#LAGalaxy are in talks with Edinson #Cavani to replace Zlatan #Ibrahimovic. They’ve offered to the striker a wages of €7M a year until 31th december 2021. Also #InterMiami and #AtleticoMadrid are interested in him. Talks ongoing, because #PSG don’t want to renew him. #transfers— Nicolò Schira (@NicoSchira) November 18, 2019
To who's perceptions of keeper quality? Most people, on eyeball analysis only, would not have Mannone, Hamid and Crepeau ranked as the poorest GKs on the season. I get that shot quality is a sticking point for some of you but I'm saying it doesn't really matter: You can just sort on xGA to discover that Bingham faced the highest xGA on the season. That could be either because 1) he faced a very high number of low% shots or 2) he faced a low number of very high% shots or some mix of the two. So why not sort by xGA, then by Save%? Goal keepers and defenders suffer from negativity bias more so than any player: we remember and talk about Bingham rushing off his line and making a gaffe, or giving up a PK against Vela or deflecting the ball right to a defender ad nauseum -- and spend little time talking about the 150 saves he made last season, including 2 PK saves, his MOTM performance in a win in Orlando, etc.
xGA has little to do with the Keepers. Its primarily a measure of the likelihood a shot will go in based upon the distance it was struck from, the location in the goal it was sent to, and other similar factors. The xGA measure published in the table you cited is the sum of the xGA for each of shots taken. If anything its a measure of how well the offense performs against the defense mostly independent of the keeper. If you divide the xGA by the SOG, you get the average of shots the keeper needed to deal with (I called this the Average Shot Quality (ASQ). It tells that the average shot David needed to deal with had a lower probability of scoring than the average shot dealt with by MLS GK's with over 900 minutes. This is all independent of the keeper. This actually helps explain his high save percentage. Relatively speaking, Bingham faced a high number of weaker shots and as you might expect with weaker shots he had an above average number of saves and consequently a higher than average save percentage. My effectiveness rating attempts (perhaps poorly) to give a better measure by multiplying the save percentage by the Average Shot Quality. I then compared this against the average for all keepers (kind of a simple wins above replacement value). I am not surprised that Ousted, Howard, Steffen, Robles, Johnson, Melia, Gonzalez and Guzan all have effectiveness ratings above Bingham.
Lots of talk from his agent about staying in Europe, but none of those teams will pay him what we are willing to as a DP.
I like your idea of ASQ - its an easy to understand metric for the quality of shots a keeper faces. And it's interesting that on average Bingham faced shots that would be expected to go in 29.2% of the time which is actually a lot lower quality shot than most of these keepers faced on average (which mostly were in the 30-38% range). That actually makes Bingham's save % less impressive. However multiplying ASQ by Save% doesn't make a lot of sense. As a thought experiment think about two keepers who are exactly average. The first one faces ASG of 30% and his save rate is 70%. The other keeper faces ASQ of 20% and, again being exactly average, he saves 80% of them. If we multiply ASQ*Save% the first keeper gets .21, the second keeper .16. Both are making saves at exactly the expected rate but one comes out looking better. In general the product is biased in favor of keepers who face tougher shots, which is what you see in your table. The top rated keepers like Turner, Vega, Antinella, Ousted all have ASQ in the 35-38% range while the low rated keepers have ASQ in 26-30% range. If you are going to combine ASQ and S% in a single metric best I could suggest is save rate minus expected save rate = S% - (1-ASQ). On this measure average keepers would get a 0, a keeper who saved 3% more SOG than expected would get a 3, and so on.
Maybe I am misunderstanding your thought experiment example, but the data doesn't support the proposition that ASQ + Save% = 1, unlike the relationship where SOG - Saves = GA. ASQ has no direct relationship to an expected save rate. Its the rating of the total of expected goals (xGA) divided by the SOG. Now if you want to say that ASQ + Save%-1 is a better rating tool, you might be right. However, I think it overrates Save% as a metric as I prefer keepers who are in general more successful in defending against tougher shots. Interesting discussion.
I didn't say ASQ + Save% = 1 at all. I suggested the metric: Save%-(1-ASQ). In words that is just "Save rate" - "Expected Save Rate". So in the average keeper examples I gave before: 1. ASQ=30%, Save%=70. Save%-(1-ASQ)= 70%-(1-30%)=70%-70%=0. 2. ASQ=20%, Save%=80. Save%-(1-ASQ)= 80%-(1-20%)=80%-80%=0. So two average keepers get the same score of 0 which states they saved 0% more SOG than would be expected given the difficulty of the shots in that face. If they are better than average then they will end up with a positive score, if worse than average they get a negative score.
Lletget gets a new contract with TAM. Super happy for him and I think it's a great move. What I do think, though it may chap some hides, is we need to move him out of the #8 position and into the attack more. We waste a lot of his best abilities when he plays #8 and I don't think the combo of he and Jona is super solid defensively. Not as a #10, though, as he doesn't fit the creator mode. I'd move him to attacking left winger-cum striker and make a move for a modern #6 to play alongside Jona. Let him dribble at players, cut inside, put defenses under pressure, and use his good off the ball movement.
