This will be an article that tells you what expected goals (xG) is, what it isn’t, and solves all the debates about it once and for all. Or, at least, I expect it to. At its simplest, the statistic is a measure of chance quality. Shots are given an xG value based on a number…
When Phil Foden was on the cusp of coming through at Manchester City, the buzz around him was of a David Silva successor. The 20-year-old referenced this in a recent interview with the BBC too. “I was learning a lot in every training session from David [Silva] because I was playing in his role,” Foden…
It seems like an obvious challenge, to avoid saying ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, when writing a blog about data visualisations. So I’ll fail early and get it out of the way. A picture paints a thousand words. The phrase is a slight simplification, of course. Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech…
With statistics being used in football more than ever, there are many articles out there telling you how to use them. These are useful, of course, but reading how-to guides isn’t always how we learn. Just like goalkeepers learn to be aware of their surroundings after seeing moments like Dion Dublin’s peekaboo goal past Shay…
Things just keep moving. A decade ago, possession percentage wasn’t yet on peoples’ minds; now, the biggest symbol of stats in football — expected goals (xG) — is calculated with computer modelling. That’s quite a change. However, just because there’s an algorithm involved doesn’t mean it’s difficult to understand. The concept is pretty intuitive, even…
At the beginning of a new year, it’s always a good time to remind oneself that there is hope for everyone. That each of us has the space and capacity to grow, to learn, to evolve, to strengthen, to become a truer or better version of ourselves. Even football teams who haven’t scored in six…
This has been the season of many things. It’s been the season of an ever-changeable title race landscape. It’s been the season of vastly changing fortunes, with dips and rises for Mikel Arteta, Frank Lampard, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. And it’s been the season where a still-quite-young Aston Villa left-winger has broken out and looked…
Everybody does things differently. Often, an off-the-shelf solution will work well enough, but it’s always better to let people go their own way if possible. It’s with that in mind that we’ve added the ability to make custom stat groups in the Twenty3 Toolbox’s Football Lab. Since the Toolbox’s launch, we’ve grouped statistics in the…
At Twenty3, we built our Toolbox to help our customers get good work and make the most out of data. Whether that’s reference pages for statistics, beautiful graphics, or powerful insight tools, there’s a spanner or Allen key in the Toolbox for you. The latest addition to the kit sees the introduction of our very…
Somehow, all old football fashion that looked terrible when I was a child is now popular. The old bruised banana Arsenal kit? Paid homage to with last season’s away kit. Kits with clashing splashes of neon-esque colour? All the rage. Patterns that look like the upholstery of public transport seats and tablecloths? Back. Fashion, I’m…