Lack of goals

[strayclaret]

Bring back Wout

[Woodleyclaret]

We need a big striker with an eye for goal in January. Letting Ash leave without a backup was a serious error .

[strayclaret]

With all these wingers sorry sounding like a broken record but bring back Wout can we ?

[Stayingup]

Last season we had four strikers. Now, after an active transfer window, we have one available and he is past it at this level.

[Conroysleftfoot]

With all these wingers sorry sounding like a broken record but bring back Wout can we ?

The trouble is he couldn't keep up with Koleosho when he breaks with the ball.

[aggi]

I know you are someone into data/xG, well at least have a decent knowledge of it comparative to most… a neutral fan I got chatting with post last season was betting we’d go straight back down based largely on our significant xG outperformance last season. He pointed out it was the largest outperformance for a promoted side since Norwich and there were many similarities between the two. Essentially with a lot of our goals coming from distance strikes last season, we wouldn’t get those same goal numbers again in the Prem, and only teams like City (best players in the league) can sustainably outperform.

So in reference to your discussion point, could this be partly the case? Tella and Benson both had the largest xG outperformance in the league last season, now we’ve had neither, plus theres been a massive step up in quality. I think Kompany has tried changing the play style slightly to try and be more creative centrally, whereas last season it was all out wide. But that relies quite heavily on Foster’s availability, of which has been 50% so far.

I think one thing that is missed about xG is that some clubs/players should outperform it. It's based on the average striker and the average team, if you're Erling Haaland or Man City you should outperform xG every season (as you've mentioned).

One of the interesting things about xG is the lack of clarity on how it is arrived at. We all know the basics of it: assess shots (distance, angle, body part, etc) and get a measure of how often they result in goals but what is rarely mentioned is what dataset is used to arrive at the results. xG based on League Two stats would be different to xG based on Serie A stats and so on. As such it's hard to tell if the top team in the Championship should be outperforming their xG (e.g. it's based on Champioship data) or that's unusual (e.g. based on top leagues' data).

[ChorltonCharlie]

Fair to say that our lack of goals is reflected by the low xg. Which in general would suggest that saying it's not a simple question the standard of our strikers. The only reasonable conclusion on strikers would be to suggest that ours aren't getting into good positions to get chances. Even Foster hasn't benefitted from a high xg, he's just been clinical with the chances he's had, which isn't really what using xg as a barometer is all about.

For me xg is much more about the quality of chances we're creating. Chances aren't just about wingers. We should create from various sources. Yet no-one is doing well in this regard. The stand out thing is that when you look at who's most likely to create our chances so far this season, it's players who aren't close to being first names on the team sheet who are doing better. Odobert, JBG, Redmond, Ramsey are all out performing the likes of Koleosho and Amdouni.

We all know the opposition are much stronger this season, and that plays a big part in the drop off. Take that as a given and look at the difference with last season.

Tella - mainly used as a right sided attacker last year. He didn't play like a conventional winger and offered relatively little in terms of creativity. His key strength was great runs from the right flank into space. Similar to how players like Salah play. We haven't signed anyone who is making those runs, so there's no runner from deep for players to pick out.

Benson - this one is a bit of a red herring. Played a huge part in our season last year, but only actually started 14 games. His biggest contribution was turning around games we were behind in. He's a unique player, and I'm not sure it's fair to blame the club for not signing someone else of his ilk. His lack of availability has been a big miss when chasing games in the last 30 minutes. Saturday's situation was made for him.

Zaroury - I see the argument that he should have started the season, but I also see why Koleosho is seen as the bigger threat for the moment overall. One strength of Zaroury is he could put in some delicious balls. Koleosho is more about driving to the byline and pulling the ball back. Both have their merits, but it's another area that's different.

Amdouni - I like this lad, but at the moment it isn't really happening for him. It would be interesting to know if he was bought to play as the more advanced of the 8's or if that's just how it panned out after pre-season. If it was by design, it's not working presuming he was meant to be an upgrade in terms of goals and creativity. Especially on the latter. In the second half of last season we had Brownhill and JBG dovetailing as 8's in front of Cullen really well. They firmed up the side, but were also creative and scored goals. You'd expect a drop off with the opposition quality and you see that on expected assists per game for Brownhill dropping from 0.17 to 0.10. Amdouni is down at 0.04. I'm not one for giving JB pelters, he's an honest enough player who has shown he can play a role in a side surviving a relegation dig-fight. But we'd expect Amdouni to be bringing more creative quality, whether as an advanced 8, or as a second striker. Yet the stats show he's far less creative than Brownhill.

We have to be careful with stats. The freely available ones give you an insight, but don't tell the full story. But they do seem indicative of the problems we're now facing.