Unai Emery

[Ian.]

It’s incredible, quite often even when we’ve had exciting periods we’ve never been a side that regularly thrashed their opponents.

Also It wasn’t long ago, February I think, I was at my aunts funeral and me and my uncle was chatting about Emery and even though we was winning it was all a bit Arsenal with more possession and is sneaking a win.

[AV84]

Also It wasn’t long ago, February I think, I was at my aunts funeral and me and my uncle was chatting about Emery and even though we was winning it was all a bit Arsenal with more possession and is sneaking a win.

Speaking of possession, I saw a guy talking about Villa the other day and he said in the Brighton and West Ham games we had like 39% and 45% possession, or something like that. Definitely not the majority of possession, and yet we scored 6 and 4.

[Risso]

You'd often see (pre-Emery) people say on here "if we play like that, we'll give somebody a right stuffing one day". And then we rarely played well, and hardly ever gave somebody a right stuffing. Now it's expected on a weekly basis!

[Drummond]

I make that 6 times we've scored 4 or more this season already. It's utterly compelling.

Hibs A
Everton H
Brighton H
West Ham H
Alkmaar A

What am I missing?

Ah, erm, I can't count.

[LeeB]

I make that 6 times we've scored 4 or more this season already. It's utterly compelling.

Hibs A
Everton H
Brighton H
West Ham H
Alkmaar A

What am I missing?

Ah, erm, I can't count.

I read the same stat on the BBC website last night but hadn't thought to check, but they said 6 as well.

[AV84]

They're preemptively including this weekends result.

[not3bad]

I make that 6 times we've scored 4 or more this season already. It's utterly compelling.

Hibs A
Everton H
Brighton H
West Ham H
Alkmaar A

What am I missing?

Ah, erm, I can't count.

I read the same stat on the BBC website last night but hadn't thought to check, but they said 6 as well.

Maybe they counted Hibs as 2 matches?

[OCD]

Interesting piece on Sky Sports' website about how ruthless we are...

"Aston Villa were truly clinical in their 4-1 win over AZ Alkmaar. Five shots, four goals. The only shot they didn't score from? It was rebounded in the net seconds later.

What was also impressive is the type of goals Villa scored on Thursday night. They took a 2-0 lead from just 0.15 xG from the two shots, showing the clinical mood they are in right now.

Then there's the personnel that are scoring for Villa. Leon Bailey and Youri Tielemans were the two players rotated into this Villa attack for the trip to AZ and took their chances, showing the depth Villa have. Ollie Watkins and John McGinn scoring once again in the form of their lives just adds to the excitement."

[cdward]

Unai is the manager we have been waiting for since MON, to take us on to the next level.
Up until now, i have looked at the CL places in the league as a  far off place which we may or may not at some time in the future arrive at.  Watching CL games over the years, and you start to wonder how would a Villa team compete at that level.
Inevitably the same reality dawns, we are nowhere near good enough, and if we did fluke it, we would be battered in most games.
With Unai i can see us definitely competing at that level, which is an unbelievable turnaround.
What a great time to be a Villa fan, thank-you Unai.

[taylorsworkrate]

What was also impressive is the type of goals Villa scored on Thursday night. They took a 2-0 lead from just 0.15 xG from the two shots, showing the clinical mood they are in right now.

This is why, although xG is a more than usual analytical tool, I can't quite take it fully seriously. Tielemans goal was a one on one with the keeper a few yards out. I'd expect a player to be converting that a lot more than 15/100

[purpletrousers]

Unai is the manager we have been waiting for since MON, to take us on to the next level.
Up until now, i have looked at the CL places in the league as a  far off place which we may or may not at some time in the future arrive at.  Watching CL games over the years, and you start to wonder how would a Villa team compete at that level.
Inevitably the same reality dawns, we are nowhere near good enough, and if we did fluke it, we would be battered in most games.
With Unai i can see us definitely competing at that level, which is an unbelievable turnaround.
What a great time to be a Villa fan, thank-you Unai.

It is worthy of reflection, on balance as much as it hurt most of us could concede we weren’t going to be where we needed to be to not lose Grealish, for what felt a very long time.
It was not long ago at all we felt a million miles off. A year ago in fact.
Now… well I’m believing.

Wash my mouth out, but I even have sympathy for the CL place over a domestic cup argument; if it meant eg keeping big Emi and attracting the right world class missing pieces, I can get the argument for sustained high level and income (within which hopefully we’d pick
up  silverware) rather than a flag in the pan trophy.

[Bad English]

Oh gawd, I thought that xG shite had gone out of fashion.

[paul_e]

What was also impressive is the type of goals Villa scored on Thursday night. They took a 2-0 lead from just 0.15 xG from the two shots, showing the clinical mood they are in right now.

This is why, although xG is a more than usual analytical tool, I can't quite take it fully seriously. Tielemans goal was a one on one with the keeper a few yards out. I'd expect a player to be converting that a lot more than 15/100

but the entire basis of the stat is that players in that sort of position have historically (since they start collecting the data) scored 15% of the time. I agree though that sometimes the values feel really low. I like xG as a stat, I just think too many people misunderstand it try to use it to show things that it isn't designed for and ignore some of the assumptions and limitations that it has.

[AV84]

What was also impressive is the type of goals Villa scored on Thursday night. They took a 2-0 lead from just 0.15 xG from the two shots, showing the clinical mood they are in right now.

This is why, although xG is a more than usual analytical tool, I can't quite take it fully seriously. Tielemans goal was a one on one with the keeper a few yards out. I'd expect a player to be converting that a lot more than 15/100

but the entire basis of the stat is that players in that sort of position have historically (since they start collecting the data) scored 15% of the time. I agree though that sometimes the values feel really low. I like xG as a stat, I just think too many people misunderstand it try to use it to show things that it isn't designed for and ignore some of the assumptions and limitations that it has.

How does it measure the difficulty though, in terms of how the ball comes to a player, for example.

A player in that position, especially a striker, with the ball at his feet, would have a higher expectation to score than a defender, for example. Also, McGinn's pass was amazing, but it did require some lovely skills from Yuri to get it under control so he could shoot. Making it way more difficult than if he'd just dribbled it into that part of the box himself.

Is that all taken into account by xG?

[LeeB]

What was also impressive is the type of goals Villa scored on Thursday night. They took a 2-0 lead from just 0.15 xG from the two shots, showing the clinical mood they are in right now.

This is why, although xG is a more than usual analytical tool, I can't quite take it fully seriously. Tielemans goal was a one on one with the keeper a few yards out. I'd expect a player to be converting that a lot more than 15/100

but the entire basis of the stat is that players in that sort of position have historically (since they start collecting the data) scored 15% of the time. I agree though that sometimes the values feel really low. I like xG as a stat, I just think too many people misunderstand it try to use it to show things that it isn't designed for and ignore some of the assumptions and limitations that it has.

How does it measure the difficulty though, in terms of how the ball comes to a player, for example.

A player in that position, especially a striker, with the ball at his feet, would have a higher expectation to score than a defender, for example. Also, McGinn's pass was amazing, but it did require some lovely skills from Yuri to get it under control so he could shoot. Making it way more difficult than if he'd just dribbled it into that part of the box himself.

Is that all taken into account by xG?

The pass was perfect and he was shaping to sweep it in first time I think but it just took a knick of the defenders heel meaning he had to re-adjust which he did really well