, I edited a couple of sentences because they were worded incorrectly.

Jay you were going on about us creating 30 chances, anyone following that would reasonably believe that a fair amount of the chances would be half decent when in reality they were dreadful chances. This opinion I have is confirmed by you saying our strikers were wasteful - they blatantly were not ! Now, I realise I have dug a ditch for myself by posting data that backs up your main argument but I think that game simply confirmed just how bad we are at creating proper chances. We played Norwich FFS and struggled to create any big chances, that is alarming !!

[theHotHead]

Most of the efforts you wouldn't expect to yield a goal PnG, the chances were rubbish. But this is where stats out of context paint an entirely different picture and I know I am gonna regret doing this.

I will say the vast majority of efforts were terrible chances, but you can say the following is true; there was the shot for the goal, 3 rebound shots, 2 initial shots on goal that caused the rebounds pinball, ESR's big chance, Auba's good chance on his left foot, Auba's decent chance from Odegaard's long ball. Thats 8 decent chances - that makes Jay's argument actually legit (hence why I said I would regret doing this). If you look at the numbers in isolation "8 decent chances" is a pretty good return. HOWEVER - watching the game and seeing those 8 chances in context gives a totally false narrative ! Taking into account the context of each chance there were in my opinion only 3 decent chances in the entire game, from the 30 (32 I counted) so-called chances that occurred.

It's like I have said - the data is what it is.
It's fairly accurate in giving a picture of how many goals we should have scored given the chances we had.
Also in every single game played in the PL this year, by every team, the vast majority of chances are ones where you would not expect them to yield a goal. That's just how football is - and has always been.

That data on chances and xG does not mean we played well or poorly or anything else. (As it happen, for the first 25 we were decent, then dropped off before picking it up again significantly when ESR and Partey came on).
It simply means based on the chances we had, given PL norms for chances taken we should have scored 2-3 goals.

This season, given PL norms, we should have scored 4-5 goals, but have only scored 1.
We are therefore performing below PL norms (in fact we're the worst in the league) at converting chances.

I agree, for the first 20 or so mins we were ok, but took a massive dip in performance until ESR and Partey came on. This was against Norwich, if the Spurs of the first few games turns up we are gona get slapped up, if the Spurs that turned up vs Palace turns up we might have a chance, but even then i don't hold much hope - they were down to 10 men after all.

[theHotHead]

But Jay, if we take the Norwich game in isolation, its not our finishing that prevented us from scoring more goals (ESR chance aside), it was the quality of the chances we created that was the problem.

[jayramfootball]

Most of the efforts you wouldn't expect to yield a goal PnG, the chances were rubbish. But this is where stats out of context paint an entirely different picture and I know I am gonna regret doing this.

I will say the vast majority of efforts were terrible chances, but you can say the following is true; there was the shot for the goal, 3 rebound shots, 2 initial shots on goal that caused the rebounds pinball, ESR's big chance, Auba's good chance on his left foot, Auba's decent chance from Odegaard's long ball. Thats 8 decent chances - that makes Jay's argument actually legit (hence why I said I would regret doing this). If you look at the numbers in isolation "8 decent chances" is a pretty good return. HOWEVER - watching the game and seeing those 8 chances in context gives a totally false narrative ! Taking into account the context of each chance there were in my opinion only 3 decent chances in the entire game, from the 30 (32 I counted) so-called chances that occurred.

It's like I have said - the data is what it is.
It's fairly accurate in giving a picture of how many goals we should have scored given the chances we had.
Also in every single game played in the PL this year, by every team, the vast majority of chances are ones where you would not expect them to yield a goal. That's just how football is - and has always been.

That data on chances and xG does not mean we played well or poorly or anything else. (As it happen, for the first 25 we were decent, then dropped off before picking it up again significantly when ESR and Partey came on).
It simply means based on the chances we had, given PL norms for chances taken we should have scored 2-3 goals.

This season, given PL norms, we should have scored 4-5 goals, but have only scored 1.
We are therefore performing below PL norms (in fact we're the worst in the league) at converting chances.

I agree, for the first 20 or so mins we were ok, but took a massive dip in performance until ESR and Partey came on. This was against Norwich, if the Spurs of the first few games turns up we are gona get slapped up, if the Spurs that turned up vs Palace turns up we might have a chance, but even then i don't hold much hope - they were down to 10 men after all.

Spurs were battered before they were down to 10 men too.
They were awful.
They've been poor all season, but ironically they have been good at finishing chances even though they have created less than us.

[Power n Glory]

Most of the efforts you wouldn't expect to yield a goal PnG, the chances were rubbish. But this is where stats out of context paint an entirely different picture and I know I am gonna regret doing this.

I will say the vast majority of efforts were terrible chances, but you can say the following is true; there was the shot for the goal, 3 rebound shots, 2 initial shots on goal that caused the rebounds pinball, ESR's big chance, Auba's good chance on his left foot, Auba's decent chance from Odegaard's long ball. Thats 8 decent chances - that makes Jay's argument actually legit (hence why I said I would regret doing this). If you look at the numbers in isolation "8 decent chances" is a pretty good return. HOWEVER - not watching the game and seeing those 8 chances out of context gives a totally false narrative ! Taking into account the context of each chance having watched the game in my opinion only 3 decent chances in the entire game, from the 30 (32 I counted) so-called chances that occurred.

This is the thing, we're not always going to get that level of possession and dominance against teams. But it was a decent performance and better than what we've seen previously. But there is still a long way to go in terms of creating quality chances because it's not just about volume and the stats don't tell the full picture but we only looked more likely to score in the late stages of the game.

But it comes back to the players and tactics overall. We'll see if improve but I don't expect us to score many goals if we're still only carving out low xG chances each game. The quality has to improve and that comes back down to coaching the current players or dipping back into the transfer window if we're committed to this possession heavy, pass pass style.

