Just Hit the Target! Redux.

In previous articles, I’ve explored the relationship between a players ability to hit the target and over/under-performing his expected goals (xG). In this article I will continue this exploration of the data from the xG Ineractive Tables from American Soccer Analysis, focusing on the 2015-2017 MLS seasons. As seen in Exploring Shots in MLS, some […]

Exploring Shots in Major League Soccer 2015-2017

In a previous article, Finishing Skill and Its Effect on Expected Goals, I used data from the 2017 season to explore shots in MLS, and the effect the number of shots on target could have on xG. That was a small sample size, but the preliminary findings were interesting. There does indeed seem to be […]

Finishing Skill and Its Effect on Expected Goals

There seem to be agreement that finishing skill exists in soccer, but that it is very hard to quantify. Basically, some players outperform their expected goals (xG), and that shouldn’t be just by chance. Finding players who can reliably do so, seem more or less impossible. But that’s not my goal with this article. Here, […]

Expected Goals and Clean Sheets

The concept of Expected Goals (xG) has been around for quite a while, and xG maps add value when analyzing a game. One thing that I would like to see in these maps though is the relationship between expected goals and clean sheets. Specifically, what was the chance of a team having a clean sheet […]