Feels like we’re approaching the point where rules about minutes played per week/month/year might need to be regulated.

It’s complicated to legislate for, though. It’s not just about limiting time played as a blanket policy across leagues. Context is important. Have a listen to this podcast with performance manager I posted a link to a few days back:

https://lemmy.world/post/8310123

Specifically the part starting at 33:15. It’s not a straightforward problem to solve, sadly.

Same for me but using Geddit. Also finally exploring Mastodon for a replacement for match threads.

Both are part of the fediverse so not mutually exclusive.

You can start a match thread on Mastodon and mention the handle of this community in the post (@football@lemmy.world) and it’ll not only start a thread on Mastodon, but also here. Comments added on Masto will appear in the thread here and vice versa. Likes on Masto will appear as upvotes here and upvotes here appear as likes on Masto. It’s quite cool. You can tell when a post originated from Mastodon because it has that little rainbow fediverse icon on it.

If you follow a Lemmy community on Masto, the posts will appear as boosts in your timeline.

Here’s a thread I started on Masto but is also on the !coys@lemmy.world community:

https://lemmy.world/post/8197032

All the comments were added from Mastodon, not Lemmy.

This is a thread I posted here directly from Mastodon:

https://lemmy.world/post/7968059

More details on how all this works here: https://vijayprema.com/using-lemmy-from-my-existing-mastodon/

It’s not the calls that are the problem. In the Tottenham Chelsea game the decisions were all correct in the end (pretty much). It’s all the waiting around that’s the problem. It ruins the flow and enjoyment of the game. I don’t know anyone at this point that thinks VAR has improved the game. Fans of clubs in the Championship often tell me they prefer no VAR.

Yeah, experience from moderating over at !coys@lemmy.world is that you’ve just got to keep posting and posting and posting and gradually, very slowly, the numbers creep up. Same on Mastodon on the #MastodonFC and #COYS tags (can’t speak for other clubs). You’ve got to give people a reason to come back.

Personally, I’m not sure the individual posts containing a single goal from a specific match is helping much. Makes the community seem very noisy. IMO would be better to have one thread per match with goals posted as comments. But I’m not mod here and others may feel differently, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

FWIW, I don’t see the community as dead. I post a few things here and there’s often a good number of votes and some good discussion. Seems far from dead to me.

They’ll need to come up with some strategies for keeping warm while waiting an indeterminate amount of time while waiting for VAR.

In American Football they use stationary bikes to keep warm.

https://bikehike.org/why-do-nfl-players-use-stationary-bike/

Yeah, he did say, “I was half-tempted to throw some balls out there for them to kick around”. It’s right there in the quote I posted.

They’ll need to come up with some strategies for keeping warm while waiting an indeterminate amount of time while waiting for VAR.

So not bullshit at all then.

Is the argument trash, though?

100% agree the discourse should be public. Good point.

Yes, the big league with their multiple camera angles led to so much scrutiny after the games, VAR felt somewhat inevitable. I’d like to see it radically scaled back. Goal line technology is fine. But get rid of the ridiculous offside checks and the debatable handballs and let the game flow. There’s an argument emerging too that all the standing around waiting for decisions can lead to injuries as muscles cool and stiffen.

That is fucking ridiculous and a disgrace. It was shit in Qatar in the middle of winter and it’ll be shit in Saudi. What a joke. The levels of bribery and corruption in world football now is incredible.

I don’t think Haaland coming second is a fair representation of his stature as a striker enjoying the fruits of exceptional service. He’s notably worse when Rodri and KDB aren’t playing. The fact that goal scorers like Haaland get votes highlights what a weird award Ballon d’Or is. The focus should be on the team award with secondary individual awards for best positions (best 9, best 10, best wingers, 6, fullbacks, centrebacks, and gk).

Do you know where I can get xG data before 2017? That’s where FBref stops.

I’ve redone it with a little more care (see above) and agree the summing of xG over performance wasn’t a good idea. It was a vestigial artefact where I’d been mucking about and I wish I’d removed it, but it was late and I couldn’t be bothered as it didn’t really affect the point I was making and it’s not intended to be rigorous maths.

The results in the updated version aren’t significantly different apart from Messi. The reason Messi’s over performance has shifted so much in the update is because I removed the three PSG and MLS years, which I think are an unfair reflection on him.

