Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread

[Valentino Bolognese]

10 hours ago, perthsaint1977 said:

11 hours ago, tree house tam said:

Should've just left that out,  then we could see how many and for how long the knickerwetters get themselves in a twist.
As we can see a few have been at it already. 

As Callum has done all season, he won't risk a player unless 100% fit. No issues with that personally

Of course, we know he's cautious and that's a good thing. I guess what threw me was Callum being in the papers the day before saying 'he's definitely going to be involved', looking good in training' and then no mention of any injury, and him being on the bench. Has there been anything saying he's injured?

Sort of hard to know what to think when the information isn't there. 

[RandomGuy.]

4 minutes ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

It's not voodoo.

Or is it?

He overperformed his xGp90 over the past two league seasons by a combined 0.44.

This season hes underperformed by 0.4 so far...

[Valentino Bolognese]

20 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Or is it?

He overperformed his xGp90 over the past two league seasons by a combined 0.44.

This season hes underperformed by 0.4 so far...

Is that not just 'form'?

[Radford]

We have a small squad and have barely been bothered with injuries since the first few weeks of the season, so the manager's approach looks to be working. 

Agree they could have communicated that there was a doubt over Melamed but, again, that doesn't seem to be this manager's approach. Cards pinned to his chest. 

Bit of criticism of the team further up the thread but in terms of how we are playing, I really don't know what more Saints fans can expect. We have a clear style of play, are well structured (look at how few chances we give away) and have had the ascendancy in 80% of our matches. 

If there is some magical way we can play that is going to create more and better chances than we've been managing so far this season, I'd love to hear it. It certainly wasn't under the previous manager where we'd scrape together a few each match.

All CD can do is continue on and if his forwards don't start producing then ship them out and bring replacements in. The style of play is good, the players are responding well to it and we are firmly on the right path IMO. 

[RandomGuy.]

18 minutes ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

Is that not just 'form'?

Aye was just a joke about the mythical power of xG "normalisation" tbh.

I realise how sad that sounds now I've written it down.

[Valentino Bolognese]

5 minutes ago, Radford said:

We have a small squad and have barely been bothered with injuries since the first few weeks of the season, so the manager's approach looks to be working. 

Agree they could have communicated that there was a doubt over Melamed but, again, that doesn't seem to be this manager's approach. Cards pinned to his chest. 

Bit of criticism of the team further up the thread but in terms of how we are playing, I really don't know what more Saints fans can expect. We have a clear style of play, are well structured (look at how few chances we give away) and have had the ascendancy in 80% of our matches. 

If there is some magical way we can play that is going to create more and better chances than we've been managing so far this season, I'd love to hear it. It certainly wasn't under the previous manager where we'd scrape together a few each match.

All CD can do is continue on and if his forwards don't start producing then ship them out and bring replacements in. The style of play is good, the players are responding well to it and we are firmly on the right path IMO. 

Think most fans would agree with this. We're good all over the park except near goal, which is frustrating but we're not leaking goals. The system does appear to be working. 

The criticism around finishing is justified though, we seem incredibly wasteful in that area of the pitch. Hendry and Kane are well short of the mark, MOH has never been a consistent finisher and neither are Spoony and Conway. We've seen some incredible misses this year from those 5 players. You'd also expect Davidson and Kerr to chip in with a few every season too but as others have said our crossing isn't consistent enough and Kerr seems to be overlapping to overload the right when getting in the box might be more productive. 

All in all though the signs are really good and for a first season under a new manager, given the unique circumstances, I agree that we could be in a far worse position and I'm enjoying watching Saints as much as you can on the telly with an empty stadium. 

[The Marly]

Tbf Hendry last season outperformed Morelos and Griffiths, and was scoring at a similar rate to Edouard despite getting less chances.
There does seem to be underlying reasons as to why he's struggled to score regularly this season.

The key words here are "last season". I don't know what's happened with Hendry but it's like watching a different player from last season. If you look at his goal v Sevco last season, would you be confident he'd score that chance this season? I wouldn't.

