Aston Villa vs Newcastle United pre match thread

[PeterWithesShin]

Almiron may be back on the bench as he returned to full training this week, ASM is in France working on recovery.

[Small Rodent]

It's not luck though, it's just shit play. Chelsea are mid table partly because they can't score many, as we saw with their shit finishing. Individual errors in defence against Leicester weren't luck, it was shit defending. Ollie scoring a lot now isn't luck, same as him missing loads earlier in the season wasn't luck.

Exactly.

Luck, like fate and karma simply does not exist.

[LeeB]

It's not luck though, it's just shit play. Chelsea are mid table partly because they can't score many, as we saw with their shit finishing. Individual errors in defence against Leicester weren't luck, it was shit defending. Ollie scoring a lot now isn't luck, same as him missing loads earlier in the season wasn't luck.

Exactly.

Luck, like fate and karma simply does not exist.

The reverse fixture at Villa Park with Chelsea had followed a similar path, and I remember thinking that day that for all of our 'good play' we could've played all day and not scored and they looked more dangerous.

The game down there felt completely the opposite.

[bob]

Luck works both ways.

Indeed.

If there's a definition of luck here, what kind of luck does going ahead against Arsenal twice, being at 2-2 on 93 minutes and having a shot bounce down off the bar, off the back of the keeper's head and in represent?

Yep, I agree, that's the biggest action of luck in any of our recent games.

Maybe, but Arsenal completely controlled that second half and you just knew that Martínez time-wasting at 2-2 just before injury time, was going to come back to haunt us.

I can see where Chris is coming from, I know people think xG is bollocks but it is an indicator of sorts, and we're outscoring it in almost every game on this run.

We haven't been swash-buckling in any of our wins but maybe that isn't the Emery way and hard-fought victories where we're more ruthless than the opposition is probably going to be the order of the day under him. Not complaining - we're winning consistently and are remarkably scoring in every game since he joined, I just hope if/when the wheels come off, it's not going to be a car-crash. It's the Villan in me, I'm scarred from years of trauma y'see.

Xg is an imperfect guide that doesn't account for things like form or ability. As an example Potter has now had both Brighton and Chelsea scoring well below their Xg over a number of seasons, that suggests something about how he sets teams up makes them need more chances than is statistically normal for the league. Emery appears, on a smaller sample size, to have the opposite effect where he creates teams that are ruthless with the chances they create. Xg won't adapt its methods for them but it doesn't mean Potter is unlucky and Emery is lucky, it just means that they are statistical outliers. Anything that is based on averages will always have those and it's impossible to account for them in the modelling.

As the most basic explanation Xg will have a hard coded value for penalties (0.79) based on x out y result in goals and situationally they're all the same. What that doesn't account for is how good the penalty taker is, how good the goalkeeper is, how much pressure there is on the taker, and many other things. It doesn' drilldown to those levels because instead it just uses a simple "79% of penalties result in a goal" stat. Across the entire league over a full season it'll be pretty accurate (because the underlying number is pulled from a similar dataset) but it doesn't mean anyone taking a penalty against anyone has a 79% chance to score.

I don't think it's luck if someone hits a screamer from 30yards, I don't think it's luck if a keeper pulls off a wonder save, they're examples of exceptional skill.

If a shot is going 2 yards wide but bounces off a couple of defenders and into the top corner then that's luck (but not all own-goals, sometimes the quality of the shot/cross creates a situation where an own goal is much more likely, that's another example of skill).

What I'm really getting at is that our form recently has been down to tactical and coaching excellence and the confidence that has created in the squad. Putting it down to luck is to subscribe (at least in part) to the 'bit of magic' approach of Gerrard and Bruce.

Someone above mentioned we were lucky with the Leicester sending off and the Forest injury but that completely ignores the fact that in the past we've been terrible against 10men but in both of those games we adapted and exploited the extra space brilliantly, that's not luck, it's preparation.

Don't think anyone asked for an explanation of xG, paul_e

[paul_e]

It's not luck though, it's just shit play. Chelsea are mid table partly because they can't score many, as we saw with their shit finishing. Individual errors in defence against Leicester weren't luck, it was shit defending. Ollie scoring a lot now isn't luck, same as him missing loads earlier in the season wasn't luck.

