Football

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Soccer

"How to Win the Premier League" is a fascinating book.

The principles in it predict well why last season Bayer Leverkusen won the league and why this season they're doing badly. In short, they had good luck last season and bad luck this season.

The book doesn't cover this case specifically, but the same principles apply in other case studies in the book. Such as Klopp's poor last season at Dortmund.

Football has swings. 
xG a somewhat limited metric. But still fairly good explainer of what's happening.

Bayern Munich was the better team last year. Higher xPts, higher xG, lower xGA. But a lot comes down to luck. And over the long run the luck evens out.
This year Leverkusen are stuck in 4th, but their xPts show they should be 2nd. Not much changed. Just a luck swing.

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Ya. He actually brings up Leicester in the book. And how that happened. You’ll notice that the next season they finished way lower. And that was basically reversion to the mean. Although they did lose players like Mahrez that season.

Leicester is a 1 in 50-100 year experience. Maybe more. The odds were 5000:1 and I don’t necessarily think they were off.

Very interesting. Luck swings are much less a deciding factor in leagues, but cups are a different story. Premier league 38 matches vs 13 UCL matches (old format). That’s why there can be more upsets in cups. Leicester the (only) exception in recent years.

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Ya. I think it’s because most don’t really understand them. Myself included although now I think I get it way more having read this book.

But probability is something people struggle with in general. We can’t comprehend uncertainty. Or a 60% chance of something happening. And then it not happening.

i'm not sure why people hate the x stats. sometimes they can be overdone, but more often than not they can really help paint a picture of what's going well (or not going well) and where changes need to occur.