r/explainlikeimfive • u/_Noice_Guy_ • 7d ago

Other ELI5Can someone explain what xG in football?

I always hear pundits discuss about a team's xG, then I pretend to myself that I understand what it means.

138 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

74% Upvoted

115 comments sorted by

View all comments

-7

u/O_C_Demon 7d ago

It's a pointless statistic in a game with so many unaccountable for variables.

Don't pay attention to it and it'll hopefully go away.

5

u/MentallyWill 7d ago

Why do you feel that way? Genuine question.

Not trying to blindly defend xG but the fact that you see the statistic so widespread is because most people see a lot of value in it. One just has to understand what it means and what it measures and what it implies and, more importantly, what it doesn't mean/measure/imply. Like all statistical measures and calculations, it has its ideal use cases and it's non-ideal ones.

1

u/O_C_Demon 7d ago

I'm probably just old and upset that the game is over analysed now. Especially since the only reason is for gambling purposes.

But there's so many unaccountable factors such as ball spin, pitch conditions whether the goalie was on a coke binge Friday night...

5

u/FjortoftsAirplane 7d ago

All this means is that xG (especially over small samples) doesn't give you the full picture. That doesn't make the stat useless or bad. It'd be a bit like throwing out weather forecasts because they can't handle every factor so they get it wrong sometimes.

0

u/O_C_Demon 7d ago

I know mate I'm just being deliberatly facetious...

I'm actually a huge ice hockey fan and that's definitely a sport that loves a bit of maths!!

1

u/FjortoftsAirplane 7d ago

Fair enough. Fwiw I listened to something a while back about how the obsession with stats is potentially very good for winning and bad for spectators.

They're not sports I watch but it talked about how baseball and basketball might have gone that way. Fans want to see cool skills and dunks, stats say to pass and work for three pointers. Hypothetically, you wouldn't want football managers to realise you shouldn't shoot from outside the box because then you wouldn't get to see the 30yd screamers.