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Is Lowe evolving?

Is Lowe evolving?

SF said:
Baffles me why people get tetchy about XG, if it was useless then top professional football clubs wouldn't analyse it.

Personally, I never look into it. But, over the course of the season, if you go through the leagues, I bet it's a pretty close reflection of the final standings, bar a few exceptions when teams have really shit strikers.
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I can see how it would work well for elite clubs, the ones with vast spending power who can create chances for fun and have the immensely technical players to pick the right passes and work the best possible openings in each and every move. Fine margins. I get that.

The lower down you go, the more random the results must get surely? I don't see how a League Two centre half on a bobbly mudbath could have the same "expected goal" threat as Lionel Messi in the same position on a pristine carpet of a pitch.


Warton PNE said:
The current Top 4 in the xG table for the Championship are the current Top 4 in the League Table.

Similarly, at the bottom, Wednesday and Rotherham are bottom 2, which is where they basically are in the League.

The midtable clubs are hovering around midtable in the xG table too.

People may not believe it means much (I'm not sure why), but us being in the bottom 3 is a real concern for me. Doesn't surprise me though.
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So who are the clubs on our sort of budget that have an impressive xG and play good football? Sheff Weds and Rotherham are skint, is it not just that the richer clubs have better players so create more chances, whereas we have to shithouse our way to TeamsLikePreston wins?
 
Bobbage said:
I can see how it would work well for elite clubs, the ones with vast spending power who can create chances for fun and have the immensely technical players to pick the right passes and work the best possible openings in each and every move. Fine margins. I get that.

The lower down you go, the more random the results must get surely? I don't see how a League Two centre half on a bobbly mudbath could have the same "expected goal" threat as Lionel Messi in the same position on a pristine carpet of a pitch.




So who are the clubs on our sort of budget that have an impressive xG and play good football? Sheff Weds and Rotherham are skint, is it not just that the richer clubs have better players so create more chances, whereas we have to shithouse our way to TeamsLikePreston wins?
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I'd probably agree for L2 and below, it definitely won't be as accurate, but for the Championship, i'd guess it's a pretty good metric.

Money = goals is another good metric, but not always. The concerning thing is that our chance creation is pathetic and the manager does nothing to change it.
 
SF said:
Baffles me why people get tetchy about XG, if it was useless then top professional football clubs wouldn't analyse it.

Personally, I never look into it. But, over the course of the season, if you go through the leagues, I bet it's a pretty close reflection of the final standings, bar a few exceptions when teams have really shit strikers.
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A very quickly knocked together table to show our finishing positions vs xG positions

SeasonFinishing PositionxG Position
22/2312th17th
21/2213th14th
20/2113th18th
19/209th6th
18/1914th16th
17/187th13th
16/1711th13th
 
Does playing the likes of Leicester, Hull, Ipswich and Southampton recently also skew the figures?

Especially when 1 keeps the ball for fun so you struggle to create chances without the ball, 1 is basically a Premier League team in the champ, one (Ipswich) is a coaching miracle masterclass and Hull were the home team and a good side by all accounts.

I'm starting to think as well how much we miss McCann and Hughes.
 
Soup said:
A very quickly knocked together table to show our finishing positions vs xG positions

SeasonFinishing PositionxG Position
22/2312th17th
21/2213th14th
20/2113th18th
19/209th6th
18/1914th16th
17/187th13th
16/1711th13th
Click to expand...

Of course you'd also have to take into account our xGa too. No point scoring 2 per game if we are conceding 3.
 
Bobbage said:
So who are the clubs on our sort of budget that have an impressive xG and play good football? Sheff Weds and Rotherham are skint, is it not just that the richer clubs have better players so create more chances, whereas we have to shithouse our way to TeamsLikePreston wins?
Click to expand...

Well, Blackburn, Cardiff Huddersfield, Ipswich, Norwich, Plymouth, QPR, Watford are all above us in the xG table and spent less money than us in the summer Transfer Market

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

Championship - Transfers 25/26

This overview shows all transfers of the Championship in the season 25/26. The clubs are ordered by their final position of the previous season.
www.transfermarkt.co.uk www.transfermarkt.co.uk

Obviously, the above figures aren't fact, but it gives you a good idea of how much each team is spending. Even if some of these clubs have spent more than us, I highly doubt it will be astronomical.

Cardiff had a transfer ban, QPR and WBA spent no money, Ipswich are flying and Plymouth (I thought) were really good. All of these teams spent less than us, and quite clearly create more than us.

Money spent, is an excuse as to why creativity is poor, but it isn't the most solid of arguments. Even on low budgets, you can and should play far better attacking football than we do.
 
