Gareth "Interesting" Southgate

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, Mr_Dogg said:

You can get away with it to an extent in a 7 game tournament.

We'll see how it stacks up in a league season when he takes over at Old Trafford in November.

I controversially predict that if he takes over at Man Utd, his side will score at least one goal in the majority of games he manages. 

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, bobzy said:

No, that's fair.  You should take the whole into account:

"England did not shoot in great volume, and when they did those shots were not of great quality. Low volume, low quality is just about the worst of all possible worlds.
Southgate’s team produced just 0.88 expected goals per 90 minutes across their seven games, ranking them 19th of 24 teams. Their xG per 90 minutes was lower than Romania, Ukraine, Georgia and Slovakia. When penalties are discounted, England fall to 20th."

(Link:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/07/15/stats-show-england-did-not-have-good-euro-2024/)

 

Sounds good.

I think that's exactly what I mean by people saying 'well it worked in reality but it shouldn't have worked according to the model', but we'll leave it there. If only we'd been able to have the tournament Ukraine had

[Mic09]

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I controversially predict that if he takes over at Man Utd, his side will score at least one goal in the majority of games he manages. 

That is most likely correct. Because Man Utd are a good league team - probably on par with what England are on international stage.

But give him West Ham, Brighton, Wolves, and those teams are getting relegated. 

[bobzy]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I think that's exactly what I mean by people saying 'well it worked in reality but it shouldn't have worked according to the model', but we'll leave it there. If only we'd been able to have the tournament Ukraine had

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "worked in reality".  We won 2 games in 90 minutes and were saved from elimination in the last 16 to Slovakia (a team who lowly Ukraine managed to beat) by a ridiculous overhead kick.  Maybe that is Gareth's plan, working.  Maybe.

[Stevo985]

2 minutes ago, bobzy said:

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "worked in reality".  We won 2 games in 90 minutes and were saved from elimination in the last 16 to Slovakia (a team who lowly Ukraine managed to beat) by a ridiculous overhead kick.  Maybe that is Gareth's plan, working.  Maybe.

And again nobody is saying "it shouldn't have worked according to the model"

[Hobsons Choice]

Tin hat on here but he may actually be a decent choice for Man U at the moment. Not because he's a good tactician, or even good at most aspects of management, but because the off field stuff there is toxic, much like it was when he took over with England.

The problem with England was that we let him stay on too long once he'd actually changed the culture of playing in an England shirt. When relying on his actual coaching/team selection, we were stuffed.

[HanoiVillan]

8 minutes ago, bobzy said:

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "worked in reality".  We won 2 games in 90 minutes and were saved from elimination in the last 16 to Slovakia (a team who lowly Ukraine managed to beat) by a ridiculous overhead kick.  Maybe that is Gareth's plan, working.  Maybe.

The 'plan', obviously, is to score goals and not to concede them. It is not to score goals from difficult angles or great distances, it just so happens that most of the ones England scored in this tournament had one of those characteristics. We had other shots, and tried to create other chances. Southgate did not tell the players to try and only score from low-percentage opportunities. 

I would say our 'plan' worked fairly poorly in an attacking sense - we scored fewer goals from fewer chances than we would have liked - and worked very well in a defensive sense, which is how come we managed to get to the final. It didn't work *that* poorly in an attacking sense, as we scored at least one goal in all bar one of the games. 

Ukraine probably also 'planned' to score goals and not concede them. Unfortunately for them, they scored 2 in one game and none in the other two, so got eliminated in the group stage. Their chances having a supposedly cumulatively higher likelihood of going in than all of ours cumulatively across every stage of the tournament seems completely meaningless, especially if we insist that xG 'is not a predictor'. What information should anyone be taking from Ukraine's tournament xG?

[Stevo985]

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Ukraine probably also 'planned' to score goals and not concede them. Unfortunately for them, they scored 2 in one game and none in the other two, so got eliminated in the group stage. Their chances having a supposedly cumulatively higher likelihood of going in than all of ours cumulatively across every stage of the tournament seems completely meaningless, especially if we insist that xG 'is not a predictor'. What information should anyone be taking from Ukraine's tournament xG?

