Final 2017-18 English Premier League advanced statistics

Welcome to your convenient homepage for all Premier League xG and other advanced stats! We will endeavor to update this page every week.

The stats below are updated through the end of the 2017-18 season.

The above does not include own goals.

Non-Penalty shots only

A quick glossary:

xG (expected Goals) is a measure of how good a chance is using the probability of a goal being scored based on the rate similar shots were scored. I tried unsuccessfully to try calling this chance quality instead of xG but it seems that this name is now ingrained and we are stuck with it.

xA (expected Assists) the flip side of expected goals but this gives the credit to creating the shot to the person who created the shot assist.

SoT xG (Shot on Target expected goals) Very similar to regular xG but this is a model that only looks at shots on target and compares to other similar shots that were on target for the probability of a goal being scored.

Goal Efficiency is goals scored divided by xG.

Big Chances(BC) are an Opta stat that is defined as “A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score usually in a one-on-one scenario or from very close range.”

Fast Breaks as defined by Opta happen a lot less often than you’d think. They do not give a definition of what specifically they train there stringers to look for on their definitions page.

Open Play (OP) open play is all actions not from a set play situation, the actual start of open play can be a little tricky but it is generally when the defense regains possession of the ball or clears the ball that a new attack starts.

xG Chain every player in a possession chain are credited with the final xG of the shot. Example: Player A passes to player B, Player B passes to Player C, who Passes to Player D who crosses the ball for Player A to shoot with an xG of 0.05. Players, A,B,C,D all get 0.05 xG Chain, Player A gets 0.05 xG, Player D gets 0.05 xA. A longer explanation here.

xG Buildup this works the same way as xG chain but no credit is given for assisting or taking the shot. This focuses just on building up play. Using the same example as above: Players, A,B,C, all get 0.05 xG Buildup. Player D does not get any buildup credit because he assisted the shot, Player A does get credit because he started the move that lead to his shot.

PPVA(Progressive Passing Value Added) You will also see my shorthand this even more to passing value added. This was created because a lot of good passing moves (and bad passing) do not result in a shot and thus are not captured in xG chain/buildup. The short explanation is that every spot on the field has a value assigned, the closer you get to the opponents goal the more valuable it is. PPVA looks at the Value Added between the pass starting location and the end location, if it was an unsuccessful pass the value to opponent starting from that location is subtracted.

This is the distribution on a per game basis:

Rough Measures for interrupting

less than 0, really bad

0.05 Average

0.15 Good

0.25 Really Good

0.4 Elite

Shot Zone Information:

The Danger Zone is the six yard box, plus the center of the eighteen yard box. This is the part of the pitch where the majority of goals come from. Shooting here is good.

The Wide Box is the rest of the eighteen yard box, shooting from here is hard but in general better than outside the box, headers from this zone are really hard.

If you have any other questions on definitions, drop them in the comments and I will update this section.