Quick and Nasty Stats - Leading xGA This Season
A quick and easy one today.
I haven’t been able to watch the first week of Champions League matches becuase it’s on another streaming service - I’ll tell you what…. watching football is expensive these days.
Anyway, enough about my private boycott of Champions League (and being a tight arse).
It’s obviously too early to look too far into numbers as most players have only played a few games. However, there’s still a few cool things to look at regarding expected assists and goal leaders in the top leagues this season so far.
Like I said though - players have only played four or five games, so one great match, or a poor one, can skew numbers.
Still, here’s the top ten, with links to eBay sales pages.
Not too many surprises towards the top. Haaland and Lewandowski are elite scorers - and Kylian Mbappe has started the season in red hot form.
We can look a little more into these players, with the use of WyScout.
A few things are sticking out to me here.
Karim Benzema and Michail Antonio are well above their expected goals and assists - mostly through goals scored. I’d expect them to continue closer to their xGA moving forward.
On the other hand, Sadio Mane has been performing under his expected xGA. He had a bit of a rough season last year (by his elite standards), but so did Liverpool - so I’m keen to see how how he goes this year.
Amine Gouiri continues to be a beast.
Paul Pogba has been in the news as a leading assist-getter so far. However, that’s off quite a small expected assist numer (what we’re looking at here).
Mikel Oyarzabal is coming off the Euros and the Olympics for Spain - Still only 24, he’s recently been linked to Manchester City instead of Harry Kane.
Erling Haaland, Robert Lewandowski, and Kylian Mbappe are probably the three most effective attacking players on the planet right now. Obviously Messi and Ronaldo are Messi and Ronaldo - but you can’t argue with those as a top three. On a side note, check out Erling Haaland’s rookie sticker (PSA 10) price change according to Market Movers (affiliate link) over the past three months.
What Does All This Mean?
Don’t look too much into numbers for a couple of games. Obviously, the larger the sample size, the better.
It’s interesting to compare this to other checkpoints throughout the year and see who dropps off.
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