What is xG? | By The Numbers 

Back when Lukaku was considered an elite striker

One of very few football channels out there, which could seriously improve your football knowledge. Great video Tifo Football.

Always coming up with interesting stuff. Keep them coming as always

I just love you guys. I'm sending this video and your channel to my 12 year old niece and 14 year old nephew who both play for the NewCastle Jets Junior Teams (Australia), your videos are succinct and comprehensive, I reckon they'll make a big difference to young kids learning the more technical aspects of the sport.

Very nice topic. One of the most discussed stuff by soccer analysts. Nice to see you explaining it

Your channel deserve more subs with this quality of video

There is an error - xG is the probability of the goal, and not the likelihood of the goal. It's the likelihood of the shot. P(Goal | Shot) = L(Shot | Goal)

Who came here after FM21 added xG?

Its definitely interesting. I can imagine clubs already plot xG in a normal distribution plot when looking at players. Harry Kane to the very right of the bell curve in the premier league - for example. I recently plotted possession vs. xG against non top 6 teams for Liverpool as from the eye it looks they struggle breaking down buses. The plot confirmed the theory nicely.

FIFA 22 brought me here

So if I understand correctly then higher xg mean you have good midfield and playmaker and if you score more goals then your xg it mean you strikers did great job

Cool vid like always, this is a stat that's thrown around a ton. Most (including me) don't really get it. Thanks for clearing it up.

Can anyone please help me understand how is xG(probability) greater than 1 for the Liverpool vs Swansea example ? ( how can the probability of any event be greater 100% ?)

Explain about VAR

Never seen XG but I could imagine Andy Carroll’s

As a person who works with stats and data on a regular basis I think the backlash against XG is a result of most people having no idea how stats work. Just because the data says something about one specific event (for example a football match) doesn't mean that that event "deserved to" or "should have" gone a certain way. For example, after the 2016 US Presidential Election, a lot of people concluded that Nate Silver's "fivethirtyeight" model was wrong, since it said Hillary Clinton had a sixty-something percent chance of winning, while, of course, Donald Trump won the election. Silver's model wasn't wrong. In fact he said Trump had a thirty-something percent chance of winning the election. Your video is spot on. XG is a model, not an exact measurement. Therefore, it is more useful for long term predictions than making conclusions about one game. It says a lot more about the repeatability of a result. We can debate all day over who "deserved" to win the Swansea vs Liverpool match. XG doesn't say Liverpool deserved to win. It says that if that game were played over many many times, Liverpool would likely have ended up winning most of them, and it suggests that Liverpool's approach to winning football games combined with their talent is overall much more likely to earn results in the league than Swansea's approach combined with their talent (which is clearly seen by their respective spots in the league table).

It’s none of the things above. It’s just another bit of effort to convince American Networks that the game just make sense for American public just like VAR (Americanized) and make pundits look like they know what they’re talking about. Be ready for 4 quarter games, Time outs, challenges by the managers, repeated plays prior to a foul and most importantly a non-continuous game clock so that commercials can be inserted. The big clubs, the networks and FIFA are slowly killing the simplest and the most beautiful game in the world just to sell their product to the US market (and don’t get me wrong, American public is just bystanders here)

Fascinating and clearly explained. Interesting that a player who was just good at getting in good positions and scoring a lot of close range goals perhaps wouldn’t have their ability reflected in goals to xG ratio?

Best football page 💙

I really wish it had been named CQ (chance quality) rather than XG. I've talked to several (usually older fans) who dislike XG and a large part of it seems to be the name "expected goals". Many are sadly unable to get past the implication that goals are in anyway expected.

Sheffield United's xG this season (12.03) is higher than Southampton's (10.93) Sheffield United have scored 4 compared to Southampton's 19

Thank you for this explanation! I've always known what it meant. What I didn't get was the actual number used. You've cleared that up.

Off Topic but is their any chance of the home nations folding and being replaced with a team GB to compete on the international stage? Very Very risky topic but would love a cheeky chat on it ;) Especially considering most of wales players are English anyway

After Romelo Lukaku's poor performance in the world cup, I'm sure he's now an amateur striker.😭

I thought I was going to miss Joe's voice,..Alex's explanation overwhelmed any tonal need

Finally I understand xg. Thanks pal!

It has really helped my fantasy football because I do not pay heed to it, and others take it as gospel. I look at body lanaguage and the manner in which that person hits the ball when they have a shot. Xg does not tell you that!

Wow I actually understood that malarkey. Well done

its pretty similar to shot conversion rate stat, both show how efficiant/inefficient a player is, or if you take the stat for all players of team, how efficiant/ inefficient a team is

Therefore if the goals and xG doesn't match up, you can say the keeper did better than expected or the strikers did worse than expected, right?

great explanation.

