Kid Icarus

@Yorkie rocking up like...

So weird man. It's a phase, just like every other.

They'll win it as well the spawny cunts

Real Madrid are proper rancid like. As boring as Man City can be, I have much more of a problem with teams winning trophies playing pretty shite football.

It's in Longbenton estate, the boundaries don't really change anything in that regard.

That stop is literally in Longbenton

In the eyes of the government 'The North' = Manchester and Leeds having a Harvey Nichols, as if that's the answer to something.

Yeah, as you allude to, you can't get the full context from xG and even when you're looking over the match again with other stats it will never be a substitute for watching it all. My overruling mantra with football, and why I love it, is that it's chaos, and these stats are good for scouting players and seeing patterns rather than judging things on a chance-by-chance or game-by-game basis. For example, in that match (which I did watch), Bournemouth had a goal disallowed for offside that I'd put down to being completely Solanke's own fault - he could see the line and didn't need to be offside (Froggy this is for you*) Solanke also did have a big 1 on 1 chance and hit the post. They also had a goal disallowed because the ball hit the players' hand before he tapped it into an empty net. And there were other scenarios where shots weren't taken that I would consider big chances that weren't taken too, particularly in the first half. Things like that will always fall through the cracks of certain stats and need to be seen to understand 'okay, that was offside/handball so doesn't count as a shot or a chance, let alone a goal, but because of these circumstances what I've just seen is telling me something that's more revealing and representative of the match' Like you say with Burnley, it's all about context. Overperforming xG can mean loads of things - the likes of Man City will do that because all of their players are world class and are going beyond an already high xG, whereas when you watched Brentford last season you got the impression that their overperformance of xG was because they were flying very close to the wind and it didn't look or feel like a sustainable way to play football at the level they were hitting. This season Man United's overperformance of xG is down to being bailed out, similar to Spurs last season. *

It's a crying shame like. Hope he can get his career back on track because he was so exciting in the Euros, loved everything about his style.

I love Chiesa, as I've said many times, he was my ideal signing when the takeover happened, but if we're looking for players that can handle the toll that Howe's system has on players, he's the last player I'd be going for now unfortunately. His injury record is about as bad as it gets.

Speaking of which just because it's fresh in my mind, here's a good example actually. If you watched this match you'd know 0-3 actually flattered Man United and you'd expect the xG to at least reflect the actual scoreline.

I can't think of any specific examples but it's definitely happened plenty of times in my experience just with Newcastle alone. It's why I don't think it's worth taking as gospel, or really investing in that much beyond looking at larger overall patterns, with a player's FBRef stats or seeing the sustainability of a team's style for example.

Neh. Like I say, you and others take it too seriously and have now started absorbing it into your personality. I'll concede that people using it as gospel, beyond what their eyes are telling them, is perversion though.

Personally think the performative hatred and deliberate misrepresentation of how people use it is the nonce shit tbh. It's just another stat that doesn't need to be taken that seriously.