Champions League

Birdy

Birdy

Senior Member
El Gato said:
Doesn't even matter either way. Could be like 10-1 on chances and I'd still fancy us to get through based on Benzema on-form influence alone
What Birdy doesn't realize is that with an experienced team that prepares to absorb and concede shots (which will inflate the opponent stat) without getting too rattled, the chance volume does not dictate a close contest. Mourinho teams would have lost on xG time and again back in the day and you'd absolutely never dare to count them out in a cup tie or chat shite that their approach is incorrect (well, unless you're dogmatic about it and will never concede that reactive football or pragmatism can be useful). This RM is not nearly as effective at parking buses and often needs a spark (overturned Marcos Alonso goal, Werner goal) + athletic midfield in order to start playing to true potential. And yet this guy will come out and categorically state affair 'won't be close' implying we're doomed to fail only to get mugged off in the end because he doesn't account for other variables, like keepers fucking it up in front of Benzema or subs making a massive difference regardless when they're introduced, lol
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Nice shit-talking about me without even replying directly or tagging

For what is worth:
1) you probably haven't seen that I have written many times that in cup knock-outs anything can happen. And the meaning of this is that a far better team over the course of a season can have a night off in a CL knockout where a worse team gets good result against them (like Chelsea in the 1st leg, or RM against PSG in the 1st leg). These one-offs are rather unreflective of the distance and gap between the teams, and is rather un-sophisticated (to put it very politely) to judge relative strength of teams based on cup knockouts.

2) I don't like reactive football, and I have the right to shit-talk reactive teams, but whenever I say X team didn't deserve to go through, I always base it on the quality of the chances created/conceded.

Now, you seem to haven't understood something important about it, even though I have explained it in defense of the model against the usual criticisms.
A team that shots 20 times outside the box with very low xG might get an aggregate of 1.0-1.5 xG in a game, but that doesn't mean they created good chances.
A good chance, by most models and modelists out there, is xG>=0.3

So, the teams that park the bus as you say, would concede a lot of shots probably.
But they would do it well if the do NOT concede good chances (xG>=0.3) and badly if they do.

An elite bus-parking team like Mou's teams 'back in the day' would minimize the xG conceded, and would not concede big chances.
Plus, when their turn would come on the counter they will create themselves high xG chances.
So, no you are wrong: Mou's good team would win the xG battle!
Dogshite bus-parking teams, and not elite, on the contrary would concede high xG chances, and not create themselves.

That's where the difference lies, and all that fluffy "prepared to absorb the pressure' stuff don't mean shite if that's not translated to low xG shots conceded.
Chelsea had 8 big chances yesterday inside your box.
That's far from "prepared to absorb pressure", and if it shows something is that you didn't defend well, and your hopes lied with Courtois making terrific saves, and Pulisic-Havertz-Jorinho missing sitters in order to qualify.

Get all that straight first, and then we can seriously talk
 
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El Gato

El Gato

Villarato!
Morten said:
I'm not going to go into all the different tables, but surely you know Chelsea had way more attempts on target over the two legs, i think the one i, and most others found is more accurate.
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They didn't though
Real had 5 and 4 while Chelsea 5 and 7 shots on target home and away respectively. 9 to 12.

Was it close? I think so, but i do think Chelsea were better as a unit overall, but they couldn't see it trough, it is what it is.
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Precisely my contention.
The original claim is based on model that assumes nothing goes wrong and that Real will not change a limited setup with CKM that doesnt work. And both were proved to important flaws as the moment Real changed it both in Paris and vs Chelsea game looked entirely different.
He's just falling into traps of treating various preferred metrics as kind of dogma by which to judge the likely result of a football match and assess the outcome. Not the first to do it.
Just poor takes is all.

City claim yet to be tested tonight.
Dont think it's clear cut and we have reasons to believe things can go wrong with City against almost anybody. Just like we had reasons to believe things could go wrong for Chelsea, they can for City considering they just had a gruelling affair vs Liverpool and Atleti had been on a good run ahead of CL

Another example from recent weeks is lack of attention to missing players in the Clasico contributing to bad result, which again informed his take on the quality of this RM side
Just exposes flaws in reasoning and consistent arrogance
 
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