He definitely was a few weeks ago, and I don't think he's made a howler or reduced his big saves since.
United have conceded the same amount of goals in open-play as Man City in the league so far this season
- Thread starter Martial
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The one thing we can all criticise him on though and it’s the one thing we expected to see was his ball playing skills. Against Luton he hit it long a lot of the time.
His pass to Dalot was incredible and should have led to a goal. I feel like he hit quite a few more mid/long balls to the free man quite a few times that beat the press of Luton. He also largely kept the ball moving with his feet when he needed to.
I wouldn't class the Luton game as an example to play down his ball playing skills. I also think he's playing long balls largely cause its part of our game plan, not cause he's panicking and getting rid.
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I was going to add, the distribution is hampered by the fact that both Licha and Shaw aren't there. Outside of Dalot we don't have anyone who can take the ball on a half turn.
In the Luton game specifically, ten hag mentioned being unhappy that we dropped too deep versus them. I don't think there were many balls on for Onana in that particular fixture.
Exactly
No but come on, we get too caught up in this stat and that stat. I'm just pointing out as good as it may well be, Everton are doing better and look at their league position - this stat is pointless.Huh? Goals conceded is a pointless stat?
Not really pointless at all. We are in our league position because a) points deduction and b) we have scored the least in the division.
Without the points deduction we would be fairly comfortable currently due to our defense being solid.
Yes, because it tried to draw conclusion from a section of the game that suits his/her argument.
What about other goals that we conceded from set piece?
How many goals have we scored
Big Sam's team would normally concede much less goals, but do you want Big Sam, or worse, want MU playing like Big Sam's team?
this is all quite a leap. Again I imagine the OP is suggesting that set piece defending can very much a coachable thing that can improve. How many times do you hear players and managers saying it's especially frustrating to concede from a set piece. In a season when our defence has come in for plenty of often fair criticism, it is interesting to think that our defending in open play may not be as bad as we think. Either way, whatever the OP suggests, its a pretty harmless take and has elicited a weirdly defensive/hostile reaction.
I had been thinking about that tweet actually, cause to my mind, it's got two problems: it came out too soon after the match and doesn't show which company provided these xG values. Both issues come from the same thing: the xG value of shots is determined manually by analysts watching games. (Or at least, that's my understanding.) I am not sure how complex xG models are (for example: how many of the complexities of your two examples are taken into account?), but either way, those analysts are coding situations in a database while watching. That means that there is a level of subjectivity and that error is possible. To my knoweldge, companies compensate for those risks by having at least one other analyst re-watch the game afterwards and verify the coding - but so you need to know which company produced the stats (they might have different quality levels), and you either way can't have reliable xG stats until the validation has taken place.
Other than that, xG doesn't record when a situation just failed to become a chance (e.g., the assist for a great tap-in is just off), so apart from issues with xG calculations, it anyway should not be used on its own to determine how a match was played. (Which no serious analysts would ever do of course, but for the public, xG undeservedly has become some sort of shorthand for overall match analysis.)
I'll end my xG rant there.
Keep it up - xG on it's own is terrible a terrible stat as are most of all the othersI had been thinking about that tweet actually, cause to my mind, it's got two problems: it came out too soon after the match and doesn't show which company provided these xG values. Both issues come from the same thing: the xG value of shots is determined manually by analysts watching games. (Or at least, that's my understanding.) I am not sure how complex xG models are (for example: how many of the complexities of your two examples are taken into account?), but either way, those analysts are coding situations in a database while watching. That means that there is a level of subjectivity and that error is possible. To my knoweldge, companies compensate for those risks by having at least one other analyst re-watch the game afterwards and verify the coding - but so you need to know which company produced the stats (they might have different quality levels), and you either way can't have reliable xG stats until the validation has taken place.
Other than that, xG doesn't record when a situation just failed to become a chance (e.g., the assist for a great tap-in is just off), so apart from issues with xG calculations, it anyway should not be used on its own to determine how a match was played. (Which no serious analysts would ever do of course, but for the public, xG undeservedly has become some sort of shorthand for overall match analysis.)
I'll end my xG rant there.