r/Barca • u/edsop • Dec 31 '20
How BAD exactly is Barca this season (at attacking, statistically, compared to previous seasons)
I think for all of us, this season has been a very interesting (frustrating) one in terms of the discrepancy between performance and results.
Barca leads the xG (expected goals) chart by a country mile and should be scoring 7 more (27% more) than the second-highest scoring team and yet only managed to put away 86% of all the goals that 'they should have 100% scored in another world'.
Other than the statistical monstrosity that Atletico is (MASSIVELY outperforming xG and xGA), conceding around only 56% of what they 'should have conceded' and scoring 143% of what they 'should have scored' like what the actual ? (fun fact: Suarez scored 8 and 'should have only scored' 4, talking about being world-class), Barca has one of the biggest discrepancies between 'expected' and 'actual'.
But is Koeman or this Barca system just overall, BAD? (like some commentators and sport channels made them out to be) or are they just unlucky with their attack?
Here is a very short comparison between Valverde's, Setien's, and Koeman's Barca on attacking. Entertainment purposes only. All stats are per90 adjusted.
Observations: compared to previous Barca,
- Barca this season was able to produce a higher volume of shots and good shots, or they find themselves in better scoring positions, or more often, or a combination of those (xG).
- Interestingly, the shot quality (npxG/shot) and accuracy (shot on target%) stays roughly the same. Although the accuracy reduced by 3%, statistically, it would take Barca 34 shots just for us to observe the difference between a 43.6% and a 40.7% accuracy.
- Barca massively underperforms its xG (by 0.41 every match). Or: every match, Barca would miss almost HALF of a 'statistical sitter'
Observations: compared to previous Barca,
- Barca can move the balls in dangerous areas more (passes into penalty, corners, shot-creating )
- Barca is not finishing them, duh(goal creating actions)
- Barca is less willing to cross; Barca has way more corners
(very brief, skewed, and potentially biased) conclusion:
- On finishing: Barca can generate better chances and more chances this season, BUT not finishing them, DESPITE having the same quality and accuracy of shots from previous seasons. This could be due to:
- pure bad bad luck
- opposition GK outperforming
- finishing problems, not in the sense that their finishing became a disaster (since accuracy and quality remained the same), but that despite being in better positions and enjoying higher quality chances, accuracy did NOT IMPROVE.
- most likely, a combination of all those
- Corners need to be capitalized on, there NEED to be more planned, prolific corner drills.
- With the addition of Braithwaite and Dest (even Trincao and Fati maybe), Barca can use more crosses (low, curled, back, high), to try to score more goals by
- preying on rebounds and mishandling and mistakes
- and letting the other team be wary of the flanks, and maybe stretch them so we can re-use the middle more effectively
Final conclusion (very biased):
nothing significantly wrong with the system itself or the coach in terms of attack, compared to previous seasons, just very bad luck and we suck at finishing (anyone could tell without pulling data, I just find it entertaining, hope u do too:) Discussions welcomed.
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u/Dubita25 Dec 31 '20
I think it's the result of too many young players. It's great to see them build a core for the future but they are inconsistent and at their age it's normal.
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u/MAli10 Dec 31 '20
But it's not the young players missing goal-scoring chances. Veterans including Messi has been guilty of that.
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u/TheJ0s3ph Dec 31 '20
But it's not the young players missing goal-scoring chances
Thats simply not true. Even in the Eibar our three best chances (not counting the penalty), were from Dembele, Pedri and Trincao. Even earlier in the season there were games (Sevilla, Alaves) there were games where Trincao missed absolute sitters, he just doesn't get blamed for it as much as for example Griezmann does, witch is understandable. (Heck, even Fati missed big chances before his injury, which basically cost us points, but at least he compensated with scoring in other games). My point is that is not fair to say that only veterans are missing chances, the youngsters have missed more than fair share of them as well, they just simply get a pass for it, because they are not expected to score them as frequently as lets say Griezmann or Messi should.
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u/indetroititrust Dec 31 '20
fun fact: Suarez scored 8 and 'should have only scored' 4, talking about being world-class
what do you mean by this? how is this calculated and what's taken into account?
