On 29 January Manchester United rescued a late draw at home to Burnley, in which Paul Pogba scored a penalty to get United back in the game on 86 minutes before Victor Lindelöf’s dramatic 91st minute equaliser.
In that game Pogba took seven shots, more than any other United player. The Frenchman recorded an xG rating of 1.32, also higher than any of his teammates, though this included his penalty that made up 0.76 of his xG.
If we take the penalty out of the equation, that comes to an xG of 0.56, somewhat higher than Pogba’s average xG for the season of 0.34 up until that game (excluding penalties). I say up until that game, because since then something has happened. United’s record signing has seen his xG drop to just 0.11 per game (excluding penalties) in the nine Premier League games since that date.
As we can see from the graph below of Pogba’s xG per 90-minute blocks, there has been a marked decrease in Pogba’s goal threat since that meeting with Burnley on 29 January.
Since that game, Pogba has seen his place in the Premier League xG rankings drop from 52nd to 84th (again excluding penalties, which we’ll come to later). But isn’t Pogba supposed to have one of the highest xG in the Premier League? Yes, and we’ll also get to why that is later. First let’s step back a moment and consider what xG ratings mean and how we should interpret them.
Why xG matters
The xG metric is now widely used in order to assess whether or not a team’s results match their performances. That is to say, if a team is struggling to score but their xG suggests they should be scoring more than they are then their problem could just be down to finishing rather than any deficiency in their build-up.
