Exactly. I’m not sure what the XG is of breaking down the left and slotting it past the keeper from an angle but I know it isn’t optimum .
If we were that bad then a striker who rarely leaves the box shouldn’t have this to his name?Tweet
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I do get what you're saying, he's a good man manager, no doubt, and he's getting a lot out of the players he does actually trust. There's a harmony in the team there hasn't been in ages and we never look like a side that just gives up under him, as evidenced by our excellent away record and points coming from behind. But the problem, as you say, is that we've already seen what his style is and it's not great. We're a pretty shite team to watch, overall.Fair point. I think that’s been an issue for far longer than he’s been here, though and the squad is demonstrably better than it’s been for years. But yeah, perhaps not the morning to make that point.
Well that's what it read like to me as we're out of the race, Chelsea have similar xg to us and Liverpool, City are favourites.
Cornered because he’s under huge pressure and “what is your tactical philosophy” is a question that pissed him off because it implies he has none.
Perhaps that was a bit harsh on him. I will admit he is the only seemingly available manager who would interest me right now. But still going from Ajax to United would be quite the step up.
That has to be fake news. Absolutely no chance that 16 PL teams have <4 xG at this point in the season.
Since Ronaldo joined ManUtd. So it's for 2 match days.
Ah. Ok. D’oh! So an absolutely tiny sample. Tells us nothing useful at all.
Yep, the idea that we don't have any patterns of play or structures whatsoever is nonsense. It's not like McKenna and Solskjaer have just been introduced to football or Michael Carrick was clueless to the concept of patterns of play even as Barcelona were tikki-takka-ing us to death in CL finals. They know how football works.
I said we can win the league but it's unlikely because we rely on individual brilliance rather than a more cohesive team structure to win games. City, Liverpool and Chelsea have both brilliant individuals and a cohesive team structure so they're more likely to do better than us. This is expressed in the xG data.
Or he was genuinely espousing his philosophy which is roughly playing in the same way as he did when he was a player, more about individualism than cohesive team structure, contrary to the likes of Pep, Tuchel etc. Of course we work on more modern stuff in training but looking at the team playing out from the back and pressing it doesn't look like we are that good at it, which comes down to coaching. I'd argue that the tetchiness in his answer is because he knows that he's going against the norm with his approach.
I think there’s also a question of how much focus there is on such patterns. I get the impression that Ole prefers to leave a lot of freedom for improvisation as compared to some others. To borrow the words of Mourinho (I think), he is not a coach who tells his players to “pass from A to B”.
Is this realistically going to happen though with the oil money in play?
Yeah, exactly. And credit where it’s due to Ole for identifying set-pieces as an issue and getting someone on board to fix it. With impressive results so far. Unfortunately, it must be a lot harder to “fix” things at the sharp end of the pitch.
Indeed. A huge part of coaching is the skill of getting across your intentions. If you drew a formation and some lines on a piece of paper and just handed it to the team, they wouldn't suddenly know how to execute it. Its about how you transmit the message, how you drill it into them. Its the way you communicate on the training ground or in one to ones. Its about how much you focus on it, with how much intensity and how highly you prioritise it over other things in training.
Not for Chelsea though. But they’ve been very impressive despite this. Which shows the fallibility of relying too heavily on xG.
To be fair, the collective wisdom of Caf identified set pieces as problem too. It was as hard as checking the table for the teams who conceded most from them.
The key point being he identified it as an issue which required a new addition to the coaching team.
For the first 5 games but last season under Tuchel they did a lot better than us in that regard and won the Champions League. Whilst I can't be certain I'd be more inclined to bet on Chelsea improving their xG performance than us as the season goes on.
World class forwards find a way to get on the end of chances is all that says and it's always held true. Accumulating high xG is more about the striker you have than the supply given to him.
Small sample size influenced too much by playing an hour with 10 men at Anfield, similar to ours being overly influenced by a horrible game against Wolves. Liverpool and City haven't had those games where they got battered.
I don't get your point here. Guardiola and Zidane coached the second teams of their clubs before being promoted, so they had experience. And there are loads of former players who went on to be succesful in their first management role. Klopp for example was promoted from player to coach over night and was a success at Mainz.
It is literally just the position of the shot.
It’s also an indicator of how often you manage to get the ball into those positions where the world class forward can potentially turn it into a goal, isn’t it? You can have world class Kane up front, but your xG isn’t going to be high if you’re not getting the ball to him in dangerous positions.
It's not. Statsbomb, which is where fbref get their data from, takes into account multiple factors including defensive pressure and the quality of the shot, see their website below
The quality of the shot, really? That seems idiotic given xg is there to measure the quality of the chance.
The quality of the shot or PsXG is of more importance when assessing goalkeepers as it puts a value of on the power and placement of the shot regardless of the position it was taken from.
It's not 5 games though is it. He's been here a number of years and a lot of persistent problems still seem evident.
Well if you compare xg for and against for the first 5 games last year compared to this year it's night and day but that would be silly as the sample size is tiny.
It would be silly. Especially considering that four out of our five fixtures this season have been against teams currently in 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th place (the other was against the team in 8th, who beat us last night)
Very true. They should leave it out of normal xg if they want it to mean something
I think the top of the league thing is valid in one sense. The forum is full of people who are absolutely dying for United to lose so they can be proven right. Before we beat west ham they were saying ole has to go if we draw. We won and went joint top. It is a reasonable response to people that say he has to go
This is what makes most sense to me - there are too many variables for it to become accurate until we have far more advances within technology (even things like humidity, what boots the player is wearing, size of foot, the speed of the assist, the spin of the ball, the % of ball inflation etc. there’s really no end) but if you pinpoint where every shot comes from you will have a pretty accurate overall high level stat after a couple of seasons+ of data.
That is and has never been true. It is just frustrated people who have had enough of 8 years of shit on a stick football, no trophies, despite spending more than any other team bar Barcelona and perhaps City. With Ole being here for more than 2 and a half years, having a higher net spent than any manager in the world during that time, and still playing shit on a stick football and going nowhere near big trophies.
supply of chances will be the bigger factor, surely
Both. A top-quality striker like Ronaldo will ensure a high xG because his movement makes other players find him very easily. In contrast, someone like Martial makes life harder for the team, because he is static so finding him in a good position to shoot becomes very hard.
