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Son Heung-Min

Finney Is Back said:
Good players outperform XG, it’s only natural really.... consider it... Whether Kane or Sissoko get a chance from 10 yards out, centre of the goal, only the keeper to beat from a through ball delivered from a central area just outside the box. Kane scores his chance, Sissoko misses. XG is 0.5. Of corse the true numbers for those players are actually 0.8 and 0.1.
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That not how it tends to come out over the longer term.

What the numbers show is that the better players tend to be in a position for and take shots from higher xG positions.
 
scaramanga said:
That not how it tends to come out over the longer term.

What the numbers show is that the better players tend to be in a position for and take shots from higher xG positions.
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Is my interpretation of the chart wrong? Isn't it saying that those players have outperformed the XG for the specific chances they had?

I
 
Finney Is Back said:
Is my interpretation of the chart wrong? Isn't it saying that those players have outperformed the XG for the specific chances they had?

I
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Yes, but pretty much nobody (bar the very top handful of the world's greatest) continually runs at +xG over the longer term - especially not by large margins.

The chart on the previous page is probably using an overly simplistic version of xG that doesn't take into account all the situational data that good models do. So Son is probably overperforming on that measure because he tends to score on the break more than others. If you are clear through from the halfway line and shoot from the edge of the box when there's only the keeper left, the xG on a naive model will be low but the chance of scoring high. The better xG models take into account the situation of the play and the status of the other team. In which case many of Son's goals would be much higher xG.
 
scaramanga said:
Yes, but pretty much nobody (bar the very top handful of the world's greatest) continually runs at +xG over the longer term - especially not by large margins.

The chart on the previous page is probably using an overly simplistic version of xG that doesn't take into account all the situational data that good models do. So Son is probably overperforming on that measure because he tends to score on the break more than others. If you are clear through from the halfway line and shoot from the edge of the box when there's only the keeper left, the xG on a naive model will be low but the chance of scoring high. The better xG models take into account the situation of the play and the status of the other team. In which case many of Son's goals would be much higher xG.
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But that table says those figures are since 2014/15, that's pretty much half a top flight football career.
 
Finney Is Back said:
But that table says those figures are since 2014/15, that's pretty much half a top flight football career.
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Hence my suspicion that they're using a fairly naive form of xG. Their website doesn't tell me whose data they use.

There's an old article on Statsbomb that I can't currently find that digs into this in detail. Very, very few players in the world overperform on xG in the longer term when modelled correctly - even Ronaldo.
 
scaramanga said:
Hence my suspicion that they're using a fairly naive form of xG. Their website doesn't tell me whose data they use.

There's an old article on Statsbomb that I can't currently find that digs into this in detail. Very, very few players in the world overperform on xG in the longer term when modelled correctly - even Ronaldo.
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That sounds strange to me though as it means that all similar chances are equal no matter who is the player taking the shot. I would've thought that players with very good shooting technique would outperform XG due to the same position and situation average coming down due to less capable players. Obviously forwards get more chances than other players and they are the players who are likely to be best at taking chances, but there still has to be a reasonable disparity between a very, very good finisher and an average one?
 
scaramanga said:
Hence my suspicion that they're using a fairly naive form of xG. Their website doesn't tell me whose data they use.

There's an old article on Statsbomb that I can't currently find that digs into this in detail. Very, very few players in the world overperform on xG in the longer term when modelled correctly - even Ronaldo.
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I disagree, at least as far as my understanding of xG goes. Take Kane and Sissoko shooting from the edge of the box. Same situation, same xG. Kane curls it into the far corner. Sissoko curls it into the far corner...of the South Stand. Kane, as a top striker, exceeds xG.

I get your point about positioning -- if Kane times his run perfectly, breaking the defensive line, he's much more likely to get a high xG chance than Sissoko lumbering through a defender -- but I think that's a factor, not the be-all and end-all.

If you ever do find that article on Statsbomb, I'd genuinely like to read it.
 
Finney Is Back said:
That sounds strange to me though as it means that all similar chances are equal no matter who is the player taking the shot. I would've thought that players with very good shooting technique would outperform XG due to the same position and situation average coming down due to less capable players. Obviously forwards get more chances than other players and they are the players who are likely to be best at taking chances, but there still has to be a reasonable disparity between a very, very good finisher and an average one?
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There is some, but it's fairly small - certainly smaller than in the chart on the previous page. The largest variation is in number of shots and quality of shot choice. Once that's adjusted for, the ability of the individual is in the margins.

Bear in mind that the Michael Dawsons of the world don't get to influence the figures much because they take so few shots compared to someone like Kane.
 
FatBloke said:
I disagree, at least as far as my understanding of xG goes. Take Kane and Sissoko shooting from the edge of the box. Same situation, same xG. Kane curls it into the far corner. Sissoko curls it into the far corner...of the South Stand. Kane, as a top striker, exceeds xG.

I get your point about positioning -- if Kane times his run perfectly, breaking the defensive line, he's much more likely to get a high xG chance than Sissoko lumbering through a defender -- but I think that's a factor, not the be-all and end-all.

If you ever do find that article on Statsbomb, I'd genuinely like to read it.
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Kane's technique of using defenders to block the keeper's view could game xG to some extent.

The thing with that shot from the edge of the box is that Kane will miss the vast majority of them too. So he might score more than Sissoko does, but it won't be night and day.
 
scaramanga said:
Hence my suspicion that they're using a fairly naive form of xG. Their website doesn't tell me whose data they use.

There's an old article on Statsbomb that I can't currently find that digs into this in detail. Very, very few players in the world overperform on xG in the longer term when modelled correctly - even Ronaldo.
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Doesn't really matter. The others are measured with the same model, so he's doing well, and we know it too. He scores some absolute blinders quite often, which are very low xg. That's probably why he gets rated high in thos stat.
 
Kandi1977 said:
Doesn't really matter. The others are measured with the same model, so he's doing well, and we know it too. He scores some absolute blinders quite often, which are very low xg. That's probably why he gets rated high in thos stat.
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That's my issue, I don't think he is massively outperforming the others. I can't say that he isn't for certain without them releasing their data model, but I know from other data sets that it's unlikely.

Son scores a lot of goals from one on one positions, all of which are actually lower xG than a basic model would imply just using position. That's not to take anything away from Son - he's often the one sending a defender the wrong way or bursting through at pace. It just means that the data are not as complete as other people's.
 
Nobody posted this?
Son Heung-min: Tottenham star to begin military service in South Korea
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52190367

My immediate thought was "as if it couldn't get any worse" but on reading, given it's only 4 weeks now seems like the ideal time to get it out of the way (as long as they don't send him to the 38th Parallel to serve :rolleyes:)
 
Great idea to get it out of the way. Given the club say he'll be back in London in May, its pretty much certain he'll be back before we play a proper game again
 
Good timing to get this done, plus he'll do nothing more than peel potatoes back at the barracks of that you can be sure.
 
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