Raheem Sterling

[Adisa]

I think he did it on purpose.

 

[Inter Yer Nan]

Little cheat.

 

[NieThePiet]

Little cheat.

Because he kicked the ground?

 

[Walters_19_MuFc]

Fantastic goal.

 

[cyberman]

I'm not going to post the nonsense but f365 pointed this out after grass gate

The best part of it all? The author of the article is Carl Long. Carl Long does not actually exist. The Sun are clearly not quite brave enough to stick an actual person’s name to it.



I find that shocking

 

[AngliaRed]

He’s stealing a living. He’s surrounded by world class players so he thrives on tap ins and the odd piece of skill. I watch alot of football and he usually wastes 2-3 great chances a game before he gets his goal. His performances at the WC in his favourite position showed you what he’s like playing with average players.

 

[RedSky]

He's a terrific player for City.

22% conversion rate in the PL if you combine this and last seasons stats together. That's higher than Aguero, Kane, Salah, Hazard, Mane etc

He also takes less shots than most averaging a shot every 30.3mins and yet scored 24 goals combined. That's a goal every 140.2mins, Aguero on 99.2mins, Salah on 104.5mins, Kane on 113.0mins, Hazard 164.5mins. One of the best players in the Premier League when playing for City imo.

 

[Tommy]

He’s stealing a living. He’s surrounded by world class players so he thrives on tap ins and the odd piece of skill. I watch alot of football and he usually wastes 2-3 great chances a game before he gets his goal. His performances at the WC in his favourite position showed you what he’s like playing with average players.

Yet when you combine goals/assists in the Premier League, only Aguero & Hazard can match him this season.

Stealing a living? What nonsense.

 

[Bugs Bunny]

He’s stealing a living. He’s surrounded by world class players so he thrives on tap ins and the odd piece of skill. I watch alot of football and he usually wastes 2-3 great chances a game before he gets his goal. His performances at the WC in his favourite position showed you what he’s like playing with average players.

I fully understand opposition fans not liking and underrating players of rival teams (and vice versa - we all tend to overrate our own players) but if you really believe that Sterling is 'stealing a living' your football knowledge is pretty limited.

 

[11101]

Shit sportsmanship by him. He could have said to the ref it wasn’t a penalty.

With Guardiola as manager he probably knew if he did that he'd never play again.

 

[Bugs Bunny]

With Guardiola as manager he probably knew if he did that he'd never play again.

Good point.

Except Guardiolla pointed out to the fourth official that it shouldn't have been a penalty.

 

[jontheblue]

There's absolutely no question that a huge contributory factor to Sterling's success playing for City is the quality of the players around him, the way the team is set up to play and the manager. Absolutely. But who the f*ck in football does that not apply to ?

As has been pointed out many times on here by United fans, a number of our star players would struggle to look as good in the current United side, including KDB, Silva, Sane and especially the likes of Laporte, Stones, Walker & Ederson

It's hardly surprising nor should it diminish what Sterling has been achieving

He is regularly keeping very good players on the bench and his stats are incredible, as is his attitude. Plus his goal last night was simply sensational

To top it all, you'd think from some posts that Sterling is the first English player to look much better when playing for club than when playing for country. You couldn't make it up

 

[Trizy]

He’s stealing a living. He’s surrounded by world class players so he thrives on tap ins and the odd piece of skill. I watch alot of football and he usually wastes 2-3 great chances a game before he gets his goal. His performances at the WC in his favourite position showed you what he’s like playing with average players.

Stealing a living, no. But I largely agree with the rest.

He's a brilliant dribbler but overall his game is lacking so much to be rated as highly as he is domestically. Take Sterling away from Pep and watch his usual average performances start.

 

[balaks]

He’s stealing a living. He’s surrounded by world class players so he thrives on tap ins and the odd piece of skill. I watch alot of football and he usually wastes 2-3 great chances a game before he gets his goal. His performances at the WC in his favourite position showed you what he’s like playing with average players.

What a load of nonsense. He is clearly one of the most important players in City's team.

 

[RedSky]

What a load of nonsense. He is clearly one of the most important players in City's team.

17/18 + 18/19
Total Key Passes:
Kevin De Bruyne - 108
David Silva - 93
Raheem Sterling - 76
Leroy Sané - 69
Sergio Agüero - 58

17/18 + 18/19
Key Pass Per Min:
Kevin De Bruyne - 29.3mins
David Silva - 34.2mins
Leroy Sané - 42.0mins
Raheem Sterling - 44.3mins
Bernardo Silva - 47.8mins

To further emphasis Sterlings importance. This is key pass stats, near the top on both. Add that to his goal scoring and it's clear as day he's one of their best players. Creative and a goal scorer.

