We focus a lot on shots and chances created around these electronic pages, based on the idea that they are more predictable than goals scored. Over the course of a season this is undoubtedly true, however, this week gave us a good reminder of what can happen in a sport where the odd goal can decide games and one moment of magic can give more rewards than 89 minutes of sweat and toil:
No real lessons here, it just struck me as particularly noteworthy that five of the week's winners were all out shot by their opponents, by some distance in a couple of instances. Indeed, we've seen four instances all season where teams had 20+ shots but lost, with two of them coming this week. The others were QPR's crazy 5-0 loss to Swansea in gameweek one where they out shot their opponents 21-13, and Spurs' 4-2 loss to Chelsea in gameweek eight in which they had as many SoT (10) as their opponents had total shots yet came away with nothing.
The 'pundits' would like us to think that all this is totally meaningless without goals ("goals win games" remember), and in a way they're absolutely right, all these highlighted teams earned exactly zero points, but if we replayed the fixtures 100 times, I think we can be confident that, for example, Newcastle at least manage to score more than once on 32 shots (thirty two!) fairly often, winning the game in a decent proportion of those outcomes.
Nothing more to take away here, just a reminder that however confident we are in forecasts, in a single gameweek, things can always go unexpectedly.
No real lessons here, it just struck me as particularly noteworthy that five of the week's winners were all out shot by their opponents, by some distance in a couple of instances. Indeed, we've seen four instances all season where teams had 20+ shots but lost, with two of them coming this week. The others were QPR's crazy 5-0 loss to Swansea in gameweek one where they out shot their opponents 21-13, and Spurs' 4-2 loss to Chelsea in gameweek eight in which they had as many SoT (10) as their opponents had total shots yet came away with nothing.
The 'pundits' would like us to think that all this is totally meaningless without goals ("goals win games" remember), and in a way they're absolutely right, all these highlighted teams earned exactly zero points, but if we replayed the fixtures 100 times, I think we can be confident that, for example, Newcastle at least manage to score more than once on 32 shots (thirty two!) fairly often, winning the game in a decent proportion of those outcomes.
Nothing more to take away here, just a reminder that however confident we are in forecasts, in a single gameweek, things can always go unexpectedly.
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