[MENTION=5226]Wolfe[/MENTION]
Sorry for not replying back, i was pretty busy..
I read all the post.
-The short answer is: i disagree. Your argument would have been valid if i had picked arbitrarily a stat that i just fancied.
I used to hate statistics in football back in the day, because i thought they distort what we see with our own eyes. And that was really true, because until recently we didn't have anything more than the usual package of the crude old day stats (shots, possession, fouls , etc)
But, the thing is that in recent years this began to change and more sophisticated stats have appeared, with some 'intelligence' built into them.
The most important cluster of them is the 'X-stats', X meaning eXpected, that show you not the actual stat in question, but the 'expected' one based on the existence or not of conditions for it to materialize. The most important stat of the most important cluster is the 'X-goal' stat that gives you the scoreline of a game based on the conditions created by both teams to score.
Now, the way it is calculated includes some basic probabilistic principles which have with small variance universal applicability. For example, if a player shoots facing the goal with the opponent GK down, and no other players around, i believe the xG is close to 1, something like 0.95
Why this? because it almost always goes in. There are some cases of incidents when players have bottled that (and we can watch it in utube compilations) but given how many times it goes in, the statistical probability is around that number.
Similarly, there are a lot of factors (distance from goal, players in between, angle, set-piece, foot or head, etc) in all those models that come together to create the final sophistication.
What does all this mean? That it is definitely not an arbitrary stat that i picked. I picked the most accurate stat we have today to depict what the performance of a team in a football game is worth.
Is it perfectly accurate? No, it is not. I said already that it brackets out the GK for example. But, it is still the most accurate metric we have to measure performance!!
It has revolutionized not only the way we assess games, seasons, teams. But is also used gradually all the more in scouting by clubs.
(Quick example: People who were too quick to judge or hadn't done their homework that much, were shouting after the end of last year's EPL that Chelsea was a dream and that Man City will never win the EPL with Pep's tactics.
A close study of the xG scorelines, though, showed that City had a ratio of -30% total actual goal difference to total xG difference, while Chelsea had a + 70% ratio.
The bet companies of course knew that, that's why they placed City as top favorite to win the 2018 EPL since August)
- I completely agree with you, though, that aesthetics is relative. I understand, though i don't share the feeling, that someone might like a Mourinho's Inter, or a Simeone's Atletico. But that's completely irrelevant for what i am saying. xG does not apply only to 'aesthetically pleasing' teams, or only teams that play attacking football. It applies to every style. When Atletico was outplaying their opponents it was being perfectly captured by the xG scoreline. Atletico vs Bayern in 2016 semis: first game Atletico was better captured by the xG, return leg Bayern was better, captured by the xG again.
Similarly, some fluffy Arsenal sides of the recent past that were playing nice football and were all attacking and 'aesthetically pleasing' were not better than their opponents, and we can say that with the evidence of the xG stat.
PS: I agree with the others that the great sides of the history did not offer only results and good performances ,but something more than that. Something that contributed to the sport as such. But, they certainly offered the former, for without that they would never have been what they were.
The uncrowned queens of Hungary '54 and Netherlands '74-'78 built a legacy because of that. And it was unfair that they didn't win the world cup, because not only they were pleasing to the eye, but they were better, more effective, and (i am sure it will be done in the years to come with data reconstruction based on the videos) had better performances as the significant stats (xG) would have said. And the unfairness could have been captured if we knew the stats. For if we knew that Hungary - West Germany final was an 5.3-1.5 in xG (let's assume), we would have known also that if you simulate the game it will be won maybe 90% of times by Hungary..