Exactly.

Luck, like fate and karma simply does not exist.

It depends what you consider luck to be really. For me it's a group of unlikely events happening one after the other to lead to something you couldn't have predicted.

The Arsenal 3rd is a decent example, shot from 25 yards hits the underside of the bar in such a way that not only does it deflect into the ground but does it in such a way that the spin on the ball makes the bounce go directly onto the back of Martinez head and into the net. There's still an element of skill involved in hitting the shot as well as he did but if the ball bounces of the turf in almost any other way Emi has time to collect it and get us a point. For me that's just about in the realms of good fortune (or bad depending on your viewpoint). So there's not much less than that that I'd put down as luck (outside of the live game, during a game I'll often call things lucky but that's more an expression than anything else).

[RamboandBruno]

Most of those Chelsea shots were from about 3 miles out, too.

That's just not true. 19 of their efforts were inside the box, and 10 of them were closer than the penalty spot. I'm not saying we didn't play well, or that we didn't defend brilliantly after taking the lead (we obviously did!), merely that the sheer number of chances they created - some of them pretty good - would "normally" lead to goals, and that we were a bit lucky on the day. 

And that's okay. It's not a criticism of us or our performance. Sometimes you get the rub of the green, or benefit from the other team's forwards having an off-day, and on that day I think we DID benefit from that.  Like I said previously, I think the "luck" against Chelsea was balanced out by Leicester having five shots all afternoon and scoring four in a different game against us - a game I think we deserved to win on the balance of play, but they go lucky due to a couple of big individual errors.

Im afraid i disagree. Chilwell clearly fouls Young for their ruled out equaliser. Mudryk fluffs his lines when through, Kante drags one wide when he should of done better. That is just poor play from them no luck involved. On the flip side Martinez makes at least one if not two great saves, again no luck just good play from us.
The rest of their shots from memory went miles over the bar, again poor play.
Again against Leicester, Traore has a lot to do after their defensive error, slightly less to do against Forest, but still had to stick it away.
Im not saying we’ve set the world alight in every game, we clearly haven’t, but this idea of luck, just waters down Emery’s huge achievements so far this season.

[LeeB]

Luck works both ways.

Indeed.

If there's a definition of luck here, what kind of luck does going ahead against Arsenal twice, being at 2-2 on 93 minutes and having a shot bounce down off the bar, off the back of the keeper's head and in represent?

Yep, I agree, that's the biggest action of luck in any of our recent games.

Maybe, but Arsenal completely controlled that second half and you just knew that Martínez time-wasting at 2-2 just before injury time, was going to come back to haunt us.

I can see where Chris is coming from, I know people think xG is bollocks but it is an indicator of sorts, and we're outscoring it in almost every game on this run.

We haven't been swash-buckling in any of our wins but maybe that isn't the Emery way and hard-fought victories where we're more ruthless than the opposition is probably going to be the order of the day under him. Not complaining - we're winning consistently and are remarkably scoring in every game since he joined, I just hope if/when the wheels come off, it's not going to be a car-crash. It's the Villan in me, I'm scarred from years of trauma y'see.

Xg is an imperfect guide that doesn't account for things like form or ability. As an example Potter has now had both Brighton and Chelsea scoring well below their Xg over a number of seasons, that suggests something about how he sets teams up makes them need more chances than is statistically normal for the league. Emery appears, on a smaller sample size, to have the opposite effect where he creates teams that are ruthless with the chances they create. Xg won't adapt its methods for them but it doesn't mean Potter is unlucky and Emery is lucky, it just means that they are statistical outliers. Anything that is based on averages will always have those and it's impossible to account for them in the modelling.

As the most basic explanation Xg will have a hard coded value for penalties (0.79) based on x out y result in goals and situationally they're all the same. What that doesn't account for is how good the penalty taker is, how good the goalkeeper is, how much pressure there is on the taker, and many other things. It doesn' drilldown to those levels because instead it just uses a simple "79% of penalties result in a goal" stat. Across the entire league over a full season it'll be pretty accurate (because the underlying number is pulled from a similar dataset) but it doesn't mean anyone taking a penalty against anyone has a 79% chance to score.