 

[SqualorVictoria]

What a load of nonsense. He is clearly one of the most important players in City's team.

He said he watches a lot of football though, so there must be something in it.

 

[11101]

Good point.

Except Guardiolla pointed out to the fourth official that it shouldn't have been a penalty.

All well and good acting righteous after the penalty has been given.

 

[Bugs Bunny]

All well and good acting righteous after the penalty has been given.

He could have hardly pointed out it shouldn't have been a penalty before a penalty had been awarded.

 

[jontheblue]

He could have hardly pointed out it shouldn't have been a penalty before a penalty had been awarded.

He could have run on the pitch, after the pen was awarded, but before the pen was taken, waving his hands & screaming to grab the ref's attention, in the hope the ref would reverse his decision based on the opinion of a coach on the sideline having a better view of what happened than the ref himself & his assistant who were just yards away.

The fact he didn't just proves the depths city will sink to

 

[James Peril]

He’s stealing a living. He’s surrounded by world class players so he thrives on tap ins and the odd piece of skill. I watch alot of football and he usually wastes 2-3 great chances a game before he gets his goal. His performances at the WC in his favourite position showed you what he’s like playing with average players.

People should be given warnings for crappy or non-factual posts. Sterling has what... 44 goals and assists in as many games in the league? I’d rather have that and «2-3» missed chances every game than a striker that doesn’t get any chances. Sterling is a very good player

 

[Theafonis]

People should be given warnings for crappy or non-factual posts. Sterling has what... 44 goals and assists in as many games in the league? I’d rather have that and «2-3» missed chances every game than a striker that doesn’t get any chances. Sterling is a very good player

Suarez, Lewandowski, Kane etc all miss thousands of chances a game. They eventually get goals but strikers who score frequently tend to have low conversion rates for shots taken, its ok though because Sterling is getting in to these positions to impact the game. Its exactly what he should do.

 

[jontheblue]

People should be given warnings for crappy or non-factual posts. Sterling has what... 44 goals and assists in as many games in the league? I’d rather have that and «2-3» missed chances every game than a striker that doesn’t get any chances. Sterling is a very good player

correct. On top of that, his decision making is getting much better, mainly I'm sure through confidence. He's a little greedier (in a good way), but is still a very unselfish player. Just as he needs good players around him to be effective, I'm sure his team mates love what he does for them

 

[Irwin99]

It'll be funny if they have a legit penalty turned down on Sunday because of his reputation.

 

[BlueMoonOutcast]

Shit sportsmanship by him. He could have said to the ref it wasn’t a penalty.

Should Ashley Young have told the referee that he nearly snapped Aguero's ankle last season when you beat us in the derby?

 

[el3mel]

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[Canagel]

That is probably the worst penalty decision of all time.

 

[Chipper]

He's a terrific player for City.

22% conversion rate in the PL if you combine this and last seasons stats together. That's higher than Aguero, Kane, Salah, Hazard, Mane etc

He also takes less shots than most averaging a shot every 30.3mins and yet scored 24 goals combined. That's a goal every 140.2mins, Aguero on 99.2mins, Salah on 104.5mins, Kane on 113.0mins, Hazard 164.5mins. One of the best players in the Premier League when playing for City imo.

Interesting stats as I don't think his finishing is particularly great, not to the eye at least. He's not someone I would think of as clinical.This is perhaps a situation where one can look at XG (expected goals) and find a use for it. It's not my favourite stat, but I think here it has some validity.

In general, up until this season he's apparently been a little less clinical than the average sort of player would be, presented with the kind of chances he's had. This season he's actually above the curve so far - https://understat.com/player/618

So if you were to take a slightly below average XG rate but with an impressive overall conversion rate like you mentioned that may suggest the quality of his chances are high when he has a shot. Now that doesn't tell you why, and I'm sure different people will have different theories on that, and more than one of them may be in play at the same time. He might only shoot when he has a very good chance because he's unselfish, his movement might mean he's particularly adept at finding himself excellent chances to score, his teammates might be good at dishing up excellent chances for him and more.

His expected assists are a little lower than his actual number of assists across his career too, which means that the players he's been creating chances for are particularly clinical themselves, slightly outstripping the actual quality of the chances he's made.