A big goal of DtK and GBS for this offseason has to be to keep a core of long term players through all the change we’ll see. Lleget is a good, core player. Apparent his talent, he seems to get along with everyone.
Lletget and Jona can be our CMs for years to come so this is a good extension for him. Add Corona to the mix, and I think our midfield is pretty solid even though Jona isn't really a proper DM. We just need some better CM depth.
I agree with you. It wasn't just our back line that let us down defensively last season -- our midfield was remarkably porous as well. I think the best way to address this is by adding a defensive minded and athletic/physical DM to play alongside Jona. Think a younger Larentowicz or, better yet, an athletic physical dominator like Nagbe. Lletget's strengths remain possession and offense. During his initial great start for us he mostly attacked from left mid. However that is also Pavon's preferred position. Maybe we could go with a 4-2-3-1 with Lletget in the center or on the right, a la: ____________________New Forward____________________ ______Pavon__________Lletget__________________???___ ________________Jona_________New DM_______________ _____________________Back Four______________________ ______________________New GK_______________________ Bottom line is that if we are starting both Pavon and Lletget in midfield then we need our other midfielders to be good defensively. Jona can't be the only one cutting off attacks before they get to our back line.
I think Llegett showed this year that he works best as a CM that pushes forward or working out left to Pavon. A midfield of him Jona pushing into the attack with Corona sweeping works best. -^--------^-----------^ ---\------/---------------\ ----^---^-----------------^ Llegett----------------Jona ---------------------- <<-------Corona--------->> aka -----------CF LW----------------RW ------CM---CM --------CDM
Yep, I'm aware of what xGA is and I agree with your interpretation of it. I point out Bingham facing the highest xGA in MLS because it's a relevant statistic: it indicates that of all keepers in MLS, he had the poorest defense in front of him. This is relevant to discussions of his performance. I don't think we can make that conclusion based on the data. This is where stat aggregation starts to not make actual sense to the thing we're discussing: For example, David Bingham may have faced -- and saved -- an equal number of high-probability shots as, say, Steve Clark, yet have his average shot quality would be dragged down by the high number of lower-percentage shots he also saved. Remember, Bingham has 100 more saves than Clark (for example) who played behind a much more solid defense. If Clark saved 5 big chances out of 100, compared to Bingham saving 5 big chances out of 200, Bingham would unfairly look worse in this estimation because he saved 100 more average shots that bring his average down. Aside from that, I don't know if there's a meaningful difference between a shot with a .29% of going in versus .38%, which seems to be the max range of average shot quality in the entire chart. According to the table, the shots Clark faced were a mere 3% more dangerous than Bingham's, not enough to conclude that he faced significantly more difficult shots routinely, IMO. But does that match what you observed about this Galaxy season? I get it, but xGA already controls for this. If Bingham truly faced "easy" shots, then his aggregate xGA would still be lower than other GKs even despite the sheer number of attempts. Even slicing it this way, we only proved that Bingham faced marginally less dangerous shots on average, but much more of them than anyone else.
Apparently we're monitoring Uruguayan GK Kevin Dawson from Penarol : VUELO DE ÁNGELESKevin Dawson ha sido observado por @LAGalaxy_Es y lo ven como posible fichaje. El arquero de 27 años tiene contrato vigente hasta 2022. Recordemos que ya había tenido un sondeo desde el América 🇲🇽 pic.twitter.com/Q1gIZnOH3w— Santiago Soto (@Santiagosoto93) November 20, 2019
This. I'll just wait for their collective conclusion and go with it. @GalaxyOne will wait for their conclusion and dismiss it entirely (just joshing!).
I'm all for improving the team, but I must say that with Romney gone and incoming names from foreign leagues flying about I'm having some transfer fatigue now and I'm kind of missing some of the good old days - when I could get excited about some US kid out of nowhere - like Herc, or Omar and AJ in the draft. I sure thought after Hartman and Reis came through LA we'd find some young goalkeeper talent. Oh well I shouldn't complain. Lletget is back. Maybe Arraujo will get a real chance in 2020. Maybe Cuello will turn out to be a world-beater.
Drini, Jona, and Traore all need their green cards this offseason. Then I’ll really start being impressed by DTK. I can’t recall the last time we got an INT domestic status. Perhaps we’d have to go back to Juninho or Keane for that.
Hate to burst everyone's bubble, but it appears we have already signed our new Zlatan DP-replacement....
I like it!! A very athletic lineup is falling into place: ______________________Le Bron______________________ ______Pavon__________Lletget_______________Harden__ ________________Jona_________Draymond_____________ _____________________Back Four______________________ _____________________Leonard___________________
Ugh. I mean he’s still good, but we need to go away from aging stars! I’d like a younger superstar like Caruso or in his prime talent like Curry.