Warton PNE said:
Well, Blackburn, Cardiff Huddersfield, Ipswich, Norwich, Plymouth, QPR, Watford are all above us in the xG table and spent less money than us in the summer Transfer Market

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

Championship - Transfers 25/26

This overview shows all transfers of the Championship in the season 25/26. The clubs are ordered by their final position of the previous season.
www.transfermarkt.co.uk www.transfermarkt.co.uk

Obviously, the above figures aren't fact, but it gives you a good idea of how much each team is spending. Even if some of these clubs have spent more than us, I highly doubt it will be astronomical.

Cardiff had a transfer ban, QPR and WBA spent no money, Ipswich are flying and Plymouth (I thought) were really good. All of these teams spent less than us, and quite clearly create more than us.

Money spent, is an excuse as to why creativity is poor, but it isn't the most solid of arguments. Even on low budgets, you can and should play far better attacking football than we do.
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Yet prior to the weekend we were above all bar one of them in the actual table?

Had the ref not been an absolute whopper we'd likely still be third.
 
Like the back-five are not play-off quality are they?

If your base is so crap that all they do is pass sideways or backwards and can't run with the ball or pass progressively by the time a ball gets to our midfield or attack the opposition are reasonably marshalled to address the threat or the chance to create or shoot is reduced dramatically because we can't move it quick enough. We don't win enough knockdowns from long-ball football because we sit too deep. It's the collective responsibility of the board to clear out that rancid defence and get some new centre backs and buy some wingbacks for goodness sakes. It's painfully obvious until you improve your base the rest of the team will improve.

Is Lowe culpable - to a degree - YES? Should we sack him - NO! Get some defenders who can pass and run and ship out those who can't 🙂
 
Warton PNE said:
But he was, and we aren't.

We didn't deserve anything from the game on Saturday.
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On reflection I think we did, we had the penalty turned down and also got in behind them with Browne and Millar running at them we were just piss poor in our chance execution.

Millar's shot being deflected wide and Ched pulling a very good save out of the keeper.

I just feel the performance would have been a lot better if we hadn't started with Ledson and then brought Brady and Woodburn on.
 
norky84 said:
I never went to Sunderland game, but my mate said we were fortunate to win. I went to Plymouth and Birmingham games, I thought we were fortunate to win those. If I was an away fan in those games, I'd have been convinced we should have had a point.

Some offensive stats from these games:
PNE VS Sunderland
XG 0.64 vs 1.38
Shots on target 2 vs 5
Shots off target 3 vs 4
Blocked shots 4 vs 7
Corners 5 vs 12
Keeper saves 4 vs 0
Dangerous attacks 28 vs 65

PNE VS Plymouth
XG 1.56 vs 1.56
Shots on target 6 vs 6
Shots off target 3 vs 2
Blocked shots 1 vs 8
Corners 4 vs 14
Keeper saves 5 vs 4
Dangerous attacks 36 vs 62

PNE vs Birmingham
XG 0.63 vs 0 83
Shots on target 3 vs 4
Shots off target 1 vs 2
Blocked shots 2 vs 4
Corners 5 vs 12
Keeper saves 3 vs 1
Dangerous attacks 43 vs 47

We failed to have more shots on goal, we failed to have a higher xG, we had less corners, our Keeper made more saves, we had less dangerous attacks. We couldn't keep playing like that and still carrying on winning. Sadly that's been prove right in this awful run of recent games bar Southampton where we were unlucky.
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Spot on
 
Yes, points on the board are what matter but XG and other underlying stats are useful to understand where things might go in the long run.

Even at the time it was clear that we were fortunate to win ALL FOUR of those home games at the start of the season and our league position flattered us. What some (myself included) feared may happen based on our performances may now be in the process of happening.

No good sticking your head in the sand - this data analysis is useful and can tell you a lot about what the strengths and weaknesses of your team are.
 
Warton PNE said:
But he was, and we aren't.

We didn't deserve anything from the game on Saturday.
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Course we did. Even so, there's still only Ipswich and Cardiff above us off your xG list.

It's blown my mind how miserable some of our fans are about our start to the season, we really haven't been that bad at all. Too many people trying to compare PNE games to whatever top Premier/Champion's League games they've been watching.
 
Bobbage said:
Course we did. Even so, there's still only Ipswich and Cardiff above us off your xG list.

It's blown my mind how miserable some of our fans are about our start to the season, we really haven't been that bad at all. Too many people trying to compare PNE games to whatever top Premier/Champion's League games they've been watching.
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Eh? We only need to compare ourselves to half the Championship teams who have played against us- sure, we expect Southampton and Leicester to be full of classier players with their prem squads, but Plymouth, West Brom, Ipswich? All play a much nicer brand of football at a Championship budget.
 
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