Scoring Contribution - November 2018

Over the last day I’ve shown you actual goals and assists charts as well as Expected Goals and Assists. Goals and Assists together gives you Scoring Contribution. How are the squad performing versus expected values?

In the SPFL Celtic are, despite the recent goal rush, behind where they should be on Expected Goals. Having scored 27, the Expected Goals (xG) tables say they should have 30.71.

In Europe Celtic have scored 19 against an xG of 19.869. So, performing as expected.

Across all competitions, Celtic have scored 53 goals but their xG for the season is 58.767. Over 5 goals under what is expected.

How is this manifest at the individual player level?

The goal and assist leaders Edouard and Forrest are the only regular team members over performing against their xG and xA. And quite strongly so.

Forrest has scored / assisted more than 6 goals /assists more than chance quality suggests he should. Edouard has scored / assisted more than 4.5 goals / assists more than chance quality would suggest.

But the rest of the squad are either performing around where they are expected or have achieved less goals and assists than expected.

We can expect Edouard and Forrest’s scoring contributions to decline towards the mean over the season.

Players like Ntcham, Sinclair, McGregor and Griffiths should hopefully see an increase in productivity closer to the expected over the rest of the season.

It doesn’t always work like that of course, but there is plenty of potential for Celtic’s scoring to improve.