[The Marly]

You do know that every time you think 'he should have scored from there' or 'should never have taken that shot on', that's basically your own internal estimation of xG? If you walk away from a game thinking 'Hendry should have had 3 today', that's your xG?
All xG does is rather than say 'he should have scored' it looks at the numbers and says 'the average striker scores that one 24% of the time'. 
It's a really good metric for how a team's performing and usually aligns pretty well with what most folk see on the pitch. It's not voodoo.

Yep. And it's just as irrelevant as "he should have scored".

[RandomGuy.]

20 minutes ago, The Marly said:

If you look at his goal v Sevco last season.

Only goal he's scored for us thats seen him take more than a touch before shooting...

It must be a mental thing in part? Watched a collection of his misses this season and he spends longer with his head in his hands after than anything else.

His expectation for himself are probably too high because of last season. There was no chance he was repeating that.

[Valentino Bolognese]

1 hour ago, The Marly said:

6 hours ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

You do know that every time you think 'he should have scored from there' or 'should never have taken that shot on', that's basically your own internal estimation of xG? If you walk away from a game thinking 'Hendry should have had 3 today', that's your xG?
All xG does is rather than say 'he should have scored' it looks at the numbers and says 'the average striker scores that one 24% of the time'. 
It's a really good metric for how a team's performing and usually aligns pretty well with what most folk see on the pitch. It's not voodoo.

Yep. And it's just as irrelevant as "he should have scored".

In what way is not relevant in assessing a player or team performance to look at if they consistently miss easy chances?

I can't get my head around why you don't think that's quite important. 

[Valentino Bolognese]

46 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Watched a collection of his misses this season

That's taking 'glutton for punishment' too far. 

Hope you're not planning on releasing it as a festive DVD. 

He did score a perfectly legitimate goal against Hibs though and as it turned out it had a material impact on the game. I do wonder how big an impact that had as his confidence was already a bit shaky.

[The Marly]

In what way is not relevant in assessing a player or team performance to look at if they consistently miss easy chances?
I can't get my head around why you don't think that's quite important. 

It's not relevant to the result of the game. If I have watched a game I don't need xG to tell me how the game has gone.

[Valentino Bolognese]

1 minute ago, The Marly said:

35 minutes ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

In what way is not relevant in assessing a player or team performance to look at if they consistently miss easy chances?
I can't get my head around why you don't think that's quite important. 

It's not relevant to the result of the game. If I have watched a game I don't need xG to tell me how the game has gone.

Who was saying it's relevant to the result of the game? Of course it's not. Nobody would say that. 

Knowing who in your team are better finishers, or if there's a general problem, is pretty important to how you set out your team though if you want to improve your chances of performing better in future games. 

And as to the second point, there's quite a weighty stack of evidence that shows that people have a bad habit of seeing what they want to see, humans are a pretty poor judge of actual performance. Also it's pretty much impossible to accurately hold in your head how players have performed in every game over the course of several seasons. 

I am genuinely bemused here. Are you saying that we might as not bother with any stats at all, on the basis that 'people watch games'?

[RandomGuy.]

1 hour ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

That's taking 'glutton for punishment' too far. 

Hope you're not planning on releasing it as a festive DVD. 

He did score a perfectly legitimate goal against Hibs though and as it turned out it had a material impact on the game. I do wonder how big an impact that had as his confidence was already a bit shaky.

Aye he had that, and the one against Livingston cleared off the line. Was just curious about a couple of things.

[The Marly]

Who was saying it's relevant to the result of the game? Of course it's not. Nobody would say that. 
Knowing who in your team are better finishers, or if there's a general problem, is pretty important to how you set out your team though if you want to improve your chances of performing better in future games. 
And as to the second point, there's quite a weighty stack of evidence that shows that people have a bad habit of seeing what they want to see, humans are a pretty poor judge of actual performance. Also it's pretty much impossible to accurately hold in your head how players have performed in every game over the course of several seasons. 
I am genuinely bemused here. Are you saying that we might as not bother with any stats at all, on the basis that 'people watch games'?

No, I'm saying that what works for you might not work for others. I see football as entertainment, not a science. I go to a game (when it's allowed) and then I go to the pub and have a laugh and a bevy with my mates. I don't spend hours analysing stats, because football isn't the only interest in my life. I don't worry about setting the team up because it's not my job. For me as a fan the only stat that matters is goals scored. Anyway who knows what stats are accurate? They vary depending on what website/paper you read.

