3 very funny pieces of data viz after City-Fulham

On Tuesday night, Manchester City had both one more real goal and one more xG than their opponents, Fulham. Normal stuff, right?

What started out looking like it was going to be a fairly standard City win devolved into a wacky display of both outstanding finishing and poor goalkeeping. I actually had to spend 45 minutes this morning re-watching everything from the Emile Smith Rowe goal onwards, since I flipped the game off to focus on the abomination that was Tottenham-Newcastle after Phil Foden made it 3-0. Whoops.

This is one of the silliest race charts you’re ever going to see. Fulham scoring 4 goals from 0.79 xG is weird enough, but the even funnier bit is that they managed to do this while missing their biggest chance, a near-equalizer cleared off the line in the 98th minute. City scored 5 from 1.97 xG while missing their three biggest chances, and also failing to record a shot after the 75th minute.

While there were no outright goalkeeper blunders, there were a couple of “could he have done better?” goals conceded from both sides, which has become a bit of a trend for both Fulham goalkeeper Bernd Leno and City’s Gianluigi Donnarumma. They were two of the weakest performing shot stoppers in the Premier League before this match, and they’re looking even uglier after adding another -2 goals prevented game to the pile.

Donnarumma might draw more scrutiny for his performances relative to cost and reputation, but Leno… might be the actual worst player in the league? I’m not going to call him nasty names or anything, but someone does have to be the worst player in the league every season. With apologies to any of Leno’s family and friends that might be subscribers, I’m pretty confident it’s him.

Erling Haaland, meanwhile, is quite clearly the best player in the Premier League. You might not expect to hear this about a general big xG overperformer in a big xG overperformance match, but Haaland could have scored more in this one. Remember 2 minutes ago when you read that City put up 5 goals without scoring any of their 3 biggest chances? Two of those were ones that Haaland put off the post.

The volume, quality, and variety of shots here is truly something to behold. The low percentage of shots that get blocked is amazing too. This guy is an alien.

As for big macro-level takes on these teams: Nope! Don’t have any. City are top 4 but worse than Arsenal, Fulham are blah but better than the relegation battlers. We learned nothing about either. But I thought you’d enjoy simply appreciating some strange numbers and individual performances.

Enjoy the even bigger slate of midweek Premier League matches on Wednesday.

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