That England were so bad at creating chances that despite playing in 7 games instead of 3, we accumulated less xG than Ukraine. 

it's exactly the same as saying Ukraine managed more shots on target in 3 games than England did in 7. Except it's far far more accurate

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, Stevo985 said:

That England were so bad at creating chances that despite playing in 7 games instead of 3, we accumulated less xG than Ukraine. 

it's exactly the same as saying Ukraine managed more shots on target in 3 games than England did in 7. Except it's far far more accurate

No, it's far *less* accurate, because the number of shots on target is real, in whole numbers, relies on very little judgement (I accept there's some at the margins) and basically everybody can agree on it. The xG numbers by contrast are ridiculous, which is demonstrated by goals being scored which are supposedly 1 in 20 chances or worse in 4 out of 6 games. 

[bobzy]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, it's far *less* accurate, because the number of shots on target is real, in whole numbers, relies on very little judgement (I accept there's some at the margins) and basically everybody can agree on it. The xG numbers by contrast are ridiculous, which is demonstrated by goals being scored which are supposedly 1 in 20 chances or worse in 4 out of 6 games. 

But pure shots doesn’t take into account what the chance is - that’s why xG is a better indicator.

A shot from the penalty spot is not the same as a strike from 30 yards etc. 

[Stevo985]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, it's far *less* accurate, because the number of shots on target is real, in whole numbers, relies on very little judgement (I accept there's some at the margins) and basically everybody can agree on it. 

I meant it's more accurate in terms of measuring chance quality and judging how a team has performed, because it's a very accurate measure of chance quality. Shots on target have absolute zero measure of the quality of that chance. If you shoot from 60 yards and it rolls into the hands of the keeper it counts the same as someone missing from 1 yard out by hitting the keeper's arse.

xG would rightly make a huge distinction between those chances, and also captures chances which are off target which shots on target completely ignores.

 

6 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

The xG numbers by contrast are ridiculous, which is demonstrated by goals being scored which are supposedly 1 in 20 chances or worse in 4 out of 6 games. 

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how xG works, how probabilities work, or both.

if those were the ONLY shots taken in those games then you might have a point. But obviously they weren't.

[HanoiVillan]

I think it probably is time to wrap this up for the sake of everyone else.

[bobzy]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I think it probably is time to wrap this up for the sake of everyone else.

Pffft, if there’s anything we love more on this forum than tedious debates, I don’t know what it is*…!

 

* - apart from fish puns. 

[Davkaus]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

PffFt, If there’S anyThING we love more on this forum than tedious debates, I don’t know what it is*…!

 

* - apart from fish puns. 

[MrBlack]

52 minutes ago, bobzy said:

"England did not shoot in great volume, and when they did those shots were not of great quality. Low volume, low quality is just about the worst of all possible worlds.
Southgate’s team produced just 0.88 expected goals per 90 minutes across their seven games, ranking them 19th of 24 teams. Their xG per 90 minutes was lower than Romania, Ukraine, Georgia and Slovakia. When penalties are discounted, England fall to 20th."

(Link:  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/07/15/stats-show-england-did-not-have-good-euro-2024/)

 

Sounds good.

 

This says all we need to know about the Southgate reign, and why it's a good thing that it's over. This is probably true of every tournament we've had with him at the helm. 

We can do much better with the forwards we've got available to us. Just look at what they achieved at their respective clubs this season. 

Obviously if we increase our shot taking ability and regularity, but at the same time increase our xG against metric by more, we're not doing it right, but I'd imagine a decent coach can avoid that eventuality.

[Hobsons Choice]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

Haha. I've never seen a Kenneth stretched so thin. Bravo.

 

[CarryOnVilla]

Sky’s narrative on Southgate is comical 

until, the Euros Semis they were chucking him pelters, via their correspondents and pundits and podcasters. Now that he’s sacked, Sky are basically saying “reporters, podcasters, pundits, social media was too mean to Gareth”

The ****, they’re just a guilty as anyone else to criticising Southgate.. and spreading it 

 

[Stevo985]

54 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I think it probably is time to wrap this up for the sake of everyone else.

What's the xBoredom on our discussion do you think?

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

What's the xBoredom on our discussion do you think?

Dunno, but some neek on Twitter has it at 0.03 but it must be closer to 1. 

[stewiek2]

Apparently, when Gareth his resignation to the FA, they passed it back, he passed it sideways to Bellingham, who fed it to Kane, who passed it back to Pickford.