Match Thread [FT] Rangers 4 (Lammers 10'; Danilo 78'; Sima 84'; Dowell 90') - 0 Livingston

[CammyF 6,781]

4 minutes ago, Rousseau said:

OK - you're verging on insulting now. 

 

I'll leave you to it. 

Haha - I posted a description of XG I found on Google. So if you somehow feel insulted, contact Google. 

[Rousseau 9,370]

22 minutes ago, Gonzo79 said:

Rousseau struggling to get past Cammy's low block on this thread.  

 

It's just like Ibrox because the spectators and bored/frustrated and several are leaving early.  

 

Typical wee-team mentality: no style of play of their own so they resort to hammer throwing. 

 

My xG is through the roof, though...

[stewarty 1,876]

Handbags away, ladies. 
 

To change tack slightly, I thought Beale deserved some credit for his substitutions.  Livi were leaving space in the channels and we weren’t attacking it with balls over the top or into the channel.  
 

It was evident for a good while before the subs were made so it was interesting to hear Beale say that he left things to see if the team could work it out.  
 

When he did make the changes, instantly we had more pace and width, which also then challenged some tiring Livi legs and we got the late goals.  
 

There have been hundreds of league games at ibrox that have gone in a similar fashion.

 

A work in progress but we’re moving in the right direction.  

[CammyF 6,781]

4 minutes ago, stewarty said:

Handbags away, ladies. 
 

To change tack slightly, I thought Beale deserved some credit for his substitutions.  Livi were leaving space in the channels and we weren’t attacking it with balls over the top or into the channel.  
 

It was evident for a good while before the subs were made so it was interesting to hear Beale say that he left things to see if the team could work it out.  
 

When he did make the changes, instantly we had more pace and width, which also then challenged some tiring Livi legs and we got the late goals.  
 

There have been hundreds of league games at ibrox that have gone in a similar fashion.

 

A work in progress but we’re moving in the right direction.  

100% agree and 100% accurate.

 

We've been quick to criticise managers (Gio and MB in particular) for leaving it to late, or making the incorrect subs. 

 

Yesterday MB was brave introducing Matonda and Sima, two players who've been roundly lambasted by the some sections of the fanbase (two so called fans near me left the stadium in disgust when MB made the subs shouting they'd never be back). 

 

Previously, we've not had these options from the bench - a strong squad means replacing quality with players with different qualities and strengths.

[Blue Moon 1,113]

4 hours ago, Rousseau said:

I think he should play as the #6, freeing up Raskin to move forward. 

 

I think I'm alone in that thought, though.

 

@DMAA gave me a right good scolding...

You deserved it.

[Devil's advocaat 1,276]

38 minutes ago, CammyF said:

(two so called fans near me left the stadium in disgust when MB made the subs shouting they'd never be back). 

That's embarrassing. I'd ban them, idiots.

[ian1964 10,415]

 

[stewarty 1,876]

17 minutes ago, ian1964 said:

 

It’s ridiculous to give Martindale a 2 minute interview.  He’s the most straight forward and fair assessor of all the managers in the league.  Compare that to the banal “how important is the game today?”/ “how difficult has the last week been?” Questions that we get when it’s our manager.  I cringe sometimes when I hear them.  

[PoohBear 1,074]

I'm not getting involved in the argument, particularly as I'm lying here with a blinding fever, but I've always wondered how xG can be considered objective? Does it not require the inputting of data and someone's subjective opinion of what is occurring on the pitch at the time? 

[Rousseau 9,370]

16 hours ago, PoohBear said:

I'm not getting involved in the argument, particularly as I'm lying here with a blinding fever, but I've always wondered how xG can be considered objective? Does it not require the inputting of data and someone's subjective opinion of what is occurring on the pitch at the time? 

It's not subjective: they've added up all the times a player actually scored. It's an objective fact. It takes that, to suggest a probability of a player in the same position scoring in the future. 

 

They take hundreds of thousands of past shots, going back decades, from every conceivable position on the pitch. 

 

In practice, that means if a chance has 0.2xG, it should be scored 20% of the time, because out of those hundreds of thousands of past shots they've looked at, the player scored 20% of the time. 

 

They take into account many more variables than just position on the pitch:

• Distance to the goal
• Angle to the goal
• Did the player strike it with his feet or was it a header?
• In what passage of play did it happen? (e.g. open play, direct free-kick, corner kick, counter-attack)
• Has the player just beaten an opponent?

We do it in our heads all the time, using our judgement and past experience of watching games, when we say, 'that's a sitter - he has to score that'.

 

The xG tells you how many times players in the past have actually scored from that position - and taking into account all the other variables. 

 

It's a lot more objective than someone's judgement. Compare how many games an xG model is based on (tens of thousands of matches, hundreds of thousands of shots, going back decades) compared to how many games you or I have watched in our lifetime. It's not even close.

 

I could watch every single Rangers game in the league, so my judgement on whether a player has missed a sitter is based on 38 games a season. An xG model has covered every match of every single club in the league, and every club in the top 15 (and more) European leagues, going back decades. 

 

In that way it's objective. There's no subjectivity in it.