There have been three distinct phases of Ten Hag’s tenure. The first was Brighton and Brentford where we were gung-ho on his ideals with disastrous results due to lack of suitable players and no adaptation period. The second was from Liverpool to City, where we were stodgy and pragmatic in the main, grinding out results without controlling games. Everton onwards, where Casemiro has been fully integrated and is giving us control in games has seen our underlying metrics improve enormously.
Most of the data posted so far in this thread is for the season as a whole; taking the above into account, is it any surprise that the underlying statistics are mediocre? They are an average of the three phases and as such, inevitably don't show anything special.
Below is a chart of our xG, xGA and xGD as a 5 game moving average. Each data point is an average for the specified opposition and the four games preceding them. This was done to reduce the variance of individual fixtures as xG’s power is in the longer rather than shorter term. The difference before and after City is pretty stark. Villa looks to be the outlier, though maybe it had something to do with who we had playing up-front for the last time.
Lots of talk about pressing in this thread and the same principle applies here (apologies if the formatting is confusing, couldn't think of a better way to do it):
| UPTO AND INC | CITY | POST | CITY |
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| Value | League Rank | Value | League Rank |
PPDA (passes allowed per defensive action) | 15.09 | 14th | 11.42 | 7th |
OPPDA (opposition passes allowed per defensive action) | 11.49 | 12th | 17.33 | 3rd |
DC (completed passes within 20 yards of goal, excluding crosses) | 58 | joint 6th | 104 | 2nd |
ODC (opposition completed passes within 20 yards of goal, excluding crosses) | 70 | 16th (!) | 48 | 3rd |
We've gone from one of the worst pressing and easiest to play through teams, to one of the best (only just below some combination of City, Liverpool or Arsenal for all but PPDA) and that's happened in the course of 5 months, without a suitable centre forward or goalkeeper. Ten Hag is elite.