[Valentino Bolognese]

16 minutes ago, The Marly said:

1 hour ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

Who was saying it's relevant to the result of the game? Of course it's not. Nobody would say that. 
Knowing who in your team are better finishers, or if there's a general problem, is pretty important to how you set out your team though if you want to improve your chances of performing better in future games. 
And as to the second point, there's quite a weighty stack of evidence that shows that people have a bad habit of seeing what they want to see, humans are a pretty poor judge of actual performance. Also it's pretty much impossible to accurately hold in your head how players have performed in every game over the course of several seasons. 
I am genuinely bemused here. Are you saying that we might as not bother with any stats at all, on the basis that 'people watch games'?

No, I'm saying that what works for you might not work for others. I see football as entertainment, not a science. I go to a game (when it's allowed) and then I go to the pub and have a laugh and a bevy with my mates. I don't spend hours analysing stats, because football isn't the only interest in my life. I don't worry about setting the team up because it's not my job. For me as a fan the only stat that matters is goals scored. Anyway who knows what stats are accurate? They vary depending on what website/paper you read.

Ah, OK. That's fair enough, but a million miles from what you were saying earlier. As it happens I like to do all that too, but I also think looking at some of the numbers occasionally actually makes things more interesting. Taking an interest in stats is not 'spending hours' doing that and having no other interests. Not everything is an extreme. In fact the only football stats I ever look at are the ones that Random chucks out on here.

I do find it really odd that you think I or anyone else is telling anyone how to enjoy your football (would never presume to do that), or that I would 'worry about setting up a team'. I will have a view on the team a manager puts out though, as every fan does. To me, that's part of the fun too. Don't you do that? 

Anyway thanks for the distraction this afternoon because it got me interested in research on how bias and perception influences how people view sporting events. There's a lot of fascinating stuff out there. Science and entertainment can live together, both offer different ways to enjoy yourself and if you're interested in both the crossover works. 

 

[RandomGuy.]

As a fan, stats like xG, and in fact most figures, should only ever be used to either support what you're seeing, or to try and explain what you're seeing.

I think.

Hendry for an example has clearly scored less, and is missing chances. xG backs that up, but also explains that he's not getting the same "quality" of chances this season (4 goals from 0.25+ chances last season, only 1 0.25+ chance this season). Some people are maybe seeing that anyway, and that's fine, it backs up their "eye test", or challenges what they're seeing and gives them something to consider. That's all I'm aiming to do tbh, add a different angle for Saints fans.

Never understood why people get so worked up about it all and try and belittle people, or force their opinion on people, though. And that's both sides, I've seen huge Twitter arguments where analysts try and strong arm people into believing certain figures are definitive proof of something. 

Edited November 12, 2020 by RandomGuy.

[The Marly]

Ah, OK. That's fair enough, but a million miles from what you were saying earlier. As it happens I like to do all that too, but I also think looking at some of the numbers occasionally actually makes things more interesting. Taking an interest in stats is not 'spending hours' doing that and having no other interests. Not everything is an extreme. In fact the only football stats I ever look at are the ones that Random chucks out on here.
I do find it really odd that you think I or anyone else is telling anyone how to enjoy your football (would never presume to do that), or that I would 'worry about setting up a team'. I will have a view on the team a manager puts out though, as every fan does. To me, that's part of the fun too. Don't you do that? 
Anyway thanks for the distraction this afternoon because it got me interested in research on how bias and perception influences how people view sporting events. There's a lot of fascinating stuff out there. Science and entertainment can live together, both offer different ways to enjoy yourself and if you're interested in both the crossover works. 
 

Aye, should have said irrelevant to me[emoji1]

[akuram]

The key words here are "last season". I don't know what's happened with Hendry but it's like watching a different player from last season. If you look at his goal v Sevco last season, would you be confident he'd score that chance this season? I wouldn't.

It’s a pity his goal against Hibs was wrongly disallowed as that might have made all the difference to his confidence. Strikers need goals.

[Salguodinmethven.]

Hendry will score this Saturday xG  roughly about 03.26+.pm.