I gotta say the Vine City MARTA station got an audible guffaw that scared the ish out of my cat. Well done.
Ironically, this post came in about 15 minutes before the ATLUTD Season Ticket folks called me. I had been hesitating on pulling the trigger, but this brought me some comfort enough to help buy AMB another piece of a boat or something.
While I sort of agree with your overall conclusion, and our ability to play triangles is one thing Pineda was able to pretty much instill. Where I differ is I think the guys taking shots, ironically with the exception of Rios, are actually systematically and repeatebly bad at finishing. And just a little unlucky. You can see it in their technique with their dominant foot, and none of them could make a high school varsity if they had to play only with their non-dominant foot.
Sam... THANK YOU for using data and putting into words what I've been trying to explain to friends and family all year about this team when they ask me why the team is so bad.
I'd also add that even something as simple as GD paints the picture of how poorly Atlanta has underachieved this season. There is no way they should be sitting below teams like Montreal, Toronto, and DC, all on -15 or worse. Heck, just look at Atlanta's GA. They're right up there with Miami, Cincy, and the NY teams.
At no point in the article we're there any stats, what so ever, that blame the giant coaches heads I made from Tata to Pineda for all the bad luck. This has me re-thinking the decision on whether I make a new giant noggin for the next coach.... or not.
This is a great overview. I'd be interested in understanding whether how our solid xG result holds up when you look at xG per shot attempt. I'm saying this without looking out any data, but what I would expect it to tell us is that we're accumulating xG for with a lot of low-quality chances and giving up comparatively fewer but comparatively higher-quality chances.
A "flaw" in xG is that it's additive. As an example, a team has 4 0.25 xG chances in a game and that's it and a team that has 20 .05 xG chances in a game will even up on xG 1.0-1.0. And yes the most likely result from that theoretical match is a draw, but the team with fewer chances in that situation should win about 60% of the time that it's not a draw, so you'd much rather be them. In fact, the average outcome for a team that plays that exact scenario 34 times in a season should be around 47 points - nothing crazy but in the playoffs - and if you're the high volume low quality team, your average season is 37 points, which just so happens to be what we're sitting on at the moment.
Araujo is a great example of this - his underlying numbers were always pretty good because he got the ball in good areas and moved the ball to good areas with frequency, but his final touch was always off the market (and not just because his shot selection required him to be Tito Villalba). Add it all up and it looks pretty good because of the volume but the actual likelihood of game-changing results was pretty low.
I gotta say the Vine City MARTA station got an audible guffaw that scared the ish out of my cat. Well done.
Ironically, this post came in about 15 minutes before the ATLUTD Season Ticket folks called me. I had been hesitating on pulling the trigger, but this brought me some comfort enough to help buy AMB another piece of a boat or something.
While I sort of agree with your overall conclusion, and our ability to play triangles is one thing Pineda was able to pretty much instill. Where I differ is I think the guys taking shots, ironically with the exception of Rios, are actually systematically and repeatebly bad at finishing. And just a little unlucky. You can see it in their technique with their dominant foot, and none of them could make a high school varsity if they had to play only with their non-dominant foot.
Sam... THANK YOU for using data and putting into words what I've been trying to explain to friends and family all year about this team when they ask me why the team is so bad.
I'd also add that even something as simple as GD paints the picture of how poorly Atlanta has underachieved this season. There is no way they should be sitting below teams like Montreal, Toronto, and DC, all on -15 or worse. Heck, just look at Atlanta's GA. They're right up there with Miami, Cincy, and the NY teams.
At no point in the article we're there any stats, what so ever, that blame the giant coaches heads I made from Tata to Pineda for all the bad luck. This has me re-thinking the decision on whether I make a new giant noggin for the next coach.... or not.
If nothing else, a retort to the “burn it down” contingent.
This is a great overview. I'd be interested in understanding whether how our solid xG result holds up when you look at xG per shot attempt. I'm saying this without looking out any data, but what I would expect it to tell us is that we're accumulating xG for with a lot of low-quality chances and giving up comparatively fewer but comparatively higher-quality chances.
A "flaw" in xG is that it's additive. As an example, a team has 4 0.25 xG chances in a game and that's it and a team that has 20 .05 xG chances in a game will even up on xG 1.0-1.0. And yes the most likely result from that theoretical match is a draw, but the team with fewer chances in that situation should win about 60% of the time that it's not a draw, so you'd much rather be them. In fact, the average outcome for a team that plays that exact scenario 34 times in a season should be around 47 points - nothing crazy but in the playoffs - and if you're the high volume low quality team, your average season is 37 points, which just so happens to be what we're sitting on at the moment.
Araujo is a great example of this - his underlying numbers were always pretty good because he got the ball in good areas and moved the ball to good areas with frequency, but his final touch was always off the market (and not just because his shot selection required him to be Tito Villalba). Add it all up and it looks pretty good because of the volume but the actual likelihood of game-changing results was pretty low.