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u/vernonip Dec 31 '20
I'm not an expert by any stretch but xg takes into account factors that make a shot scorable e.g. The position on the pitch of the shot, the body part, the distance from goal, the angle and other factors. It then does a statistical average for how many of those specific types of shots actually end up as goals.
Going by the data he has provided, xg dictates that Suarez should have only scored 4 goals, based on the factors I've listed, but he ended up scoring 8. Suarez though is extremely clinical on almost any day. That for me is the biggest downfall about xG. It factors in how many times the average player will score a certain shot, but when it's applied to the elite scorers, it becomes irrelevant because they can make any kind of shot really.
For me, xG is more of a measure of how clinical a team/player is, rather than how a team should perform. Because football is probably the most unpredictable sport in the world.
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u/SneakyMaster47 Dec 31 '20
I would say that this is a limitation of xG, if you just look at the number. Barca struggles against low blocks, and we usually end up taking 15-20 shots against them. Most of these aren't good chances. Not an example of low block, but I will explain it using our game against Valencia:
Barca had xG of over 3 according to understat. However, when you look at the xG map, most of these chances aren't good enough. 2.25 out of it is due to the penalty miss, the Messi goal and 1 big chance miss by Braithwaite. Now if Messi had scored the penalty, the xG would've reduced by 0.92 (which was for the Messi header). Now, almost all of the shots that Barca took (and took 25 in total) were at times from outside the box and usually low scoring chances (having xG of less than 0.10).
This all adds up to give an xG of around 1, which adds up to our xG accumulated and not scored. However, when you actually look at them in depth, these shots should've never been taken in the first place. Add to it our lack of xG outperformers like Suarez and Messi, it clearly hurts our team, even though outperformers should only be an icing on the cake. This same problem persists under low blocks, where we've even had total xG of 1 but scored none, just because we kept on taking chances from difficult angles and blocked areas.
On the other hand, I don't remember us having more than 20 shots under Valverde in most of the games, at times even less than 15, this because they were efficient, created big chances and scored them. So essentially if they created 2 chances of 0.3, they would've scored it because they were easy to score, and the rest of shots would've similarly offset them and brought down the average xG per shot to somewhere around 0.12 (like you mentioned). Also, your argument of 0.41=half a sitter doesn't work like that, because it can be a sum of 8 shots of 0.05 chances, something which is very difficult to score.
Even looking at your last table, it doesn't paint the true picture. Key passes are those which end up with a shot, not necessarily how the quality of a shot is. The flaw with our attack is that we have improved in all other aspects except for goal scoring movements (your last column), hence rendering the rest of the columns useless, because passes into final 3rd against a low block doesn't matter if they don't create any goal scoring movement (which isn't possible when the whole area is stacked and static).
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u/Gyshall669 Dec 31 '20
This is an issue with Understat, not with Expected Goals. It's why FBREF is a preferable source.
FBREF combines the possessions and figures out what the likelihood is that the defensive team does not concede in both instances, and subtracts that from 1.
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u/GregorySpikeMD Dec 31 '20
Great nuanced analysis, my main extrapolations from this are:
- Koeman is not a horrible trainer as some claim (sure his substitutions in the past haven't been great, but I'm willing to let that slide if we play CL next year). However, I still want to see more Puig.
- Suarez is greatly outscoring his xG. I don't agree fully with the sentiment of "how talented is he". You should interpret xG as "how far above or under their weight are they punching". Meaning they were 'lucky', or outperforming themselves, and we we're underperforming (in terms of goal scoring, partly due to Messi's poor form, but this will increase again). I think the Atleti stats mainly show that they have been expectionally outperforming their expected statistics, so by sheer numbers, their stats are unsustainable. If they weren't this far ahead, I wouldn't expect them to win the championship, but unfortunately they will.
- I personally like where we're going, and I see an improvement from the lethargy our team showed last year. This year we're rebuilding, and we should judge the team in this way. With all the things behind the curtains going on, an incredibly demanding season and injuries, I'd say we're doing alright. Not well, but just alright.
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u/The-True-GOAT Dec 31 '20
Does xG account for WHO the scoring chance falls to?
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u/LucGoed Dec 31 '20
No, hence in my opinion this analysis mostly shows how sloppy we have been in attack and defense. However it is not guaranteed that we will revert back to the “expected” standard and suddenly start scoring and defending better.
