What were you expecting? A deep dive into the Sounders’ xG mess
The data suggests the Sounders are doing more right than wrong despite the frustrating results.
Following yet another frustrating home loss on Wednesday night, there’s a lot of consternation within the Seattle Sounders fan community about talk surrounding xG. There are folks who think stats are bunk and that soccer isn’t played on a spreadsheet. There are also folks who see the numbers as the be-all and end-all trump card when discussing matches. People, broadly speaking, should try not to find themselves firmly in either camp but instead realize that numbers and stats are a tool to investigate what’s going on at any given point.
Before we really dive into the nitty-gritty of what the heck is going on with the Sounders, it’s important to level set what we’re actually talking about when there is a discussion happening about expected goals. I asked Ian L., friend of the blog and American Soccer Analysis extraordinaire to help me understand.
“People tend to misuse xG as a tool to hand-wave away results, but that’s not its intention,” Ian said. “If you watch soccer, you’re probably pretty aware that shots are good things to produce, and that some shots are better than others. All xG does is measure the quality of chances a team is creating. Unless you believe there is no fundamental difference between a 4-yard tap-in and an ambitious 25-yard strike, you believe in the philosophy behind expected goals.
“xG isn’t meant to replace goals, or diminish the importance of them. It’s a statistic that measures a specific thing and it does that incredibly well. That being said, xG is a big-picture statistic. Single-game xG is one of the ways that the stat can be used somewhat improperly. While it’s interesting to look at a single game and even single shot xG, not all 4-yard shots are, in reality, created equally. All of this tends to come out in the wash with enough data points.”
The Sounders aren’t winning games at the moment. That’s painfully obvious to anyone who has watched the matches. They have three wins in their last nine league matches and they’ve lost three of their last four home matches. They’ve scored one first-half goal during this run, and that sequence seemingly injured their leading goal scorer Jordan Morris. They haven’t scored more than one goal in a match since April 8, a stretch of nine matches. But then again, you probably don’t need me to tell you that things haven’t been great.
What’s a little more interesting than just that cursory glance at the high-level numbers is what’s happening underneath the hood. If you’re an xG skeptic, I’m sorry for about what you’re going to read. The Sounders currently lead the league in xG created with 28.1 xG, despite only scoring 21 goals. Yes, to no one’s surprise, that is the biggest discrepancy between goals scored and excepted goals created. They are an incredibly good team in most advanced-statistical categories. Like, as good or better in some cases than LAFC despite playing more matches. Is it just poor and/or unlucky finishing? What’s happening here?
Of the Sounders’ 10 best chances they’ve created this season, they have scored eight of them. However, if you look at their 33 best chances you will find that they’ve missed 19 of them. This isn’t just one player in a poor run of form in front of goal. These misses and goals are pretty much shared equally across those you’d expect: Jordan Morris, Raúl Ruidíaz, Héber, and Cristian Roldan.
Another interesting data point is how good the Sounders are defensively. Seattle is a top-five team in the league in terms of expected goals allowed (xGA). They lead the league in shutouts and Stefan Frei is excelling at all the fancy goalkeeper stats. Everything points towards the Sounders being a very good team, if not, the best team in MLS.
It doesn’t feel good to look at this stuff with an analytical lens. After all, we are watching the Sounders lose games they should be winning, but I think it provides helpful context for what we should be expecting. I have seen people suggest that some sort of voodoo magic fell upon the Sounders after Dairon Asprilla’s bicycle kick went in and now they lack fight and desire. A different column can go deep on this subject to be sure, but it’s important to look at the data when trying to reach conclusions. The Sounders are performing very well in terms of duels, they’re doing okay in even game-states, and they’re blowing their opponents out of the water after they go a goal down.
As a fan, it’s easy to worry and be alarmed when things are going wrong. And, for the record, I would like to clearly state that I think losing while not scoring goals is bad and cause for concern. When you’re worried and concerned, it’s natural to want to change the process, but the Sounders have a good process. I think only LAFC has a slightly better process. If you ask any nerd that’s a fan of a different team in this league, they’d want their team to be putting up the Sounders’ numbers.
I’ll be honest, I set out on this project in hopes of finding some sort of smoking gun to point to. Maybe there was a statistical anomaly that I wasn’t seeing that’d tell the whole story. Nope. The worse thing the Sounders could do in this moment is rip up their playbook and try to do something different. Trust me, I know how boring and lame it is to hear that, but it’s true. The Sounders have a process that every successful team envies. Results will come, assuming they maintain this path.
In the sport of soccer, chance creation is king. Finishing is noisy. And there’s a whole bunch of luck involved.
Author note: A huge thanks to Ian. L of American Soccer Analysis for helping me dig into the numbers for this piece.