West “better off without Rice in the team” Ham
Interesting that we haven’t just improved defensively, we have done it in a league where almost every team is scoring more than previously; almost every team has an upwards trajectory line.
‘22-‘23: build attack
‘23-‘24: build defense
‘24-‘25: World domination.UCL, NBA, World Series, PL
Throw in the Super Bowl for eggball in as well!!!
For the record, I am American and my family hates when I call it eggball, especially all this week during Thanksgiving 😂
calling football eggball or handegg is so corny man cmon. Just call both sports football if you don’t like saying soccer
tf are u on about, handegg is just a better name. calling it football is just confusing and nonsensical.
No PGA. Arteta out!
Olympics here we come!
ASSNA GHANTA SUPABAWL!
I know it’s a joke, but since the attack has already been built, where has it gone this season?
But someone told me we have the most touches in the box this season surely that means our attacking play has been just fine this season
I think it’s explainable though. Teams play differently against us now due to our success last season; they sit all the way back so we cant punish them in transition like we did all last season.
This would lead to both more touches in the opponents box, and also less goals. Probably also less goals conceded from us as well, which we’re also seeing. We’ve also had one injury after another in our starting attacking lineup.
We’re still doing fine.
I mean you say that but Chelsea and Spurs probably the most open teams we’ve played this season and they’re the ones we struggled the most against and conceded the most XG as well. It’s really not as simple as teams are playing us differently. We really have not been as fluid this season. It’s more like we’re the ones playing differently partly because of new personnel and partly due to the fact we’re trying to be more compact. There’s been a real lack of central penetration this season. But it should also be mentioned that this graph should look way worse than it does because we’ve got 6 pens this season which inflates our XG by quite a bit.
You can point at the exceptions like Tottenham and Chelsea (both of which are passionate, high pressure derbies where form and stats tend to be less relevant), but all the info we need to see is in this graph really.
Yes, we’re scoring less but also conceding less. It’s less exciting but I think probably a more consistent chance at a title challenge. “1-0 to the Arsenal” comes to mind.
The graph is already non pen xg.
Half an expected goal a game is considerable. Also compare our attack to the rest of the league in terms of xG. It’s midtable in some areas.
We have the most box touches but that’s because teams are comfortable allowing it. When they have 8 men in the box, why bother stopping us to get in. We aren’t scoring with In a box that packed.
Pretty disappointing that we’ve focussed on trying to concede less than score more. The focus went all on the defence end of last season but our scoring slowed considerably too.
If we tried to focus more on attack with our injuries then we would’ve still been worse at attack because of the injuries and our defense would’ve been worse because the emphasis on a attack that isn’t better than last season’s.
Happy the manager is working with what he has instead of forcing something else.
Attack wins you games, defence wins you titles - Ferguson
This is particularly funny cause his attack won him more titles than his defence did. I think he actually won the prem with the worst defence
“In fact, Sir Alex was the master for winning titles with an inferior defence - mitigated with a league-topping attack. Manchester United only had the seventh best defence when they won the title in 1996/97, shipping 44 goals - Blackburn conceded fewer and finished in 13th place. And Fergie continued in the same vein, having only the fourth best defence in 1998/99, the sixth best in 1999/00 and fifth best in 2012/13. In each of those title-winning seasons, United scored more goals than any other team.”
Of all the languages in the world, you chose receipts. Kudos bossman.
Real problem is the midfield buy another striker and we’ll still be slow in the transitions and low on the creativity.
We miss Xhaka much more than I think most people would have guessed.
He was absolutely sensational last season, and is such a rare profile to replace. Havertz has much larger boots to fill than Xhakas reputation suggests.
Also, we reeeally miss Partey.
Rice has obviously been incredible, but without both Partey and Xhaka our progressive passing from midfield has taken a huge, huge dip.
Overall I agree. We need another elite passer in midfield.
A mainstay in that Leverkusen side as well and based on his match ratings, doing very well still. Don’t think many people would have anticipated how big the hole he left would be.
Xhaka quite obviously couldn’t handle the tempo of the Premier League and was struggling when he was put under pressure. The same is happening at Leverkusen now as well. I wouldn’t re sign him if we could
I don’t think we miss Xhaka the player, but rather his profile.
Someone who pings balls to everyone.
Last season Partey was doing that while Xhaka was playing a box to box role. While Havertz is trying to do Xhaka’s work, he is just too indecisive, lacking in composure and energy to be effective.
Kai Havertz shouldn’t be what Xhaka was. He should be more of what Odegaard was last season, or a bad mockery of what KdB is to City. He shouldn’t do any build up.
A Thomas problem that wasn’t discussed is that he had become more of a Pirlo than an actual DM. Putting him out there as the defence protector is one of the reasons we were getting skinned in transitions. A Thomas - Rice Midfield would have done wonders.
Now the problem with it is that both don’t have tempo control as their strongest point. It sort of makes sense why the manager kept talking about using all three. And why in a desperate attempt to pull this off, shipped Thomas to RB.
This is why we need a Xhaka profile. Combining grit and ball skills. That’s why names like Zubimendi and Douglas Luiz are being tabled. They’re perfect clones of Thomas + Jorginho. They solve the problem.
100% Xhaka vs Havertz it’s an immediate upgrade he’s better at creating and taking opportunities, that being said I think Zinchenko missing at the start of the season, White being out of form and Partey out injured has had a knock on effect.
I’m glad this comment isn’t aging well.
Think we should wait to see our attack at full strength for at least a few games before making broad conclusions.
Only the Arsenal is moving in the right downwards direction.
the thing about this stat is that it is a little misleading in isolation about the strength of our attack. 6 of our 26 goals this season have been penalties, that is a big contribution of our total goals, so that xG is stripped from our attack, imagine they were shots instead the xG would be higher but the goals we’ve actually scored in games would be lower.
It also doesn’t take into consideration game state. We scored a penalty to go 1-0 up away to Palace, went down to 10 men, of course we are going to sit deep and protect what we’ve got, which we did. 3 points. But we come out of that game with a bad non pen xG score, which does damage to a chart like this, but I’d rather the 3 points.
Chelsea and Everton wtf!
I guess that’s why we only got one point at stamford bridge
Everton are a huge surprise. Chelsea have been good all season to anyone who has been paying attention
I look at this graph and all I hear are the sounds of tiny race cars zipping around the track
Ok we didn’t get better attacking wise but please why couldn’t it have just stayed the same level, we be killing the league 😭
Partey always pass the ball to odegaard, thats one of the reason why odegaard dominate the midfield. And this season partey only played 4 games in pl (even that as right back), and odegaard played with injury for the last few games. Tifo irl also said in their video that odegaard got less ball this season compared to last season
Midfield is only 1/3 of what it was last season and our preferred midfield and front 3 haven’t started together yet this season
Why are the axes attack and defense? Like why defense?
xg and xga are the axis, meaning the same thing as attack and defence.
I guess really they should say something like “xG scored” and “xG conceded”.
But I imagine it’s because they think people will find it easier to understand “attack” and “defence” with higher up and further to the right being good.
Poch and Dyche cooking the blues
Last year we were good for goals, but in the red for goals conceded. We had to sacrifice something to fix that. We might have sacrificed a little too much, but I think that’s not unfixable. Especially considering injuries etc etc etc