Can’t read it because paywall but do they say why they excluded penalties? I understand it for players but surely for teams conceding/earning a penalty would be relevant to the overall point of this graphic.

That some people cant read such a simple graph scares me. It even shows above the graph which part of the club tadpoles that is last season and which part is this one

I’ve always been so apprehensive at how quickly the public adopted it as the end-all-be-all stat. It’s flawed and subjective (the fact different sites have different models). It’s similar to how basketball fans use the TS% to settle debates nowadays.

I think this should be viewed at the end of the season.

Because every time I’ve watched either Everton or Chelsea they’ve looked much better than they did last season, and typically performances come before results.

But if you were to ask me the two most improved clubs in terms of performance this season I would say Chelsea and Everton, closely followed by us.

Chelsea and Everton the “most improved” while both having a generally awful start to the season is a fun indication of how useful xG is.

Except Everton have been pretty good and are easily the most underrated team in the leauge. I’d argue they were pretty unlucky and were shit aginst Luton which apparently is the only relevant game of the season for judging them on. If anything, their quality on the pitch compared with their xG is a lot more similar than when compared to how many points they’ve gained.

xG is worthless for you because you couldn’t finish of a virgin who’d been edging for 8 hours.

Chelsea finished 12th last season and are 10th now

Everton finished 17th last season and are 14th now without the deducted points

The teams have both improved

No up and to the right is best, the x axis is xG conceded per game, and it’s descending

It’s either Everton or Chelsea. Quite hard to really say who from this graph

After the initial outrage over the 10pt deduction dies down, Toffees would be secretly happy that it came at the best time for them.

Last season, they’re relegated. Earlier this season when they were on a bad run and suddenly the doom and gloom around the club could’ve spiralled. Later this season and they wouldn’t have the games left to react.

But now, in a good run, with enough games to go and the siege mentality setting in with very low risk of actual relegation = best outcome of a bad situation.

Everton most improved, Liverpool best attack, Arsenal best defence, Man City prob best overall, Man Utd biggest decline, Sheffield United worst team in league & interestingly for all the Spurs hype their defence has declined by a similar amount that theor attack has improved by & they look like they should be midtable