I friggin' love statistics in football and how they make you understand the game better

Hopefully with this video, you guys will start using xg more often in your future videos -particularly in the "by the numbers" series.

This was a perfect explanation of what xG is.

I have a question. Can someone help? Let’s say Messi scores 10 Goals but has a xG of 5. Does it mean he was lucky? Does it mean hes really good because he scores against the odds? Or let’s say his xG is 15. Is he unlucky in that case? But a higher xG would be good because even though someone is underperforming it means that over time it is expected for him to score more often or not? So what exactly is good or bad regarding xG?

Perfect exlpenation. Thanks so much

Great simple and informative video on XG, as well as the things it does and does not do.

Morata xg: 30 goals, actual goals: 10, yeah he was so worth the 70 million Chelsea paid, I hate football.

What about the goalkeeper? If XG does not account for the goalkeeper then it is misleading. If the keeper is Courrtois, the XG will be higher.

This channel is a voice of reason within an opinionated and biased community. Really impressed at how you guys can resolve the xG arguments in a 4 min video.

Great video. Really clear explanation.

Your model is useless, if it cannot predict anything or contribute to that. Any model, any statistic, any figure. xG is an offensive metric. So a corresponding defensive one would be needed on top of that.

If xG is a probability or "chance quality" then why are the quoted numbers greater than 1?

But I always see people say that player x is better than player y because he has a better expected goals i hope i get an explanation

Do gyan asmoah tacticas and top 5 African teams tactics as well

So an xG of 1.0 doesn't exist and then Liverpool had an xG of 2.3? I am confused...

back in the time when Lukaku and Sanchez scored more than expected :D

if Xg is a number between 0 and 1 how can a team get an Xg of over 1

Never forget Alex Stewart

That's a bit rubbish then. What if you pass from a penalty shot like henry and Pires did, and end up not shooting at all? Surely the xg from having a pen should count?

Amazing video, as usual! I think it's amazing how football stas are evolving on Europe, being heavily used by coaches and now even on TV, just like american's sports. I also think it's amazing how little we hear from those stats here on Brazil teams and TV's... No news that we're still in the past =/

I find it very useful regarding predicting matches. I quite don't get why it shouldn't be. Especially if you look closely on the xG's without penalties and own goals and the difference in home or away performances.

Absolutely outstanding video.

Can you make a video on how good are Barca this season (stats & records) like you have with City?

did everyone get a black screen or is it just me?

Great topic. I imagine xG is also useful from a Goalkeeper stand point, right? I'd like to see, for instance, a De Gea-Nick Pope comparison, to check who saves more goals than is expected, etc.

Expected goal analysis is probably the worst model to analyse a player/team.

Why is the xG best used over periods of 5-10 games when it's more likely that the probability will be borne out over a larger sample? I don't really know how probability works, but that seems counter-intuitive on the face of it. Also, how are players' xG rating over the course of a season determined? It seems to me that you can't really tell me how high an xG Lukaku will have without first telling me the expected chances created by supporting players, since the fomer is dependent on the latter. It seems like it'd be a ridiculously complex thing, and any unreliability about the chances Pogba, Martial and Mata will create will compound once it reaches the stage where we're predicting overall conversion rate of chances and giving an xG rating.

I thought this was pretty straightforward.. "Expected Goals" 🤷🏽♂

Wait, if an xG of 1 is impossible, how did Liverpool had 2.31??

How do I add xg and xga together?

Xg* Pg (for a particular striker) = real Xg

Which team has the highest xG on average? And which team has low xG and is "overperforming"?

I could see this being tweaked, to give goalkeepers an expected save per shot on target number, which would be way more insightful than the save percentage, and the saves per game-numbers we have today. What do you think?

Also, what about angle of pass? If it's a case of giving a specific xG rating for chances from a certain area, I don't think that's enough - it seems too simplistic. What about chances taken from that position, but one where the ball comes across the strikers path (making the margin for error smaller)? These are surely two very different chances. To bunch them all together based on absolute position on the field seems like something I shouldn't take seriously.

Could u do a video on why arsenal defence is so porous inspite havin good defenders

Football for dummies ! The best football channel for me!

xG ìs not a real thing. Hope this helps.

Swansea beat Liverpool then Arsenal next.

Confused by chrismd story so am here

Christian pulisic please. Next

Do penalties get accounted for in this xG?

An imaginary stat 📊

FM21 players. Hello.

goals per chance?

you should picture of messi and then talked about lukaku . lol.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Should rather be, what is a Gx (Granit xhaka) #Xhakaout

0:02 XG

Its because xg = bollocks

and what a useless factor

So boring.

what a garbage stat. way overused

this is soccer not football

Its a bullshit stat