Poch and Dyche cooking the blues
the thing about this stat is that it is a little misleading in isolation about the strength of our attack. 6 of our 26 goals this season have been penalties, that is a big contribution of our total goals, so that xG is stripped from our attack, imagine they were shots instead the xG would be higher but the goals we’ve actually scored in games would be lower.
It also doesn’t take into consideration game state. We scored a penalty to go 1-0 up away to Palace, went down to 10 men, of course we are going to sit deep and protect what we’ve got, which we did. 3 points. But we come out of that game with a bad non pen xG score, which does damage to a chart like this, but I’d rather the 3 points.
Interesting that we haven’t just improved defensively, we have done it in a league where almost every team is scoring more than previously; almost every team has an upwards trajectory line.
Why are people throwing this on our coach that we are less attacking this season.
Ofc you’d be less of an attacking team when you couldn’t play your first attackers in the same lineup for two consecutive matches. AND your playmaker captain was holding an injury during that.
We still pressure so much on attack and create alot. It’s just Nketiah wasn’t that really good except for 2 matches this season.
Think we should wait to see our attack at full strength for at least a few games before making broad conclusions.
Only the Arsenal is moving in the right downwards direction.
Chelsea and Everton wtf!
I guess that’s why we only got one point at stamford bridge
Everton are a huge surprise. Chelsea have been good all season to anyone who has been paying attention
Thing is, this is actually a bit of a positive. We all know the injuries we have had. We are also integrating a new midfield. In many way’s I’d expect this to be our rough period. In previous years, we’d be struggling. Yet we are still top or thereabouts and defensively a rock. I’m optimistic about the second half of the season.
Last year we were good for goals, but in the red for goals conceded. We had to sacrifice something to fix that. We might have sacrificed a little too much, but I think that’s not unfixable. Especially considering injuries etc etc etc
I look at this graph and all I hear are the sounds of tiny race cars zipping around the track
West “better off without Rice in the team” Ham
Ok we didn’t get better attacking wise but please why couldn’t it have just stayed the same level, we be killing the league 😭
Midfield is only 1/3 of what it was last season and our preferred midfield and front 3 haven’t started together yet this season
Partey always pass the ball to odegaard, thats one of the reason why odegaard dominate the midfield. And this season partey only played 4 games in pl (even that as right back), and odegaard played with injury for the last few games. Tifo irl also said in their video that odegaard got less ball this season compared to last season
Why are the axes attack and defense? Like why defense?
xg and xga are the axis, meaning the same thing as attack and defence.
I guess really they should say something like “xG scored” and “xG conceded”.
But I imagine it’s because they think people will find it easier to understand “attack” and “defence” with higher up and further to the right being good.
‘22-‘23: build attack
‘23-‘24: build defense
‘24-‘25: World domination.UCL, NBA, World Series, PL
Olympics here we come!
ASSNA GHANTA SUPABAWL!
Throw in the Super Bowl for eggball in as well!!!
For the record, I am American and my family hates when I call it eggball, especially all this week during Thanksgiving 😂
calling football eggball or handegg is so corny man cmon. Just call both sports football if you don’t like saying soccer
tf are u on about, handegg is just a better name. calling it football is just confusing and nonsensical.
No PGA. Arteta out!
I know it’s a joke, but since the attack has already been built, where has it gone this season?
But someone told me we have the most touches in the box this season surely that means our attacking play has been just fine this season
I think it’s explainable though. Teams play differently against us now due to our success last season; they sit all the way back so we cant punish them in transition like we did all last season.
This would lead to both more touches in the opponents box, and also less goals. Probably also less goals conceded from us as well, which we’re also seeing. We’ve also had one injury after another in our starting attacking lineup.
We’re still doing fine.
I mean you say that but Chelsea and Spurs probably the most open teams we’ve played this season and they’re the ones we struggled the most against and conceded the most XG as well. It’s really not as simple as teams are playing us differently. We really have not been as fluid this season. It’s more like we’re the ones playing differently partly because of new personnel and partly due to the fact we’re trying to be more compact. There’s been a real lack of central penetration this season. But it should also be mentioned that this graph should look way worse than it does because we’ve got 6 pens this season which inflates our XG by quite a bit.
You can point at the exceptions like Tottenham and Chelsea (both of which are passionate, high pressure derbies where form and stats tend to be less relevant), but all the info we need to see is in this graph really.
Yes, we’re scoring less but also conceding less. It’s less exciting but I think probably a more consistent chance at a title challenge. “1-0 to the Arsenal” comes to mind.
The graph is already non pen xg.
Half an expected goal a game is considerable. Also compare our attack to the rest of the league in terms of xG. It’s midtable in some areas.
We have the most box touches but that’s because teams are comfortable allowing it. When they have 8 men in the box, why bother stopping us to get in. We aren’t scoring with In a box that packed.