Blog Posts

  • Predicting, Prospecting and Expecting Goals

    So I’ve started to go into the uses of Expected Goals Models here at Differentgame and today I’m looking at predicting striker goal returns. Once again I’m using a recent Prozone presentation (if you’ve got half an hour to spare) to introduce an idea. This time it’s Omar Chaudhuri (@omarchaudhuri) putting some context into using…

  • Expected Goals Models – What’s the Use?

    Last week I posted about one of my own expected goals models and briefly touched on how it’s applied. I wanted to go in to greater depth about its possible uses and had been thinking about it during the week when I finally got round to watching the ‘football as a dynamic system’ presentation by…

  • A Shooting Model – An Exp(G)lanation and Application

    If you’re a follower of the growing analytics movement in football you’ll probably have heard of the term ‘expected goals model’. The term may have been shortened to ExpG, xG or something, but whatever it’s been named, it’s basically a shots model. What’s a shots model, then? A shots model puts a theoretical goal value…

  • The GoalImpact England Team

    Just over a year ago, I introduced Jörg Siedel’s GoalImpact model to the readers of Differentgame. Well, it’s World Cup time and Jörg is back. GoalImpact (GI) simply measures a player’s team’s goal difference when that player is on the field. The following factors are then taken into account to give a final score: the…

  • Petr Cech – Bouncing Back to No.1?

    Prior to the head injury Petr Cech sustained in October 2006, he was widely regarded as the best goalkeeper in the Premier League. Since his return from that injury there’s been a lingering feeling that he’s never quite reached the heights of those early Chelsea days under Jose Mourinho. Well…the Special One is back, and,…