In short:
It says more about the passer, I agree, but it also says something about the receiver.
However, when you see Memphis topping the individual xT charts, it says everything about him, whether it's passes or ball carries
Sure, let's wait to have more data available, 3 games are def. not enough
When you see passes to him from both WBs and Frenkie de Jong topping after three games played, it tells you that he recieved a lot of passes from these worse positions in these three games.
Just to get a sense of what to expect, I posted here some time ago the graph from the same analytics guy of the
individual xT by passing of all Barca player for 20/21 all season long (La Liga only. In general -unfortunately- most databases have league data only) and as expected Messi was first,
alba was 2nd, and surprise, surprise, King Dembouz was 3rd above Busi
And
here is the same graph for xT received for all players in 20/21, where you see Braithwaite is 1st
These graphs over one season could potentially say something, and when it's players instead of pairs, it tells you more about the individual players.
But it's still not saying that much. Messi and Alba were the main men in playing breaking, final, passes, as anyone saw. Dembele is shit but tries difficult passes, it is no surprise to anyone he'd be decent in this stat.
What to make of Braithwaite being on the receiving end a lot (like Depay in the first 3 games this season)? Was he the best player last season? The best without the ball?
"Is this the way Barcelona should play?" I don't think it indicates a way to play.
The one doing the graphs thought so, he said that he thought the numbers highlighted Barcelonas reliance on crosses and wing play.
I don't think it tells that much about anything to be honest, but the thing it sort of tells is who is allowed to play with higher risk.
It's obvious that if a team manages to make successful progressive crosses they are doing sth good.
But it doesn't HAVE to be that necessarily.
It's more about realizing when you pose danger or threat to the opposition, and that's by penetrating into areas by either successful passing or successful ball carrying
You can penetrate without having individual passes that score high on these xT delta stats. Your numbers only include passes, and it is inherently faulty that just the xT increasing pass should count. The same way that he has forward iterations to xT numbers for areas, he should have backwards iterations before the xT increasing passes, if he was to find the EV for the players performances. And that number would include faulty passes and actions of course.
"A pass into the 6yrd eats up good passes on the own half"
Of course, it 'eats them up' because *IF SUCCESSFUL* it's more important in posing threat
No it is not more important.
The 6 yard is awarded this 0,4 number, but this number comes from including cutback passes etc, the shortest pass you can imagine recieved in that area is very dangerous and helps give the area its xT, but these passes gives very little xT delta
A long ball from Pique that is recieved by Depay in the "best" 6yard spot, will most of the time be hard to control, and maybe he'll have to take it towards the corner etc, but it will score the highest xT delta score.
It is a very simplistic stat missing a lot of essential information, and it's very easy to see many flaws with it.
"Positions of defending/attacking team"
I don't know about that, have to look it up, not sure what you write about PiqueVsBusi pass is correct
It is correct, but please look it up.
"Pairing players"
There are individual stats, like the one above from 20/21
If you had posted stats like these, you would have more of a case and I would be less unimpressed, but still very unimpressed.
The guy posting the stats from last season thought the sample size of Pjanic was too small to include in the pic you posted above btw, he played more than twice what Depay had done in the pic you posted. He also thought Dembeles sample size was only decent, and Dembele had played 6,5 times more than Depay had done after three games.
"Filtering"
I don't think it's correct to say there is a decrease in xT when a pass is misplaces.
A decrease in xT is with a back-pass for instance (the ones Roberto is so good at...)
Of course it is correct.
If Roberto passed it back to ter Stegen, the xT value would still be slightly positive. When the ball is at the opponents hand, the xT value will be negative.
The xT is also calculated with future iterations in mind, and the reason the flanks for example have pretty positive numbers is that it includes backwards passes. It is very narrowminded to disregard backwards passes.
I get your annoyance with misplaced passes.
But you have to understand correct passing is not no1 desideratum from a player whose main responsibility is to threaten, and eventually score or assist
You have to understand that I understand some players are allowed to take risks to threaten.
Depay gets total allowance to take these risks, he takes all the set pieces, and he doesn't really defend, but he has very little to show for it so far. Once again I will mention that Roberto has as many non-penalty goals and assists as him, playing less than half the minutes, much of them as a defender.
This will probably change over time, but an xT combination graph from matchday 3, where he is on the recieving end of a lot of position improving passes, says very little about it. And it is not the case that Depay threatens a lot when he makes most of his mistakes, many of the mistakes are just sloppy, shitty, unconcentrated poor technique.
