Graham Potter and the xG conundrum

At the start of the month, we published a story on why Brighton are the unluckiest team in England, they then went on to beat Tottenham and Liverpool.

However, last night, after more dominance and packing of their excellent stats, Brighton went back to their old ways; racking up 25 shots to Crystal Palace’s three, and somehow losing 2-1.

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But the debate has begun around Brighton and the use of expected goals, with the Opta metric, since publicised by the BBC and Match of the Day, generally seen as a good measure of who’s been lucky, and who hasn’t.

Comparing the chances Brighton have had this season to the exact same quality chances in the history of the league, Brighton should be as high as fifth in this season’s table, with 11.85 more goals scored, and 3.99 less goals conceded.

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Clubs now use customised in-house analytics for scouting, with varied methods like ‘packing’ to measure the number of opponents a player beats with a pass or a dribble, as luck doesn’t always change.

Over a longer period of time there’s always a regression to the mean with expected goals, teams outperforming their totals begin to drop off, and those underperforming start to improve. However, that relies upon the quality of players’ to reach a league average, and for Brighton, that’s clearly not the case.

Graham Potter realised that this season by dispatching Matt Ryan in January who was statistically far and away the worst goalkeeper in the league, and improvements have been vast, but not finding a solution at the other end of the pitch could well be Brighton’s downfall come the end of the season. 

There’s no doubt that Brighton have been unlucky, but Monday night’s loss against Crystal Palace was the perfect example of why they can’t help themselves. 

Of their 25 shots, only five were on target, expected goals tells you they should have scored 2.59 goals, performances tell you Neal Maupay, Leandro Trossard, Danny Welbeck and the rest are clearly not unlucky, but nowhere near good enough at putting the ball in the net.