TWar

I think Mcneil has something about him, also a very hard worker so would fit well. Probably be quite pricey though so more likely we pick a prospect from abroad or championship.

We gave McCarthy a new contract 6 months before the takeover to be fair. Redmond and Walcott, yeah they sat on the bench as an option but have fallen behind smallbone. I imagine redmond will be off to a promoted side or similar level and Walcott will run out his contract as a 5th choice striker and 5th choice 10. Regarding the debt, I dunno what's going on with it but the club said it shouldn't effect transfers. I'm not sure we'll have more spending money but am personally optimistic

My hope is when we move Ralph on we'll have known he's off for a year prior and can better plan for the transition. I certainly wouldn't sack him after a season where we lost 3 key players, were tipped to go down, and were safe from the end of January basically.

Yeah, because of Ralph. Being within touching distance considering at any stage considering our budget is amazing. The fact you say he has done an average job and a good manager would get top half and maybe europe is potentially a bit spoiled by how well we've done. In actuality, based off budget, a bad manager would see us relegated, an average one would see us successfully fighting relegation maybe 16-17th and a good one would see safe mid table 11-15. 11-15 being average when we spent 19th most is a bit delusional, in my opinion.

I do agree with this. xG is definitely overused for general team performance and when I do my stat posts I tend to use lots of different ones. In this case, however, where the question is "given the chances, was 6-0 a fair score" xG is basically designed for that question. But yeah, its certainly a fair point that xG isn't the only or even normally the best stat to analyse a team in a vacuum.

We've spent 2nd least in league since finishing 17th and 16th consecutively, who the hell would have us in europe? That is a silly expectation. I do think we have a top 12 squad but thats all Ralph as we have spent fuck all.

It's qualified in similar level leagues, I believe understat just uses prem. Within the league there isn't much variance between an Adams and a Kane for example, Adams actually is performing better with regards to goals vs xG.

Of the top 7 scorers in the league only one is overperforming xG, so no its not. If it was as heavily influenced by striker quality then the top strikers would regularly overperform but they don't. Not Kane, not Salah, not Ronaldo.

No. We had two fluke games. And this would have been a fluke too if it ended up any higher.

It could have been 10, it just was very unlikely to be and in actuality the most likely situation was less than they scored. I'm not arguing 10 was impossible, just that saying we are lucky it wasn't is bollocks. And yeah, obviously it doesn't change the result, but we aren't aiming to change the result we are analysing the game for fun. And the most accurate statistical analysis is that if the chances had been finished to an average level it would be 4-1 or 5-1 and "worst home result in recent memory" is a big overreaction.

We started Hoedt?!

Doing it in the Scottish league is not the same as doing it in the prem. Also he played a completely different position in Scotland as Ralph plays him as a 10. So no, Celtic didn't do that. Here is a question. If Ralph doesn't improve players and the team he inherited was on the verge of relegation and since then we have spent second least in the league, why haven't we been relegated? Why have we never even been close?

Stats are facts, how you interpret them is opinion. There are a great number more than "how many goals were there" available. We have access to a set of tens of thousands of shots in each of the situations Chelsea shot from so we can pretty accurately say how likely each of them are to go in. But if you think what you reckon is more valuable, and let me remind you you reckon we were lucky not to have the worst defence in prem history, then crack on.

Modern xG uses a post-shot algorithm than predicts significantly more accurately, the understat has been shown to be within 2 standard deviations across a controlled sample set. This first iteration has been improved upon significantly. The failing to predict a high scoring game isn't a flaw with the system, its because high scoring games are inherently unlikely, they are freak occurances over a certain point. It's why people saying we were lucky to not see double figures are talking nonsense. The prem has never seen a double figures game so those saying its lucky it didn't happen are saying we are lucky we didn't have the worst defensive display in premier league history. Which is obviously objectively pretty silly.

Ofcourse it could have been double figures, but statistically it was most likely to be 4-5 goals. That is objectively true. I'm sorry if you think that makes me look silly but it's not an opinion, it's a fact.

A lot of the shots weren't very likely to go in. Here is a breakdown of each of their xG https://understat.com/match/16687

So it doesn't matter if hes objectively improved 10 fold since he last played for us if he is in a spell of bad form then Ralph has made him worse? How's that fair? Across the entire season he looks a different player under Ralph than he did previously.

Welcome to your opinion, statistically you are incorrect though. Very much weren't lucky.

Have a look what Bednarek was up to pre Ralph.

How can you possibly say Elyounoussi has regressed? Did you watch him last time he played before us. He has had a massive improvement.

No way in hell Tino had gone backwards. He hadn't played a single senior game when he joined. Djenepo hasn't progressed but he wasn't exactly massive when he joined. Walcott has aged, happens to the best of us. Diallo is fine, hasn't had enough minutes but has had some very good games this season. When you consider the progress of JWP, KWP, Salisu, Adams etc. He definitely improves players.

Bednarek who was a bench player before Ralph and now is a prem regular, yeah. Romeu is definitely better than when Ralph joined, he often didn't play under Hughes and Pellegrino. Both Broja and Tino are better than they were previously to Ralph. By the time of their first game they'd been training with Ralph for some time. No mention of the others I listed? That seems biased to me...

I disagree. A team can't survive on promising teenagers alone. We need some senior talent and some genuine quality, especially in attacking mid and CB, and that costs money. If we could spend a good £30-40m and get our answer to Raphinha or Neto we'd be atleast a few points better off. Ralph has done incredibly to improve JWP, Bednarek, Adams, KWP, Romeu, Armstrong, Tino, Broja etc. But we need money to reach the same level as these teams who fill holes with £30-40m finished article signings.

You can't say we are lucky a sitter didn't go in and then not admit we are unlucky a screamer went in. Swings and roundabouts. That's the nature of luck. I'm not suggesting they are correlated, I'm saying when calculating whether it should have been a bigger loss that the good luck and bad luck balances out and really if anything the result was slightly harsh on us. Still a loss but not 6-0. On the whole they scored one goal more than the chances they produced. Them missing a couple of easier chances was balanced by them putting in a couple of harder chances.

To get to the next level we need to spend more than second least in the league. The manager can't pull that out of thin air. With these new owners we shall see.