Impotantly, he's never been miles behind on XG or miles ahead on XA, neither set of figures would really lead one to think he's a total myth or anything, but those little trends are there and could well mean something.

Back to chances, and XG over the past 5 seasons vs. goals scored with the players you mentioned we have:
Sterling +3.60 was expected to score 3.6 more goals than he has based off chances
Aguero -3.04 has scored 3.04 more goals than expected
Kane -17.44 an immense finisher, that's insane
Salah -12.82 another particularly clinical player, perhaps skewed a little by last year's outstanding season but that's still quality
Hazard -15.04 Yet another really good finisher, teammates notably letting him down on the assists too
Mane -4.23 Better than average

So Sterling is the only player of that lot who according to XG should have scored more goals than he has based off his chances. Of course, the old esponse to a lot of this is that it doesn't matter, all that matters is how many times a team or player actually does score. He can miss chances, or in the case of XG good quality chances but still score other chances and that's ok, and at least the player is getting into the right positions etc. That has validity and merit too.

 

[RedSky]

Interesting stats as I don't think his finishing is particularly great, not to the eye at least. He's not someone I would think of as clinical.This is perhaps a situation where one can look at XG (expected goals) and find a use for it. It's not my favourite stat, but I think here it has some validity.

In general, up until this season he's apparently been a little less clinical than the average sort of player would be, presented with the kind of chances he's had. This season he's actually above the curve so far - https://understat.com/player/618

So if you were to take a slightly below average XG rate but with an impressive overall conversion rate like you mentioned that may suggest the quality of his chances are high when he has a shot. Now that doesn't tell you why, and I'm sure different people will have different theories on that, and more than one of them may be in play at the same time. He might only shoot when he has a very good chance because he's unselfish, his movement might mean he's particularly adept at finding himself excellent chances to score, his teammates might be good at dishing up excellent chances for him and more.

His expected assists are a little lower than his actual number of assists across his career too, which means that the players he's been creating chances for are particularly clinical themselves, slightly outstripping the actual quality of the chances he's made.

Impotantly, he's never been miles behind on XG or miles ahead on XA, neither set of figures would really lead one to think he's a total myth or anything, but those little trends are there and could well mean something.

Back to chances, and XG over the past 5 seasons vs. goals scored with the players you mentioned we have:
Sterling +3.60 was expected to score 3.6 more goals than he has based off chances
Aguero -3.04 has scored 3.04 more goals than expected
Kane -17.44 an immense finisher, that's insane
Salah -12.82 another particularly clinical player, perhaps skewed a little by last year's outstanding season but that's still quality
Hazard -15.04 Yet another really good finisher, teammates notably letting him down on the assists too
Mane -4.23 Better than average

So Sterling is the only player of that lot who according to XG should have scored more goals than he has based off his chances. Of course, the old esponse to a lot of this is that it doesn't matter, all that matters is how many times a team or player actually does score. He can miss chances, or in the case of XG good quality chances but still score other chances and that's ok, and at least the player is getting into the right positions etc. That has validity and merit too.

How do they calculate XG and XA?

 

[Santoryo]

Read that this guy signed a new contract and was looking for what fee the paper would write then find nothing, which got me thinking, had he been a United player his salary would have been written in the titles of all reports, not to mention it would have been exaggerated.

 

[Tommy]

Read that this guy signed a new contract and was looking for what fee the paper would write then find nothing, which got me thinking, had he been a United player his salary would have been written in the titles of all reports, not to mention it would have been exaggerated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/46157225

Was the feature article on the BBC Sport page yesterday.

 

[Chipper]

How do they calculate XG and XA?

It's a little hard to describe, I'll post a link to one off an XG site at the end of this but will give it a go in my own words first.

Essentially they look at every attempt at goal that happened over I don't know how long, but it's a really big sample size. They then group these attempts together and put on a number on how often a goal was scored from a similar chance/effort in the past. When a player has an attempt/number of attempts at goal they then compare whether he scored or not to the average conversion rate of similar chances.

I think different XG sites run different number of variables. You might have one that's worked out that a player having a first time shot in space on the volley 28 yards from goal with the ball 1-2 feet off the ground has a 5% chance of scoring or something or that 0.05 goals will typically be scored for each shot of that nature. If a player has a shot like and misses he's now 0.05 below average at shooting, if he scores he's now 0.95 ahead. XG is an accumulation of that kind of thing, but with every single chance a player has.

