Dion
Full Member
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2010
- Messages
- 4,465
Apologies if I've missed this, but we should do a quick sense check.
Does the sum of say every premier league player's actual goals less expected goals equal close to zero? If the xg goals figure truly was expected, then over such a large sample size (200 starting outfield players per gameweek, plus say 50 subs, over 38 game weeks = 9500 data points), then the total goals actually scored in the league should be very close to the expected goals.
If it's not, it's a shit metric by its own definition.
In the Premier League this season there have been 814 goals, 810 xG.
Some seasons are downright weird though, the 2016-2017 in La Liga saw 19 teams outperform their xG (the only exception being 9th place Alaves) and 1118 goals from an xG of 952.