Rangers current form has ruled Barry Ferguson out of landing the manager’s job on a permanent basis with one statistic in particular proving why.
Look away now if you are an atheist in terms of expected goals and don’t believe that the use of data has any relevance on how a team can be assessed.
One person who is a devout follower of the use of data is new Rangers sporting director Kevin Thelwell.
With experience in the Premier League at Wolves and Everton it isn’t really a surprise, however, it was at New York Red Bulls where the use of numbers was so heavily entwined in his day, to day work.
Where Rangers have struggled on the pitch in recent seasons, is the gap between the quality of chances being created versus the quality of chances being conceded.
- READ MORE: ‘Directionless’ Rangers look to avoid £30m transfer mistake after Kevin Thelwell appointment
The statistical problem Rangers have to fix to win title
In other words, xGD, or expected goal difference.
In a one-off game there isn’t too much that can be read into it, however, over the course of a season, it highlights a pattern of likelihood.
The closer the gap, the bigger the chance there is of dropping points with a league title, historically, needing an xGD of around 1.6.
Under Philippe Clement, this number was under 1.
Under Barry Ferguson, well, Rangers are lucky to be even drawing games, put it that way.
Kevin Thelwell appreciates what Rangers need to fix
Encouraginly, Thelwell has spoken about xGD in the past, and will recognise that Rangers have been massively underperforming:
“Yeah, everybody points to xG, don’t they, is the big old marker,” Thelwell told the Training Ground Guru podcast.
“But I think it’s xG difference that’s probably the most important one, which is, you know, talks about goals that you score and goals that you should have scored or goals that you should concede and vice versa. And we don’t believe that we’ve got as many points as probably what we deserve this season,” he said speaking about Everton’s form last season.
“You know, again, we’ve got 11 points at the moment, but if we look to our earlier games and we look at some of that data, then we think we maybe could have got a lot more. And reviewing that data, analysing that data, I think is an important part of the process now because in the director of football role, it’d be very easy to become very emotional and just make decisions on the results.
“But actually, when you look at those underlying statistics and you look at the way in which the games have actually played out, then it just helps you to make a more informed decision, a more balanced, rounded decision.”
What this means, is that Thelwell, probably, would have sacked Clement a lot sooner.
He would have seen that, even if results were ok, that the numbers pointed to a style of play that simply wasn’t going to win a league title.
Ultimately, this is what it is all about.
