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Yes I know, some people will roll their eyes at the mere mention of XG and, to an extent, I agree with them, but I've been looking at this page
https://fbref.com/en/squads/75fae011/Cardiff-City-Stats
which is linked to in the Trust's latest newsletter and it is thought provoking stuff.
You compare City players actual goals figure with their XG and the clear trend is that, in most cases, our players exceeded or equalled their XG.
Players such as Ng, Grant, Bowler, Goutas and Ramsey all scored more than their XG figure and as for our much maligned strikers, Ugbo scored 4 against an XG of 4.1, Etete's goals and XG were identical at 3 and Diedhiou scored 2 against an XG of 1.5. To balance things a little, Yakou Meite was the biggest XG under achiever at the club with 2 scored against an XG of 4.3 - others who came up short included Rubin Colwill, 1 against an XG of 1.4 and Ryan Wintle with 2 scored against an XG of 2.5.
As I say, there will be those who place no relevance on these figures whatsoever, but it seems to me that if you do credit them with any sort of authenticity, the conclusion you draw from the figures is clear - our XG figures are low, but in many cases, the players exceeded their individual figure.
The cry is going up yet again for us to sign a fifteen to twenty goal a season striker during the summer because the ones we've got at the moment couldn''t hit that mythical barn door with a banjo, but I would argue that the XG figures are a justification for my own view that the strikers aren't the main problem with us,. Instead, it's our inability to create chances in open play for them - we used four "proper" strikers all season and while I agree that none of them were very convincing, I can't recall any of them missing a hatful of easy chances over the course of the season.
As it turns out, I did look up "couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo" and "couldn't hit cow's arse with a banjo" and they both brought back references - being a refined soul from Pentrebane, I was always going to opt for the barn door.
Let's not forget either that more than twenty years ago (where does the time go? ), the excellent Peter Thorne was being called the barn door by some on here when he was going through a long lean spell in front of goal during our 02/03 promotion season.
Thanks for that - a good find. The way I would read that is that we are a clinical team in front of goal. If those statistics are repeated next year, we needn’t sign many players beyond replacing expiring loans or sub-par players.
What Bulut needs to focus on is:
1. Creating more chances so that the high “XG to goals conversion” turna to more goals
2. Reduce the goals conceded
But with statistics like that it seems we are at least clinical and resourceful, we just don’t create enough, which most of us can see with our eyes. Good to see the stafistics meet the eyeball test, I think.
looking at the overall shot stats, we have had the 4th lowest number of shots this season, with only Preston, Milwall and Rotherham managing fewer than us.
Our average shot distance is one of the highest, indicating that more of our shots are from distance and not from as good a chance (only 5 teams shot from further out on average)
these 2 things together can go some way to explain why we had the 3rd lowest xG in the division (ahead of only Preston and Rotherham)
If you look at the Shot creating actions (the something that is done to create the opportunity for a shot, a pass, a tackle, a dribble etc whatever it is), one thing immediately stands out - all the players who have done that the most for us per 90 have hardly played any football, for one reason or another.
SCA per 90
Ramsey - 4.27
Colwill - 3.73
Robinson - 3.72
Turnbull - 3.53
Ashford - 3.46
Giles - 3.21 (ignore as only from 0.3 90 minutes)
Ralls - 3.19
Tanner - 3.13
of those only Ralls has played more than half the available minutes this season, and most have played far far less.
I think though in reality Ramsey OR Turnbull would have played more had thet been available all season and likely hugely limited Colwill's gametime who's second on the list
Bulut's persisstence with (at least) 2 holding midfielders really limits our chance creation. I imagine Ralls' numbers for example are inflated by set plays
If you look at that it's very telling that basically none of Bulut's first choice attacking three (Grant, Bowler, Etete/Meite/Diedhiou) are up there, passes the eye test though. If he's to be here next season and have any success, he's either got to have better players or find a way to get them the ball with options ahead of them, preferably both.
We can all argue on the why (for me it’s the slow build up play and the lack of line changes) but we can all at least agree on the what.
We are very poor at creating chances.
XG , SCA , load of bollocks , never mind the stats , they have all been on the beach for weeks