I don't think it's luck if someone hits a screamer from 30yards, I don't think it's luck if a keeper pulls off a wonder save, they're examples of exceptional skill.

If a shot is going 2 yards wide but bounces off a couple of defenders and into the top corner then that's luck (but not all own-goals, sometimes the quality of the shot/cross creates a situation where an own goal is much more likely, that's another example of skill).

What I'm really getting at is that our form recently has been down to tactical and coaching excellence and the confidence that has created in the squad. Putting it down to luck is to subscribe (at least in part) to the 'bit of magic' approach of Gerrard and Bruce.

Someone above mentioned we were lucky with the Leicester sending off and the Forest injury but that completely ignores the fact that in the past we've been terrible against 10men but in both of those games we adapted and exploited the extra space brilliantly, that's not luck, it's preparation.

Don't think anyone asked for an explanation of xG, paul_e

It provides context to the discussion, unlike your occasional shitposts.

[Bad English]

Let's all quote a massive post to moan about the massive post. Great one!

[LeeB]

Luck works both ways.

Indeed.

If there's a definition of luck here, what kind of luck does going ahead against Arsenal twice, being at 2-2 on 93 minutes and having a shot bounce down off the bar, off the back of the keeper's head and in represent?

Yep, I agree, that's the biggest action of luck in any of our recent games.

Maybe, but Arsenal completely controlled that second half and you just knew that Martínez time-wasting at 2-2 just before injury time, was going to come back to haunt us.

I can see where Chris is coming from, I know people think xG is bollocks but it is an indicator of sorts, and we're outscoring it in almost every game on this run.

We haven't been swash-buckling in any of our wins but maybe that isn't the Emery way and hard-fought victories where we're more ruthless than the opposition is probably going to be the order of the day under him. Not complaining - we're winning consistently and are remarkably scoring in every game since he joined, I just hope if/when the wheels come off, it's not going to be a car-crash. It's the Villan in me, I'm scarred from years of trauma y'see.

Xg is an imperfect guide that doesn't account for things like form or ability. As an example Potter has now had both Brighton and Chelsea scoring well below their Xg over a number of seasons, that suggests something about how he sets teams up makes them need more chances than is statistically normal for the league. Emery appears, on a smaller sample size, to have the opposite effect where he creates teams that are ruthless with the chances they create. Xg won't adapt its methods for them but it doesn't mean Potter is unlucky and Emery is lucky, it just means that they are statistical outliers. Anything that is based on averages will always have those and it's impossible to account for them in the modelling.

As the most basic explanation Xg will have a hard coded value for penalties (0.79) based on x out y result in goals and situationally they're all the same. What that doesn't account for is how good the penalty taker is, how good the goalkeeper is, how much pressure there is on the taker, and many other things. It doesn' drilldown to those levels because instead it just uses a simple "79% of penalties result in a goal" stat. Across the entire league over a full season it'll be pretty accurate (because the underlying number is pulled from a similar dataset) but it doesn't mean anyone taking a penalty against anyone has a 79% chance to score.

I don't think it's luck if someone hits a screamer from 30yards, I don't think it's luck if a keeper pulls off a wonder save, they're examples of exceptional skill.

If a shot is going 2 yards wide but bounces off a couple of defenders and into the top corner then that's luck (but not all own-goals, sometimes the quality of the shot/cross creates a situation where an own goal is much more likely, that's another example of skill).

What I'm really getting at is that our form recently has been down to tactical and coaching excellence and the confidence that has created in the squad. Putting it down to luck is to subscribe (at least in part) to the 'bit of magic' approach of Gerrard and Bruce.

Someone above mentioned we were lucky with the Leicester sending off and the Forest injury but that completely ignores the fact that in the past we've been terrible against 10men but in both of those games we adapted and exploited the extra space brilliantly, that's not luck, it's preparation.

Don't think anyone asked for an explanation of xG, paul_e

It provides context to the discussion, unlike your occasional shitposts.

Let's all quote a massive post to moan about the massive post. Great one!

Soz.

[Baldy]

A lot of the new players we buy seem to get 'crocked' within no time. I call that shit luck before we even get on the pitch!!

