moles40":10rmizah said:
Once we start taking our chances in games then this league better watch out.
Great chance of auto- promotion this season, despite everything like no crowd to help the team to victory.
Thought i'd nibble at this, and expand slightly. Personally, I think you are too optimistic. I don't think we are good enough defensively to be promotion contenders. Although unlike some, I do not fear we'll be down the bottom. I think a top half finish is achievable.
Anyway, for some context i thought i'd have a quick look at your statement of
"Once we start taking our chances in games then this league better watch out." Mainly for my own curiosity more than anything. Statements like this are the exact reason "Expected Goals" exists. I'm a believer in stats and think xG gives you a good indication of how a team may fare over a period of time. xG calculates the probability of scoring based on the chance created. So the more clear cut/central/closer the chance is, the higher the XG is. Pretty simple. So far this season our results based on xG should be:
Wigan 0.9 - 2.1 Argyle
Lincoln 2.7 - 0.5 Argyle
Argyle 1.6 - 1.2 Northampton
Argyle 1.6 - 0.7 Burton
Hull 1.1 - 1.1 Argyle
Argyle 1.4 - 0.4 Shrewsbury
Wimbledon 2.2 - 2.7 Argyle
Argyle 1.1 - 1.4 Blackpool
To explain how this works, if the xG is within 0.3 of one another, the match is consider a draw. If more than that it suggests one the team with the higher should have won (basically, round to nearest whole). Whilst I can see the limitations of XG, it shows that barring the Lincoln game, we've been very competitive in every game we've played in and created enough to win most.
Outperforming your XG would be a sign that you are very clinical, but don't create many chances. Underperfoming would suggest we create good chances but don't take them. If these patterns continue over a season, the former will eventually stop, the latter will generally catchup. A good example would be Solksjaer's first few months at Man Utd or Emery's first few months at Arsenal. In both circumstances, the teams were outperforming there xG either through outrageous finishing from them, or bad finishing from the opposition. The following season United were atrocious for the first six months and Emery was sacked before Christmas following a poor end and start to the new season. The results started to match the performances.
Here's how the L1 table would look so far if teams took there chances:
Paints a frustrating picture, but shows that we are doing well from box-to-box. We had the issue last year and Hardie and Jephcott came in in January and starting scoring which made the difference. Our current circumstances are similar.
Anyway, I know some don't believe in stats, some think xG is nonsense... "you win games on goals not expected goals" bla bla bla... but just a little bit of data behind the performances giving food for thought (data the club probably looks at).