The game started with some novelties in the yellow eleven. Especially striking were Álex Suárez’s debut this season and of course Viera’s return to the starting eleven, But as Mel said, “I preferred to put Johnny at the beginning at the end and evaluate and see how it goes.”
They had a very deceptive Zaragoza in front of them. The Aragonese appeared in Gran Canaria with some ‘liars’ 12 goals in his favor in 15 days. A scoring baggage that could be misleading. Because he was not as tame as those figures said. Under that surface of calm for the rivals with less than one goal per game, other much more threatening metrics for the yellows were moving.
And is that the Zaragocistas were not the harmless team one might hope for. But rather the opposite. Las Palmas was facing a team that was not tuned to face goal, simply. Not to a team with problems getting the ball to the rival area or that was incapable of generating danger, but the opposite. And is that the yellows were against one of the teams that generated the most goals in Segunda, moving in figures similar to Eibar, Valladolid, UD itself and Tenerife. He only needed to materialize them.
The statistical hypothesis of expected goals measures the quality of an occasion. It does this by calculating the probability that it will be scored from a specific position on the pitch during a specific phase of the game. It is based on several factors prior to taking the shot taken such as the type of assist, the angle of the shot and the distance from the goal, if it was a head shot …
Expected goals are measured on a scale between zero and one, where the zero represents the inability to score and the one represents a possibility that the player is expected to score each time he shoots under those conditions.
For this reason, advanced models such as expected goals are increasingly being used. Being a statistical measure that assesses the quality of the chances created. Reducing the luck factor, which as Mel said “I don’t like to use that word because it sounds a bit empty”, by this metric it tries to bring more light.
Well, before last night’s game, the Zaragozans had generated attacking plays throughout the season to take before the match in Gran Canaria nine more goals of what they had written down. All this under the parameters of the expected goals.
To contextualize. In the First Division, practically 10 goals are scored for every 10 expected goals —9.7 to be exact—. Meanwhile, in the Second Division, for every 10 expected goals that the teams generate, an average of 9 are scored. However, for example in the case of UD Las Palmas, the yellow team have generated 23.44 expected goals and have scored 24. That is, they score what they generate. Although there is also the case of Almería with a ratio of 12 goals for every 10 expected goals generated, the one with the most positive difference in the category.
But there was also the case at the other extreme. Precisely that of Real Zaragoza. Who, until last night, only scored 65% of the expected goals, the worst team capitalized on their chances in Second. Until last night. Because against the yellows, they uncovered and made the most of their chances throughout the season. In a match that ended 2-3 and that, according to that metric, would end in 2.06 goals expected by the locals compared to 1.94 of the visitors. And that insane Aragonese voracity that had been accumulating since the start of the season ended up exploding in the face of UD