We have qualified for the CL.

[dave.woodhall]

Mashiters unique passive aggressive coverage strikes again.

How overperforming Villa returned to Champions League

Edit: Sickbegger making friends in the BBC comments as well.

What’s this guy’s background? Everything I’ve read from him has a bit of a dig at us.

I'd guess he's had a falling out with someone at the club, the sad little man.

He has.

[mike]

What a twat.

[PaulWinch again]

It’s so weird to let that seep into your job.

[Somniloquism]

Mashiters unique passive aggressive coverage strikes again.

How overperforming Villa returned to Champions League

Edit: Sickbegger making friends in the BBC comments as well.

What’s this guy’s background? Everything I’ve read from him has a bit of a dig at us.

I'd guess he's had a falling out with someone at the club, the sad little man.

He has.

Someone in the comments stated something similar. I just assumed it was because he was from the E&S so was a bitter Albion or Wolves.

[eamonn]

What about yer man, Ollie something or other, Emily Bishop's son? Does he still hate us for making poor Marty O'Neill throw his toys out?

[LeeB]

Tim Spiers at the Athletic is another bitter Doghead who can't help letting it show.

[Somniloquism]

What about yer man, Ollie something or other, Emily Bishop's son? Does he still hate us for making poor Marty O'Neill throw his toys out?

His latest is that Guardiola is leaving after next week. Cue Emery to Citeh links if true.

[PaulWinch again]

That is nailed on to be Maresca.

[LeeB]

That is nailed on to be Maresca.

You would think so.

[teamvillage]

This is spot on. xG is a useful stat to gamblers as it usually predicts future goal outcomes slightly better than actual goals. This is not unexpected given the lumpiness (technically, stochastic variability) of football outcomes.  However, it has been embraced enthusiastically, but sadly incorrectly, by people as meaning “who’s actually best”. There are several methodological weaknesses to it (that have been discussed here and elsewhere), but the biggest one to my mind is that in football goals are actually scored or not, and that effects behaviour in the rest of the game. If we go a goal up, we often slip into control mode under Emery, limiting future xG creation. So looking at xG of a match with hindsight does not actually tell you who should have won, because if we had not in fact been ahead, we’d quite likely have created more.

The one that really boils my piss is remarking on us outperforming our xGA and implying this means we're incredibly lucky, rather than the blindingly obvious point that having a world class goalkeeper might mean keeping more goals out than teams who don't.

[paul_e]

This is spot on. xG is a useful stat to gamblers as it usually predicts future goal outcomes slightly better than actual goals. This is not unexpected given the lumpiness (technically, stochastic variability) of football outcomes.  However, it has been embraced enthusiastically, but sadly incorrectly, by people as meaning “who’s actually best”. There are several methodological weaknesses to it (that have been discussed here and elsewhere), but the biggest one to my mind is that in football goals are actually scored or not, and that effects behaviour in the rest of the game. If we go a goal up, we often slip into control mode under Emery, limiting future xG creation. So looking at xG of a match with hindsight does not actually tell you who should have won, because if we had not in fact been ahead, we’d quite likely have created more.

The one that really boils my piss is remarking on us outperforming our xGA and implying this means we're incredibly lucky, rather than the blindingly obvious point that having a world class goalkeeper might mean keeping more goals out than teams who don't.

and made all the worse by the fact that it's usually said by people who will talk about how Raya, Alisson, Donnarumma, etc are all brilliant but who either ignore Martinez or grudgingly include him. All the parts are there to show that he's still one of the top keepers in the world but putting those dots together is beyond the average pundit who doesn't like to look outside the sky 6 for their opinions.