Kid Icarus

The analysis is very good, but his conclusion (doing sort of 3rd way centrism on HoweIn-ism and HoweOut-ism) is unsatisfying and a bit convictionless imo, especially when it seems like he does have a conclusion (Howe in) but doesn't come out and flat out say it.

Bruno is adored, he's our captain. Tonali's very good, but the connection isn't there like it is with Bruno.

Personally think we should never sell any of our star players to domestic teams. It should be completely non-negotiable and I don't think I'll ever change my view on that.

Hate modern football so much like

Also usually said about players who end up being amazing, so I'm gonna choose to be optimistic.

He looks very talented.

Dunno about that mind, 23/24 has a lot of the matches I reminisce about, particularly at the start of the season. Villa, PSG, Sheff United, Man United, Chelsea. I also remember the 3-1 loss away to Brighton because of how impressed I was by Brighton that they managed to play through it.

We've been reminiscing about how much we used to press since the start of last season. We definitely choose our moments to do it now.

This month has been 7 weeks long.

That wouldn't stop me.

There you go, you've just described it perfectly. While it would be even funnier if the reason why was because you'd had low attacker turnover and they'd been so bad that they hadn't scored more than Salah at Old Trafford, it's still funny that the reason why is because you've had high attacker turnover and keep having to buy and get rid of attackers because they've all (sweeping generalisation) been so shit.

I dunno like, Salah scoring more at Old Trafford than all but 7 of your own players in 7 years is a pretty mental stat like.

I don't think they were primed to hate him because of his looks or because of being into philosophy. As far as I remember everyone in our fanbase hated him at Everton because every time we played them he was a snivelling little shit bag who dived all the time. Since then he's been our fan's player of the season and escaped scrutiny from a year of poor, often lazy looking performances. Him getting called a scouse cunt isn't because he's a scouser, it's because he's played poorly and people are arseholes who'll use any tool at their disposal, short of racism and homophobia (though not always) to insult players. No one's calling him a scouse cunt in 23/24.

Deal!

Often thought we should have an N-O podcast that has different posters on week to week, but the quickness to which I'd probably call someone in the comments a cunt would make it pretty short lived like.

AWSF is definitely the best but it's held together by Dekka, Besty and Mark is sometimesa maybe good, etc. Outside of that the rest of Gallowgate Shots is bad and getting worse imo. Same knee jerk, fickle, zero attempt at insight, very little substance stuff you see everywhere else.

Other hand playing with yourself over the negativity.

It does happen a lot, but if my memory's right I can't think of loads of times per match where it ends up with huge chances for the opposition. Villa could just be conceding loads of low quality shots and the xga goes up in that way like, but either way I can't stand how they play.

The thing with xga though is that it still only combines the amount/quality of shots, so while the context of how the opposition get to have those shots in the first place isn't known, it shouldn't really matter because it's still resulting in few shots, or poor quality shots. If our midfield and defence were easy to cut through at will you would expect that to happen more often and result in higher xga surely. Villa are also 5th worst for the amount/quality of chances the opposition has against them, yet somehow 6th best in the league for actual goals against. There's no reason for that to be a tactic of their's I don't think. The long shot thing is sort of plausible, but they're also quite often only having 1 or 2 shots and score from one of them, so it seems like a mental way to approach that tactic like. Villa do my head tbh and have done for ages. When you watch them it matches up with those stats imo, they're so often like a punching above its weight team (like us in 11/12) but they've been like this for the best part of 3 fucking years.

Also bonus stat, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Villa are massively overachieving on their xg and xga.

Nah, 5th best, see below. It doesn't tell the whole story (and tbh this is all really broad strokes anyway) though. Not only are we conceding more than the xg the opposition has against us (45 goals conceded to 39 xga) we're also not meeting our own xg (44 goals to nearly 48xg) The disparity with the xga is much bigger though, We're 5th best for xga, 14th actual goals against, but for xg we're 8th best, also 8th for actual goals scored. Basically priority 1 is a 'keeper, but I think we all knew that.

Ah I get what you're saying. No, it's basically xG that the opposition has had against us in our matches, ours is the 5th best in the league - so we're quite good in comparison to the rest of the league at not giving away really clear cut chances often in matches. The fact that in terms of actual goals conceded we're 14th and our actual position being 12th would suggest that the problem is with the opposition either being freakishly good at converting chances against us, and/or we have a goalkeeper problem.

You asked what xga is telling you that the stats you mentioned don't. That we're extremely unlucky and/or need a new 'keeper is what it's telling you that the other stats aren't. I'd personally say it's been a bit of the former (it has felt like nigh on every chance the opposition has had has flown in) but it's more that we need a new 'keeper. And no, that wouldn't be everything solved, but it's one part of the puzzle.