[jayramfootball]

But Jay, if we take the Norwich game in isolation, its not our finishing that prevented us from scoring more goals (ESR chance aside), it was the quality of the chances we created that was the problem.

It was a combination.
ESR chance, Auba chance and Pepe chance (blocked on the line) - you'd expect 1 goal from those three chances ( in fact the xG combined for all 3 was about 1). We missed them all.
Then all the other chances - based on league averages a goal would result about 2-3% of the time so you'd expect 35-40 of those types of efforts to yield a goal.
Then the actual goal, which obviously had a very high xG.
That is why the xG came out at 2.7.

Now, if you refer back to a previous post I have already stated that we're only 4 games in, so the numbers can not be reflective of individual players yet and even for the whole team we only have a small data set.
For example, that ESR chance - we can forgive him. It's one chance and can easily be missed. If over the season, however, he has 10 of those types of chance and misses ALL of them, we'll be saying (rightly) that he has finished poorly this season.

That is why this data will be updated each week. The picture becomes more and more solid as more data is added, but as of now, 4 games in ... we are creating lots of chances (6th in the league), but not very good ones (19th in the league on average) and our finishing is the worst in the league.

[jayramfootball]

81 mins, 24 chances, 7 of which were not absolutely fookin shit chances, 3 of which were rebounds, one was the actual goal and there were 2 decent half chances from Saka. But again I stress, not a single big chance from any of that lot, not a single chance that I would expect a goal to be scored from.

At this point I can say we were crap vs Norwich, Ben White had a good game, anyone criticising Lokonga's performance is blind, Odegaard was meh, AMN needs to give up ambitions of being a CM, for e very good thing he does, he will do 2 absolutely dreadful things. Tomi looked quality, Ramsdale looked good, Pepe was in and out, Saka was in and out, Auba was Auba - not a great game but you felt he would do damage given a chance.

There were 30 shots on goal - you'll just have to rewatch it ( ) as I am going to assume that all the major websites like Sky and BBC who also state there were 30 shots got it right).

4 good / decent chances listed above with video and time stamps.
26 speculative chances

You use the term 'expecting to score'. What does that mean???
You mean would NEVER expect to score? Would you NEVER expect ESR to have put his chance away, or Auba to NEVER score with his left foot with just the keeper to beat, or Pepe to NEVER score from 2 yards out instead of having his shot blocked???
Or do you mean - on percentages you would expect a miss more often than a goal?

Name one chance where the xG is not accurately reflected.

Your player assessment is similar to what I thought from being there.

Again, find a game from the weekend where a team has had a similar amount of shots on goals with a low xG ratings and scored? It's a rare thing.

Also, Norwich had 10 shots on goal with similar low 0.1 xG scores. Should they have scored a goal against us? The volume of shots argument doesn't make much sense

This data has already been provided for the whole season not just this weekend.
Example. The average quality of the chances created by Aston Villa this season is 0.09.
They have scored 5 goals.

3 of their 5 goals have xGs off 0.03, 0.06 and 0.09.
There are other teams in the table at the top of this thread.

Another example...
Liverpool have had a lot of lower quality chances like us. The average quality of their chances is less than 0.1.
They have scored with an xG chance of 0.03
There is another one of their goals with an xG of 0.14.

I can go on.

Obviously the accumulation of lower quality chances will eventually yield a goal. That's been football ever since it began. We've all heard the phrase 'keep shooting and one will eventually go in'
Some players are just better at converting harder chances than others.
At the moment our team, unlike Liverpool, Villa and others, have turned none of those difficult chances into goals

So yes, the volume of shots argument does make sense and can be tracked to show that lower quality chances do yield goals and some teams are better at converting them.

Whichever way you come at the data it pretty much always ends up reflecting reality.

As for Norwich, yes, if they had scored we could not have said they were lucky. They had enough chances to score, but you are wrong about their xG. It was 0.58, not 1.
So whether they scored or not was pretty 50/50 based on expectation from chances.
Again solid data.

[swipe right]

HH - it’s a bunch of BS and we all know it. It’s Jays way of distracting from the fact that he’s spent all summer biging up Arteta and it’s come undone in four games. That’s why my posts on the first page was show me the chances. Eight pages later, nothing.

[theHotHead]

But Jay, if we take the Norwich game in isolation, its not our finishing that prevented us from scoring more goals (ESR chance aside), it was the quality of the chances we created that was the problem.

It was a combination.
ESR chance, Auba chance and Pepe chance (blocked on the line) - you'd expect 1 goal from those three chances ( in fact the xG combined for all 3 was about 1). We missed them all.
Then all the other chances - based on league averages a goal would result about 2-3% of the time so you'd expect 35-40 of those types of efforts to yield a goal.
Then the actual goal, which obviously had a very high xG.
That is why the xG came out at 2.7.

Now, if you refer back to a previous post I have already stated that we're only 4 games in, so the numbers can not be reflective of individual players yet and even for the whole team we only have a small data set.
For example, that ESR chance - we can forgive him. It's one chance and can easily be missed. If over the season, however, he has 10 of those types of chance and misses ALL of them, we'll be saying (rightly) that he has finished poorly this season.

That is why this data will be updated each week. The picture becomes more and more solid as more data is added, but as of now, 4 games in ... we are creating lots of chances (6th in the league), but not very good ones (19th in the league on average) and our finishing is the worst in the league.

No Jay, I agree you could reasonably expect 1 goal from ESR/Pepe/Auba chances most definitely but I disagree that you would expect a goal from the other chances, they were poor low quality chances, they never looked like being goals.

I agree with PnG, of we continue to create such poor quality chances in high numbers, we will struggle to score any goals!!