Penalties are the easiest ones that they deal with. Not sure what percentage are actually scored, think it's in the high 70s, let's say it's 77%. That means for every penalty a player takes he should score 0.77 of a goal. For every penalty he takes and scores he's improving his real life finishing compared to his XG by 0.23, for every time he misses he's making it worse by 0.77. Course, you can't score 0.77 of a goal, so to see if someone was a good penalty taker you'd be looking for around 8 out of 10 penalties scored or better.

XA would be taking the XG of a particular chance and noting who created the chance. E.G. someone has a tap-in into am empty net that 90% of time would be scored based off previous data. The chance is worth 0.90 XA whether a goal is scored or not. If someone kept serving up amazing chances like that, but donkey players kept missing them then they wouldn't have as many actual assists as they perhaps merited. XA will show that if done accurately.

Similarly, someone might think a player with 10 assists is creative, but if every single one of them came about because he knocked a 5 yard square ball to his teammate on the halfway line who dribbled through the entire opposing team before scoring then he's not creative, and anyone could have done that pass. They'd calculate how many times someone got an assist for a 5 yard square pass on halfway with the defenders in place which must be less than 1% of the time and give him 0.01 XA for that 'chance'. Of course he'd get 1 assist in the real world for that. Do that 10 times and he'd have 10 assists and a 0.10 XA, meaning that his XA of -9.90 compared to his real-life 10 assists shows that he's got his teammate(s) to thank for a lot.

Here's Opta's (the football data people) take on it - https://www.optasportspro.com/about...he-performance-of-premier-league-goalscorers/

 

[BeforeKeanetherewasRobson]

Read that this guy signed a new contract and was looking for what fee the paper would write then find nothing, which got me thinking, had he been a United player his salary would have been written in the titles of all reports, not to mention it would have been exaggerated.

And included wages, agents fees, potential sponsorship earnings, potential bonuses then add the number you first thought of.

Hence Pogba cost us £400m.

 

[BeforeKeanetherewasRobson]

People should be given warnings for crappy or non-factual posts. Sterling has what... 44 goals and assists in as many games in the league? I’d rather have that and «2-3» missed chances every game than a striker that doesn’t get any chances. Sterling is a very good player

To be fair, his WC ratio/performances were lower than with City? (different players, different chances/difficulty) and I'd agree with that part of his post, though not that he's stealing a living but that's just a turn of phrase, exaggerated because he's a City player and this is a UNITED forum? Like "Pep is hugely overrated".

It's just opinions, no-one should be getting warnings for saying things other don't agree with - we're not in school. Just post an alternative opinion.

 

[Dumbstar]

XG also doesn't take into account the team you play for. Not properly anyway. Sterling will be more relaxed for City in 95% of games knowing that even if he misses someone else, or him even, will score loads eventually as that's what City does. As a result of that calmness he will invariably score first time anyway thus his shots to goals ratio will look hot.

It's not surprising that when shooting/scoring is paramount (CL game against Liverpool or similar) he doesn't strike the same fear in opponent fans or players or manager. At Liverpool where the pressure was more intense to score he was ridiculously wasteful. Five one on one shots against Utd, all missed. He has obviously improved a little but not as much as his XGs are showing. Tomorrow's game against Utd will be a decent measure about how far he's come.

Of course any or all of the above could apply to any City player (Sane, Silva x 2, Aguero, etc) but none offer that same nagging doubt that Raheem does despite his fantastic streak.

 

[Santoryo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/46157225

Was the feature article on the BBC Sport page yesterday.

I read it on sky page.

 

[BlueMoonOutcast]

Unreal consistency from Raheem. He's possibly player of the year thus far.

11 games, 7 goals, 6 assists.

 

[djembatheking]

Unreal consistency from Raheem. He's possibly player of the year thus far.

11 games, 7 goals, 6 assists.

He has been fantastic for you this season , superb attitude and desire . Pep has certainly got the best out of him .

 

[Adisa]

Regardless of any racist comment, why would grown people behave like this?
I have enormous respect for footballers.
What other profession is regularly taking abuse while working accepted?

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[Hernandez - BFA]

Regardless of any racist comment, why would grown people behave like this?
I have enormous respect for footballers.
What other profession is regularly taking abuse while working accepted?

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Amazing, when there is a black Chelsea fan literally 3 seats from him.

 

[Eyepopper]

Chelsea fans being racist?

No, I refuse to believe that!