Football, as the old cliché goes, is very much a results-based business. As such, there are those – including many in the broadcast media, incredibly – who take great comfort in exclusively enjoying the sepia tones of the league table as a guide to performance levels. It’s the beautiful game’s equivalent of the profit and loss account.
But there are some who revel in the technicolour aspects of the sport, where the lines are blurred and the real story is often hidden under layers of superfluous information. That’s not to suggest that Manchester United’s sluggish start to the campaign shouldn’t worry the club’s supporters – it should – but as is so often the case in football there is nuance and subtlety that hints that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men are not as bad as the standings hint.
‘Old Trafford’ – Paul via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Fire up Understat and take a look at their Expected Points league table; that is, where each team would reside in the Premier League based upon the quality of the chances they have created (minus those that they have yielded).
That reveals that United would, in fact, sit fourth in the rankings, which is a much healthier position than the actual league table suggests. Toggle the xG for and against columns and the picture is enhanced further: based on the quality of chances created and yielded, the Red Devils should have scored more goals and conceded fewer than they have.
Of course, such data wizardry holds little regard with the mainstream media. Their performances have done little to convince the bookmakers, either, as United are priced as long as 7/2, at the time of writing, to secure a top-four finish, which is behind Leicester and mini-crisis club Tottenham. However, they did manage to hold Liverpool to a stalemate with Marcus Rashford getting himself on the scoresheet, which was one of the pre-match football betting tips from Betfair for the game. Ole may be at the wheel but he is very much on a slippery road.
Remember, football’s major decision-makers, i.e. chairmen and owners, do not hold Expected Goals and other advanced metrics in all that high a regard.
Repairing the Titanic
Let’s assume that Solskjaer is given until the end of the season to turn the ship around; in reality, we know that the club’s owners are perhaps eyeing a replacement already, with Massimiliano Allegri apparently on the radar. What can the current manager do to right the wrongs of the opening few weeks of the campaign?
You’d have to agree that Ole has been unlucky with injuries so far, with separate spells on the treatment table meaning he hasn’t been able to field his favoured front three of Rashford, Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard.
It’s a lack of a recognised goal-grabber that is really hurting the Old Trafford outfit, with Rashford’s return of three in eight in the Premier League not the kind of prolific output that a side missing plenty of high-quality chances needs. The jury is still out on whether the 21-year-old is best served as a frontman or in using his pace from wide areas.
Perhaps the key man to save Ole’s hide could well be Martial, the much-maligned Frenchman who started the season with a bang as he netted twice in his opening three outings. His productivity, on the whole, was up on the last few seasons, although it is a small sample size – he has averaged 2 shots and 2.3 dribbles per 90 minutes this season according to WhoScored – and so United fans will be desperate to see the 23-year-old starting games sooner rather than later after his return from injury.
As we’ve discovered, Manchester United are creating plenty of goalscoring opportunities, they just need somebody to put the ball in the back of the net to pick up the points their play deserves. Ironically, they need a finisher like Solskjaer himself….
