The 2-1 loss in the derby to Manchester United will make it seem definitively wretched, but an analysis in Guardian’s The Observer, startlingly states that “by some metrics, Manchester City are top of the league. Yes, you read that right.”
Explaining this ‘against-all-that-we-see’ results, is a spot of data crunching. The Guardian piece titled ‘Manchester City are not playing as badly as it looks – but emotion trumps data’, leans on a couple of experts and.open source numbers. “No one knows more about data analytics than Brighton’s Tony Bloom and the word out of Sussex last week was that their data still has City top of the Premier League for expected goals (xG), essentially a measure of how many “good chances you’ve created.” That tallies with some open source xG data that also has City top,” It writes, linking to FootyStats on December 14.
According to FootyStats, Manchester City have created “good chances to score” and lead the xG (Expected goals to be scored) metric charts with 1.97, while their expected goals conceded is lowest at 1.05, giving them the best expected goal difference of +0.92. Tottenham, who netted 5 on Sunday, Chelsea and Liverpool are 2, 3, and 4 on the list.
Erling Haaland also tops the list of players with highest expected goals (good chances created), at 13.52, after having taken 59 shots. Second after him is Mo Salah at 11.97 xG, with 40 shots taken. Both however have scored 13 actual goals. Cole Palmer is the only medio in top15, standing 3rd, with 10.26 xG.
Manchester City also top the list of Expected goals at Home, with 2.11 xG, with Arsenal second at 2.04 xG. Tottenham are third with 1.79, while Liverpool fifth with 1.74.
The FootyStats xGa – expected goals away – has City on top too with 1.85, Tottenham second with 1.73, and Liverpool third with 1.64.
However none of these teams score high on xGA – actual goals scored per chances created. That has Leicester, Brentford, Southampton in top 3.
According to the piece, Guardiola “may need a call right now from his old protagonist Jurgen Klopp…. Like Manchester City, Dortmund in 2014-15 had an injury crisis and had sold key players with their replacements struggling, all of which exacerbated bad luck, making their decline apparently inexplicable.”
At the start of Klopp’s Liverpool stint, physicist Ian Graham, the director of research at Liverpool, had explained with data to Klopp that his Borussia Dortmund’s plunged 2014-15 season, still had them as the second-best team in the league on xG markers, “demonstrating how unlucky they were.”
| # | Team | MP | xG | xGA | xGD | GF | GA | xG vs Actual |
| 1 | Manchester City FC | 16 | 1.97 | 1.05 | 0.92 | 1.75 | 1.44 | -0.22 |
| 2 | Tottenham Hotspur FC | 16 | 1.76 | 1.25 | 0.51 | 2.25 | 1.19 | 0.49 |
| 3 | Chelsea FC | 16 | 1.71 | 1.32 | 0.39 | 2.31 | 1.19 | 0.6 |
| 4 | Liverpool FC | 15 | 1.69 | 1.21 | 0.48 | 2.07 | 0.87 | 0.38 |
| 5 | AFC Bournemouth | 15 | 1.62 | 1.44 | 0.18 | 1.53 | 1.33 | -0.09 |
Source: FootyStats
Guardian quoted Graham as saying, “Outcome bias is vivid. What actually happens is vivid and it’s against human nature to consider what might have happened. What Jürgen did in 2014-15 was roll three dice and [repeatedly] get three ones rather than three sixes.”
The piece argues that “while City are worse than before but they aren’t as bad as they look. It’s just that emotion trumps data and is playing havoc with the team’s confidence and the media analysis. ‘People love narrative,’ said Graham.”
The results though have seen a plummet, however inexplicable, or over-analysed, as the case may be.
However City ace Ilkay Gündogan post their Wednesday to Juventus defeat had hinted at something similar, when he said, “It’s a mental issue. We miss the right timing, we miss a ball or lose a duel and you can see we immediately drop, we lose the rhythm.
They [the opponents] are able to break out and they don’t even need to do much. It has such a big effect on us right now. Doing the simple things as good as possible, quick, clean, fluidly, this is how you get the confidence back. But at the crucial moment, we are always doing the wrong things.”
City’s xG needle though, keeps beeping at imminent goals, from the good chances created, but their position on table has slipped.
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