gecko

If memory serves, I'm sure I'd read somewhere that the Man City formation/tactics was actually something that players approached Jones with themselves. Perhaps that was all hearsay or I'm remembering incorrectly. But it wouldn't surprise me given what we've seen of Jones' selections, that the one game he had less input on, is the one we actually played well and deservedly won

getting the guy sectioned might achieve the same end-goal though :-D

BBC got an interesting take on that line up. If this is actually Jones' plan, then he deserves no one's support

If there was one of our other players for AA to hand him off to, I'd be agreeing with you. AA does need to make himself available for an out-ball/counter-attack should the Newcastle move break down. But that's not what happened; the problem is that he doesn't even look, drops off Longstaff in acres of space with none of our lot anywhere near him. AA delivered Longstaff into the box and then watched the rest happen in slo-mo

Absolutely agree. People must really hate Bednarek so much to place that first goal on him... Diallo, Alcaraz and JWP just jog their way back to the box after losing possession Armstrong follows Longstaff to the edge of the box and then just gives up and watches And KWP should force Trippier down the line All of that lot completely culpable in some way, but sure, it's Bednarek's fault for not making the block from an opponent who has 10 yards of space in every direction inside our box.

This is the definition of Saintsy. Play crap for 60 mins Boss it for 10... Let in a goal Play crap again.

yes, but the point is who do we get to improve on this? Players who outperform their xG are likely to be the ones we need to get in - and if we can use this amongst other factors to focus our scouting on people we can actually afford, then great

I like the simplicity here. However, if there is a statistic that points out to the club that our strikers regularly under perform, and it highlights who might be able to do a better job, then that could show who to bring in to improve the number of goals in the back of the net. xG correctly tells the club that Che misses loads, and if we'd kept Ings, we would (probably) have more goals than we do now - not sure many would argue that even if there wasn't a stat to back it up.

xG is like every other statistic that gets published about a game - it can be useful, but probably shouldn't be taken as fact. The standard stats that we get (shots/on-target etc) rarely ever tell the whole story and all of them, xG included, need to be considered in the context of actually watching the game. For instance, the Brighton match: https://understat.com/match/18371 Saints: 14 shots, 4 on target Brighton: 7 shots, 4 on target That would suggest that it was a reasonably balanced match to some degree, but anyone who actually watched it would know we got our arses handed to us and at no point did we ever look like we'd win the game. Coincidentally, the xG on that match also fails to show things brilliantly as well. Saints: 1.71 xG Brighton: 1.01 xG The Perraud O.G. is given an xG of 0.0, which seems to twist the numbers a little bit, and the JWP penalty and follow up are treated differently as they're two efforts, with xG's of 0.76 and 0.37 respectively (1.13 combined) - so discounting the penalty, the xG scores would be: Saints: 0.58 Brighton: 1.01 xG I'd also point out that Solly March's goal was spectacular, and rightly given an xG of just 0.04 - i.e. only 1 in 25 shots like that would hit the back of the net, which seems about right. So taken in isolation on a specific match, they obviously don't always tell the complete story, just like all the other stats. But over the course of a season across all teams/shots/goals/saves etc, it probably spits out a reasonable estimate/average of how good a striker has performed. We know Che misses a lot of chances that he should score and his xG reflects that; we know Kane + Haaland score a lot of their chances, and again their xG reflects that. tl;dr - it's not an exact science, it _can_ be useful, but it's not total bollocks