It's far too early to be taking shots at Ollie Watkins

I don't think there's much to pick at with Aston Villa's season so far. We're four games in - so we're only seeing a skin-deep layer of the football season, and to make conclusions right now would be a bit of a reach. To pick out stats and paint a picture right now? A reach all the same.

Poor use of stats is rampant in our lives, and so it goes that they are used poorly in football. We've been given tools we don't really understand, and many of us - myself included - need pointers on how we digest said data. It's just basic information hygiene really - and context is key. Nobody understands or can make conclusions based on most datasets provided to them, that's a truth of life. You need to spend time with them and their context.

We look to stats accounts to help us process this information. We look to verified accounts, and pundits. However, with engagement grifting ramping up - it's hard to know when we're being led in bad directions for the sake of #numbers.

I want to point you to this tweet:

A verified account (yes, I know you can buy the blue tick - but it still signal boosts as an 'authority'. A clear 'expert' in xG. Why can't we take this at face value? Why shouldn't we hammer Ollie Watkins over the head? And why do I have a problem?

Well - I don't believe the world needs more aggregators to take news and push it out to an audience without context or understanding. Worse when they are pushing their own bias by willfully misrepresenting the news they take, or the stats they find.

9/10 times it's clear the account knows what they are doing and they'll hold their hands up with a "I'm just presenting the figures." It is far too early in the season for this bullshit. X/Twitter has made it far too easy for aggregator accounts to rise to the top, with the entirety of their content usually lacking any context whatsoever. The best accounts are often buried.

So holding Watkins up in a negative light just after the first break in the season is a problem.

Why? Good data reading relies on trends, and spotting patterns. Is form dipping? We can tell from the most basic of averages - the five game rolling average. We're at four games, we're not even at the lowest benchmark of a rolling average. And even then, what trends are we spotting that make a difference? What data do we gain from one more game that we don't already know from SEASONS of Watkins at Villa?

Here's some numbers.

14 goals. 11 goals. 15 goals. Zero.

14.5 xG. 11.6 xG. 16.5 xG. 1.8 xG.

That is the statline for Ollie Watkins league goals, followed by his statline for league xG ever since he joined Aston Villa. What we can gather from this is a striker who will only slightly underperform his expected return over the course of a full season. The reason we can gather this is because we have seasons worth of data, and two points of comparison - how many goals he scored Vs how many goals he was expected to score. On average, Ollie Watkins will provide - mostly - what is expected of him. What we can also gather, is that he can be streaky - he'll underperform and then overperform. What we're left with is something entirely normal. Also, if you think he's that bad on the basic statline alone, Mo Salah had bigger scale of underperformance that Watkins last season - not to compare the two as equals, of course.

The specific problem with using (misusing) xG so early in the season is clear - or so according to one of my favourite Villa accounts Dan Pritchard.

"I'd say xG figures without any broader context (especially after 4 matches) will lead to the same outcome bias that xG was designed to avoid. I.e. Looking only at results rather than performances (and context in general) can lead to a false impression of a team's standing, performances are a better predictor of the long term standing of a side than a run of 1-0s were you had 11 men behind the ball," said Dan when I spoke to him about the xG tweet.

"xG only counts shots and it's hard to score in football, a clear cut opportunity is something like 0.3 xG meaning there's a 70% chance a player will miss. Happens all the time. Without also including a shot map or timeline the raw xG figure tells you very little. If two sides play to 1.0-1.0 xG but one side did that by 3 shots worth 0.33, and other with 10 0.1xG shots, team one will win the majority of matches unless they play infinity times. Each of their shots has a better chance of becoming a goal."

Digging into where Watkins' xG has stemmed from this season is also revealing. Dan saw that most of his xG came from one game against Burnley - and most of it from one shot. A saved shot - according to Understat.

This is not to mention that there's a skewed bias towards league stats, as though they are the only to matter. It's not as if Watkins' boots or finishing ability decide to change from game to game. The averages and trends tell us all.

Is there anything we can take from Watkins' stats though?

"In general the fact that Watkins is underperforming his xG at the moment should give fans confidence that he is getting into good positions and the goals will come, that's what the coaches will be telling him," finished Dan.

I can't argue with that. Drop him a follow, and read more from him on Watkins here:

My own theory with Watkins is that we're all experts on him. Seriously. With other forwards, we're used to watching highlights and seeing the very best of them - packaged up and sent over. With Watkins, we can all see his imperfection because we watch every single second of him (or at least we try, as Villa fans). We can judge his finishing and how clinical he can be quite harshly because we see every single shot. All it takes is some out of context stats and our own bias and we can make quite a bad case against Watkins to anyone willing to listen.

‌As for the use for strawman statistics, it won't stop. The use of single game xG (a fallacy) has only increased, and the grift is good. I can only ask that we try to see past the headline, and ask why we can only interact with data when it is served to us in the worst way possible? It's a problem in sport, and it's a problem outside of sport. It doesn't exact pay to be a critical thinker anymore, but it's certainly a more useful skill than parroting shite you see.

Genuine criticism is fine, but defining xG as a 'who should win' stat and then holding up Watkins as the worst at it just four games into the season completely destroys the point of the stat in the first place.

As for shots and Watkins, let him take them - and he'll score.

Eventually.

UTV