I don’t agree averaging the xG overperformance “grossly” inflated the numbers (unless you consider 6% gross). I do agree including the PSG and MLS years grossly short changes Messi, but I noted something to that effect in the original.

You don’t need to be quite so hostile to people sharing their stuff here btw - save that for Twitter or Reddit if hostilities float your boat. I take it you’re not and have never been an educator? But no harm done - thx for the feedback - it was useful and improved the analysis :)

A little heavy to say “fraudulent” and “total BS” - it’s a sketch I quickly knocked up from FBref data (which only goes back to '17) to help me understand Son’s low xG and relatively high actual goals. It’s meant to be indicative rather than precise. Critique and improvement always welcome, but no need to be so rude, mate. I’ll make some improvements based on your feedback.

I was a little surprised by these figures myself so went looking for any prior work in this area and found this from '21: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/tottenham/son-heung-min-xg-harry-kane-b1782968.html. The figures there broadly reflect what I’ve got here. The point being made remains the same. It also contains some theories as to why Son is such an outlier, but the conclusion seems to be Son is indeed unusual.

“Goodman agrees, though, that in a game of mostly uniform standards of finishing, Son’s numbers are startling.”

“Goodman” here is Mike L Goodman, the former managing editor of StatsBomb.

I agree it will be good to see how he fares with a) more shots; b) more goals; c) more play in the box. This season and beyond with him playing as a 9 should hopefully shed some light.

I also agree he’s probably not the one-of-a-kind genius Messi is. But to be even vaguely comparable is in itself quite a remarkable thing. And the bigger question for me is, is there anyone else, aside from Messi, that comes close?

Update: here’s an improved version: https://thelastboyscout.uk/assets/img/son_xg_stats.webp

Would you say he’s THE most elite finisher, though? He’s definitely up there when comparing the data of his peers. That’s what I mean but underrated. He takes fewer shots than the others, so that could be skewing things. But then again, if you look at other players who take a similar number of shots, they don’t overperform like Son consistently does. I don’t know, he seems to be a bit of a outlier. I can’t find any other player like him. Will be very interesting to see what his numbers are like at the end of this season with him playing as a 9 and without Kane. Will he still overperform?

Oh I think I see what you’re saying: a poor team will create poorer chances in general, leading to lower xG shots. There’s truth in that, but is it the case at Spurs? The club has had an average league position of 4.6 over the last 10 seasons, which suggests it has had above average players, regardless of (lack of) trophies, so you’d have thought, on balance, those players would in general be capable of “good play” resulting in high xG chances. All that is besides the point, though. This analysis is about how Son has an uncanny ability to score low xG chances.

Handy hint: you can eyeball low xG goals by looking at a player’s Goal Log on FBref then sorting on the xG column, low to high. Always fun to check out the really low ones. The PSxG stat (called xGOT on Sofascore) gives us an indication of how savable the shot is - the closer to 1, the less likely to save. It’s a useful indicator of the “quality” of the shot to go along with the “difficulty” represented by xG.

E.g. https://fbref.com/en/players/92e7e919/goallogs/dom_lg/Son-Heung-min-Goal-Log

No, it takes into account the events and circumstances of the play, not the individual skill of the players involved. At least, that’s how Opta’s xG model works.

xG does not take into account the quality of player(s) involved in a particular play. It is an estimate of how the average player or team would perform in a similar situation.

More here: https://fbref.com/en/expected-goals-model-explained/

We need to find a way to make it bigger.

Post content and replies consistently over time and it’ll grow. The problem is people expect it to be like the other networks that have been through that process over decades. Takes time and tenacity to build communities. :)

True. But now with Scott Munn running the football. We can only hope Levy has learned his lesson and will leave the football side of Tottenham Hotspur FC to football people. If he can rake in the cash from the stadium and other ventures then more power to him, just as long as it doesn’t come at the embarrassing expense of good football.

He wasn’t clearly the issue. He’s been doing well at Bayern with a team only partially built around him. He probably wouldn’t have be the best fit under Ange, and perhaps we wouldn’t be doing as well, but he wasn’t THE problem at Spurs. Perhaps symbolic of many of the problems that have dogged the club since Poch’s peak. Arguably a case of Ewing Theory.

I’d put the main issue down as Levy neglecting the football in favour of the business (the stadium etc), then seeking quick fixes when things turned south. But with Scott Munn coming in to take over running the football side, along with Ange as coach and Lange as scout, we could have reached a turning point. Time will tell.