Would this imply that despite making the 18 for the past few weeks, he wasn’t ready to play?
Away - 6/30 Chicago
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Am I reading this wrong? It does seem to support me, even though we arent well controlling for villa’s tantrums.We'd have to look at other seasons and players to see whether this chart tells us anything useful about yips, but I think it's fun regardless.
ETA:
Also, I didn’t really say yips (did I?). I said poor finishing.
I still need a reason to change my mind that Villa isn’t actually a volume finisher rather than a clinical finisher.
I see relative cold dips too. Seems he still beats out other solid strikers even in cold spells, but we are just spoiled by his otherworldly default mode.
The reason to change your mind about Villa's finishing is right there in that first table you rejected. Since Villa joined the league in 2015, only four players have outperformed their non-penalty expected goals by more. In other words, to the extent that finishing is a thing that matters, he's as good as it gets. But the more interesting question, the one that got me digging through the data, was Jay's suggestion (which you picked up on) that maybe Villa has had the yips for some undefined stretch of his career here. That took some work to look into.
You could certainly argue—although again this would need statistical confirmation from somebody smarter than me—that something was up with Villa's finishing in his first season or two. You would point to the parts of the third chart I posted where the green G-xG line sags below zero for a while. But if a rolling 50-shot sample is big enough to support the conclusion that he was struggling back then (and I doubt it is), it's also big enough to show that he's been extraordinarily clinical for the last couple seasons. The most important line is the blue one representing his cumulative G-xG, which hangs around zero for the first half of his MLS career, indicating that he was converting chances around the rate an average player would, and then takes off into the stratosphere around the start of 2017.
So yeah, Spain's all-time leading goal scorer turns out to be really good at scoring goals.
But what about Maxi? Just to bring this conversation back home, I went ahead and ran some charts for him, too. They show a guy who converts chances a little more often than you'd expect. More interestingly, he has almost never dipped below an average finishing rate during any 25-shot stretch of his NYCFC career. Whatever yips we think we're detecting are more in our head than his.
This was all fun for me, so thanks to Kjbert and JayH and you for getting me thinking about it. But if you want to read up on why finishing skill isn't something you should spend a lot of time worrying about, here are some good articles to start with:
https://www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2016/4/4/does-finishing-skill-matter-in-mls
https://statsbomb.com/2017/07/quantifying-finishing-skill/
https://cartilagefreecaptain.sbnation.com/2014/4/25/5652640/player-finishing-skill-is-real
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That is a lot of effort and I just wanted to let you know I appreciate it.The reason to change your mind about Villa's finishing is right there in that first chart you rejected. Since Villa joined the league in 2015, only four players have outperformed their non-penalty expected goals by more. In other words, to the extent that finishing is a thing that matters, he's as good as it gets. But the more interesting question, the one that got me digging through the data, was Jay's suggestion that you picked up on that maybe Villa has had the yips for some undefined stretch of his career here. That took some work to dig into.
You could certainly argue—although again this would take some statistical work by somebody smarter than me to confirm—that something was up with Villa's finishing in his first season or two. You would point to the parts of the third chart I posted where the green G-xG line sags below zero for extended periods. But if a rolling 50-shot sample is big enough to suggest that he was struggling back then (and I doubt it is), it's also big enough to show that he's been extraordinarily clinical for the last couple seasons. The most important part of the charts is the blue line representing his cumulative G-xG, which hangs around zero for the first half of his MLS career, indicating that he was scoring goals around the rate an average player would, and then takes off into the stratosphere around the start of 2017.
So yeah, not surprisingly Spain's all-time leading goal scorer turns out to be really good at scoring goals.
But what about Maxi? Just to bring this conversation back home, I went ahead and ran some charts for him, too. They show a guy who converts chances at a rate a little more often than you'd expect. More interestingly, he has almost never dipped below an average finishing rate during any 25-shot stretch of his NYCFC career. Whatever yips we think we're detecting are more in our head than his.
This was all fun for me, so thanks to Kjbert and JayH and you for getting me thinking about it. But if you want to read up on why finishing skill isn't something you should spend a lot of time worrying about, here are some good articles to start with:
https://www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2016/4/4/does-finishing-skill-matter-in-mls
https://statsbomb.com/2017/07/quantifying-finishing-skill/
https://cartilagefreecaptain.sbnation.com/2014/4/25/5652640/player-finishing-skill-is-real
This is the Matchday thread for the game in Chicago.
If you want to go off on a crazy tangent about Villa’s finishing, please take it to the Stadium thread.
If you want to go off on a crazy tangent about Villa’s finishing, please take it to the Stadium thread.
or, we could go to the nickname thread.
Great place for people to just make shit up. HINT HINT.
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