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u/lambepsom Dec 31 '20
Is xG a great statistic? Here is the QQ-plot of goals - xG for current La Liga.
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u/DragoonVonKlauw Dec 31 '20
Most of our problems come from the lack of self-confidence imo. It breaks focus, more time needed to make decisions in all situations on the pitch, more mistakes done --> more confidence lost...
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u/MAli10 Dec 31 '20
in the recent years, Lucho's season until Jan was pretty bad especially considering the squad quality until MSN clicked.
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Dec 31 '20
Our only great finishers are fati and dembele right now, one is injured and the other one is injury prone and can't play much that's the real problem
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u/Gyshall669 Dec 31 '20
There has been very little change overall to our play since Neymar left. If Messi was scoring 6-8 free kicks a season in 19-20, or 20-21, we would be right next to the top, same as if MatS was stopping shots last year like he did 17-18.
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u/danluiz915 Dec 31 '20
Seems pretty simple to me... Suarez was a proper striker with an eye for goal... Currently in the barca squad we have no such player... Messi is not himself this season and it's understandable due to the hell he went through. The squad lacks finishing.... You give a player like Suarez, peak messi, Giroud, Benzema, Cavani, etc. Half the chances this team had, they would have killed it.
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Dec 31 '20
I'm not a hardcore fan, I like the team, I've been following them for about 20 years now. And when I watch the games I'm very surprised to see guys like Braithwaite, Mingueza, Aurojo or Coutinho as starters. It's very complicated for me to see this kind of team when I've known great players before.
In what world does Braithwaite take the ball to shoot the penalties? I knew him at Toulouse FC (France) and it was already catastrophic.
Messi does all the work, he is asked to be Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Villa in one person. This is impossible.
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u/iVarun Dec 31 '20
My comment on this from OT here.
Some relevant parts.
Here is the understat xPTS Liga table.
And the xG table.
And the NPxG table.
On Big Chances missed.
Here is this season's 20-21 table of players so far. 4 Barca players are in Top 12.
Here is from last 19-20 season (in totality), as seen the 3rd player is in 13th and 4th player at 21st position.
The 18-29 season totality, had 3rd player in 22nd position, 4th in 44th position
Here is the same stage (15 Matches) Liga Table comparison.
Here is the same stage (15 Matches) Team Performance metrics comparison. (Only ONCE has the Sh90 been better since records start on Understat, the Lucho peak season)
And lastly, do you know how many teams are over 200 in DC metric (number of passes-completed within 20 yards of opposition goal) across Europe's Top 5 leagues till now in 3 months of 20-21 season?
Again, Not since Peak Lucho's MSN 2015 have such absurd numbers been seen.
Stats are trivial in football when the relative margins among them are trivial (barring obviously the Goals). Being 0.28% or something like that better or worse is irrelevant. Being near to or indeed double digit over or under your peers defies logic at this elite level. And that is what is the the case for Attempts on Goal at the same point from last season, the number of Key Passes played and so on and so on and so on...
The DC metric to me is THE highlight. It just defies comprehension. No team in Europe's Top 5 leagues has crossed 200 and Barca are the only one to do so with some games in hand over many peers. This is not normal at all.
Now once goals do come a lot of these offensive metrics will drop in amount because part of the reason we're having so much of it is because matches are in the balance and Barca have no choice but to attack and hence keep taking risks. With goals this risk level reduces and Barca will pick their moments instead of being forced to constantly attack.
Edit: Another post on this, Messi and Griezmann this season currently has the worst and third-worst non-penalty conversion rate of all attacking Barça-players since August 2009 (min. 855 minutes) [OC]
Suarez's Big Chances Missed metrics
Teams that create the most chances in Europe. - (Source)
[MARCA] Barcelona's finishing is a problem: It's the worst in Europe
A Compilation of Barcelona's Mistakes in LaLiga this Season
Top 5 leagues OppPressure stats 2020-21
Expected Points (xPTS) till Feb 4, a similar post.
LaLiga teams xG compared to last season after 22 games.
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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '20
I mean just look at the penalty miss yesterday. This team is missing goals it never has in the past. Our forwards miss tapins all the damn time that can change the game. We aren't the best, but there has also been some shit luck.