Whilst Celtic are getting soundly thrashed in the World Cup Break Cup (see any edition of the Daily Record for details), a reversion to a time when actual football was played.
A regular feature is the Good/Bad/Lucky/Unlucky grid.
In essence this plots teams’ average goal difference with the difference between that and the expected goals (for and against) goal difference!
Average goal difference reflects what happened on the pitch in terms of goals for minus goals against per game.
Expected goal difference is expected goals for minus expected goals against, per game.
If your goal difference is lower than that expected, you might be considered “unlucky” (one of many factors in reality).
If your goal difference is higher than expected, you might be considered “lucky”.
Clearly, if you have a negative average goal difference that is “bad” and the reverse holds true.
Ok, here is the view after 15 matches:
Celtic have by far the largest goal difference and expected goal difference. Indeed, they are exceeding their expected goal difference by 0.67 goals per game. Which we can surmise may not be sustainable.
Mick Beale’s plucky rivals are spot on with their goal difference the same as expected.
Aberdeen is also overperforming their expected goal difference.
I will leave it up to you as to whether you believe it is better to be Bad and Lucky or Bad and Unlucky. In truth, most other clubs are hovering around the centre of the graph meaning there isn’t a huge variance between expected and actual.
Either way, Kilmarnock look in trouble early into the season. And the Edinburgh clubs are underperforming badly, despite, in Hearts’ case, all those penalties, and in Hibernian’s case, all those opposition red cards.
Here are the expected goal difference numbers in the raw:
Heart and Hibernian can both be expected to improve as the season progresses if they continue with current performance levels.
Celtic average 0.47 xGD more than their nearest rival per game. Over a season, if things remain, and why would they with Magic Mick in town, then Celtic should have a healthy points lead at seasons end as the various expected points models are predicting.
We’ll see. Celtic need to recover from the World Cup Break Cup hammering first!