Expected Goals stats tell the very real story after Crystal Palace 2 Newcastle 0

The Mag

·25 avril 2024

Expected Goals stats tell the very real story after Crystal Palace 2 Newcastle 0

Expected Goals is widely agreed to be the best way of measuring how well Premier League clubs play in any particular game.

To get a better look at how sides are doing, the Expected Goals (xG) metric allows you to get a better picture of just how teams are performing.

Vidéos OneFootball

Expected goals (xG) is a statistic used to work out how many goals should be scored in a match.

With every single shot awarded an xG value based on the difficulty of the attempt, with factors including distance from goal, type of shot and number of defenders present affecting the value.

The higher the xG of a particular shot, the more likely a goal should be scored from that shot.

The xG value of every shot in a game is then used to calculate the expected goals in a particular match.

So rather than just the usual basic statistics of how many shots each team has, Expected Goals factors in where shots were taken from and how good a chance was and whether defenders in the way etc.

These are the Premier League matches from Wednesday night, with the Premier League Expected Goals stats (and actual final scoreline in brackets) by Understat:

Wolves 0.48 v Bournemouth 2.40 (0-1)

Everton 1.89 v Liverpool 1.87 (2-0)

Crystal Palace 1.44 v Newcastle 0.55 (2-0)

Man U 3.51 v Sheffield United 1.21 (4-2)

As you can see, an interesting set of results on Wednesday night, including when the focus is put on the expected goals stats.

The four winning teams last night all had the bigger expected goals stat. Although only minimal as the Scouse Mackems seemingly ended Klopp’s title hopes, their Expected Goals stats 1.89 v 1.87 with Everton winning 2-0.

In Newcastle’s case, nobody would claim that in the match, Palace weren’t the better team.

However, for all they were the superior side for most of the game, the Expected Goals stats of 1.44 v 0.55 shows that the reality was that Palace didn’t really have many great scoring chances. I can’t remember Dubravka making a difficult save, as apart from the two goals, I think the other shots were from distance. Whilst for Newcastle, both Isak and Gordon had decent scoring chances, plus then of course the Longstaff penalty which could have changed everything, United only 1-0 down at the time.

Palace:

Mateta 55, 88

(Half-time stats in brackets)

Possession was Palace 47% (51%) Newcastle 53% (49%)

Total shots were Palace 20 (9) Newcastle 6 (1)

Shots on target were Palace 7 (5) Newcastle 2 (0)

Corners were Palace 7 (4) Newcastle 2 (0)

Referee: Thomas Bramall

Newcastle team v Crystal Palace:

Dubravka, J Murphy (Wilson 65), Krafth, Schar, Burn, Longstaff (White 90), Bruno, Anderson (Ritchie 90), Gordon, Barnes (Hall 65), Isak

Unused subs:

Karius, Dummett, Livramento, A Murphy, Parkinson