Well, it is Twellman. Why wasn’t he announcing his home team Messiami?
Also is there video of this anywhere? lol
It's at halftime of the full game replay, but in short he opened with the "xG says [___] but I know what I saw" gambit, which fine, but xG is based on detailed tracking of millions of shots over many years based on at least
- location
- kick, volley, header, etc.
- state of play (free kick, breakaway, standard run of play etc)
- location of defenders
and then simply dividing Goals/Shots to determine how often each similar-type shot goes in goal. You have to be a fool to think one's ability to judge how dangerous shots are is superior to that. Moreover, his primary specific example that xG underestimated how dangerous RB was in the first half was a Lewis Morgan shot from 20-25 yards because it hit the post. That's like me claiming people overstate how hard it is to pull an inside straight because one time I needed a 5 and I got a 6. I mean, even if I got the 5 that one time doesn't change the odds, and I would literally be using an example where the likely odds won out. Twellman also pointed to a shot by Haper from outside the side of the 6 yard box. It was close, but it's a tough angle and if the keeper is in position it just is not high probability.
xG has limitations. It doesn't capture everything (eg if a team gets the ball to players in dangerous positions and they fail to shoot) but what it captures it does very well. Most of the complaints about it are based on it not sufficiently corresponding to actual goals over small samples, which is like complaining that a .300 hitter went 0 for 6 in yesterday's game, so what's the point of Batting Average anyway, or that same player hit .310, .270 and .320 in consecutive seasons.
To give Twellman some slack, he was reacting to the MLS xG figures which continue to be crazy outliers. For the full game, ASA had NYC with 0.02 more xG than RB. Opta had NYC up by 0.11. MLS had NYC up by 1.20. I don't trust the MLS xG figures at all.
For a somewhat fuller sense of each teams chances: according to Opta, NYC had 3 of the 4 most dangerous shots in the game, the 2 goals plus Jovan's from just inside the spot. Both teams had 7 shots worth at least 0.05 xG. RB had more <5% shots by 8 to 5, and one of them went in.