[purpletrousers]

It's not luck though, it's just shit play. Chelsea are mid table partly because they can't score many, as we saw with their shit finishing. Individual errors in defence against Leicester weren't luck, it was shit defending. Ollie scoring a lot now isn't luck, same as him missing loads earlier in the season wasn't luck.

Exactly.

Luck, like fate and karma simply does not exist.

Rolling a lot of different concepts into one there.

(Buddhistic pedant alert)
In arguing against luck and influencing outcomes instead by actions, you are getting close to describing karma, willed/volitional action.

You are probably thinking of karma vipaka, the fruit of the actions, but again I'm not clear you don't believe doing crappy things will not have crappy outcomes for yourself (you'll feel it on some level).

As to whether you are arguing against an inherent natural way of things, that acting more other regarding won't have positive consequences for yourself etc, well it's not my experience. 

Anyway, to adopt H&V vernacular, oh to 'funeral' the barcodes. They'll get reborn anyway. 

[Smithy]

Most of those Chelsea shots were from about 3 miles out, too.

That's just not true. 19 of their efforts were inside the box, and 10 of them were closer than the penalty spot. I'm not saying we didn't play well, or that we didn't defend brilliantly after taking the lead (we obviously did!), merely that the sheer number of chances they created - some of them pretty good - would "normally" lead to goals, and that we were a bit lucky on the day. 

And that's okay. It's not a criticism of us or our performance. Sometimes you get the rub of the green, or benefit from the other team's forwards having an off-day, and on that day I think we DID benefit from that.  Like I said previously, I think the "luck" against Chelsea was balanced out by Leicester having five shots all afternoon and scoring four in a different game against us - a game I think we deserved to win on the balance of play, but they go lucky due to a couple of big individual errors.

Im afraid i disagree. Chilwell clearly fouls Young for their ruled out equaliser. Mudryk fluffs his lines when through, Kante drags one wide when he should of done better. That is just poor play from them no luck involved. On the flip side Martinez makes at least one if not two great saves, again no luck just good play from us.
The rest of their shots from memory went miles over the bar, again poor play.
Again against Leicester, Traore has a lot to do after their defensive error, slightly less to do against Forest, but still had to stick it away.
Im not saying we’ve set the world alight in every game, we clearly haven’t, but this idea of luck, just waters down Emery’s huge achievements so far this season.

I agree with all of that, I think it's this perception that people are saying Emery has been "lucky" like it's some supernatural force that has been dragging him along. I'm certainly not suggesting that. I don't even know if "luck" is the right word, it just seems like the right vocabulary for the point I'm trying to make. I don't believe in luck, or karma or any of that superstitious nonsense, but I still think buying a winning lottery ticket is "lucky", or that getting a hole in one is "lucky".

What I do know is that if we played Chelsea 100 times, and in each of those games they had 27 shots to our 5, and had 69% of the possession, then I think we would lose more of those 100 games than we win. We'd still win some, and I believe we were "lucky" to get one of those days when the team with all the shots and possession loses.  I don't know what the right word for that "luck" is, maybe it's not "lucky", maybe it's something else.  Probability suggests if your opposition has five times the chances you do, then you're going to lose more in the long run, but you can still win the odd game.

Chances created, possession and shots taken do not win matches. That's the beauty of this game. If they did, then every game's result would go to the side with the best stats.  But over time, the more games you play, the teams with the best of those stats drift toward the top of the table, and those with the worst go downward.  Because those things DO impact you chances of winning.

Again, I don't want to make out I'm dismissing Emery's or the team's achievements in the Chelsea game, I'm not.  And I don't want this to become a philosophical debate on the nature of 'fate', I just think it doesn't hurt to acknowledge we've had elements of good fortune in our recent good run.

(for the record, I often make the same point, but with the opposite emphasis when we've lost games while playing well - I promise I'm not just trying to be negative!)

[PeterWithesShin]

Chelsea have failed to score in 8 league games in 2023, it's nothing to do with luck, they're just a bit shit at scoring.

[ChicagoLion]

Who we playing Saturday?

[Lastfootstamper]

Who we playing Saturday?

Hopefully some team down on their luck.