Is it better to have a really low xG or higher?
In: Other
xG is “expected goals per game”, so clearly more is better.
It’s like “field goal percentage” is basketball – given where the player typically shoots when playing with the people they typically play with what’s the chance that their shot will go in.”
It’s a statistical measure, not a prediction for any given soccer game.
Very simplified answer for a 5 year old:
xG stands for “expected goals.”
Imagine your team misses a really easy shot, and you’re like “we should have scored!” Then later on, your rival scores a really difficult long-distance shot and you’re like “they got lucky, we should be up 1-0 instead of them!”
xG is basically putting a number on what the score “should” be. Therefore, higher is better since you want more goals.
As an example, if your xG is 1.5, then you “deserve” or “expect” to have scored 1.5 goals, so you’re lucky if you have 2 or more, and unlucky if you scored 0 or 1 in that game.
I’ll leave any discussion of how the math works to others 🙂
A shot from position x on the pitch (taking into account certain other factors like the position of other players, whether it’s a header or a kick etc) has xG% of resulting in a goal.
A high xG is therefore good – as it means you’ve created a good number of good chances.
Xg is expected goals so if you were to score a point blank goal in an open net that your grandma would be able to score that would be close to an xg of 1 meaning the vast majority of people/players score that goal. The further below 1 you go per goal that means the more difficult the shot is. If a player/team scores 4 goals with an xg of 2 you can assume that they scored at least a few of the goals from difficult positions or situations. It’s one of those stats that is more effective with less information input; it’s meant to give you a snapshot of a particular moment in time. The more data you receive the closer xg and actual g becomes.
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