CroJack
Key Player
Expected Goals, or xG, are the number of goals a team (or a player) should have scored considering the number and type of chances they had in a match.
Expected Points, or xPTS, are the number of points a team should have earned considering the number and type of chances it had in a match.
This is called a justice table.
Example:
Team A creates a lot of high quality chances, but somehow misses them all or opposition goalkeeper makes some high quality saves during a match.
Team B creates nothing, but scores a lucky goal from a deflected shot or the goalkeeper from Team A makes a huge error.
Team A is awarded 3 xPTS, and team B 0 xPTS. In real life Team A has lost the game, and Team B has won it.
Both Expected Goals and Expected Points are important because they show us trends in football. One team can be lucky in a couple of games, but not during whole season.
Teams who create many chances, and allow only few chances against them, tend to finish higher in the league table at the end of a season.
We can see in the table below that Brentford should have won all three games, and in the table above that Millwall and Monk's Sheffield Wednesday are so far the poorest teams when it comes to quality of chances created.
It's still early in the season, and we'll know much more about the Championship clubs' creativity when 23 games will have been played.
Next time, after week 4 games will have been played, I'll add expected goal difference.
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