Have Fulham been lucky this season?
The stats say yes…
Following the West Ham defeat (and Fulham’s many heartbreaking post-90th minute losses), it is hard to believe but, according to the numbers, Fulham have been lucky this season.
Right now, if you look on Opta Analyst, Fulham are ranked fifth in the league in terms of goals vs. xG with 3.92 for the season just behind Man City with 5.77. Arsenal leads the category with 9.02 while Crystal Palace comes in dead last with -13.30.
Goals versus xG is a simple metric - it is just the total number of goals scored this season, 40 as of this writing for Fulham, minus the total expected goals or xG, 36.08 so far for the Whites. So, Fulham have overperformed the expected goals we should have made according to the numbers by 3.92, or 10%, over what was predicted which is a lot in the game of, to quote our former manager, “fine margins.”
xG, or expected goals, gives a number that is a portion of a goal based on the likelihood, based on past similar situations, that a shot turns into a goal.
So, you can add them all up and see what, on average, you’d expect the goal outcome to be compared to what actually happened. For example, Opta gives penalties an xG of .78 because there is - based on the numbers - a 78% chance (on average) that a penalty shooter will make a goal. Opta uses its database of millions of shots to come up with an xG score for each shot from 0 to 1.
Like a lot of statistics, xG works best (in terms of predicting outcomes) over the long run. It is fun to look at xG for a given game but it’s most useful to look at it over a season or even longer. I know some people don’t like xG, but really it’s just math and nothing to get upset about.
Some teams (and players) are lucky in terms of xG and some teams (and players) overperform because they are just a lot better than the average at scoring goals, like Erling Haaland who often exceeds his xG and this season has a goals vs xG of 1.29. The current goals vs. xG leader for players with more than 900 minutes is the very in-form Antoine Semayo at 5.26 followed by… Harry Wilson at 4.35! Yes, Harry Wilson is rated second in the league.
Harry, who has scored nine goals so far this season from shots that Opta’s model predicts would generate an xG of 4.65 goals. Harry has scored almost twice as many goals as Opta’s model thought he was likely to. Harry is a big reason why Fulham have overperformed our xG so far this season.
He’s followed, on the team, by Alex Iwobi who has a goals vs xG of 2.72 and then by Samuel Chukwueze with 1.39, Harrison Reed with .96 and Ryan Sessegnon with .84.
It makes sense. Think of all these bangers.
But, alas, there are two sides to every story including Fulham’s overperformance.
The Whites also have one of the worst performers in the Premier League in terms of goals vs. xG, with Raul Jimenez (12th from the bottom for players with more than 900 minutes) who has -2.09 goals vs xG so far this season. Raul’s Goals vs xG score would be even worse if he was not so good at penalties.
Raul gets, according to my calculations, a total xG of .66 for the three penalties he converted. Unfortunately Raul is not alone in missing shots that the odds say he should have made. Josh King, Joachim Andersen, ESR and Timothy Castagne are also offsetting Harry’s amazing run by missing shots that the numbers say are made relatively frequently from that spot on the pitch and that game state. Josh is actually worse than Raul if you look at Goals vs xG per 90 minutes. He’s got a -.14 goals vs. xG per 90, which is the 11th worst in the league (for players with more than 900 minutes).
It makes sense that this group is in the red; think of all the clangers like ESR’s miss against Tottenham on the break which had an xG of .462 (players score shots like that nearly 50% of the time).
What is the moral of this story? We can see what happened in the West Ham game when we didn’t have our Welsh Wizard on the pitch. So while there is no guarantee that Harry will exceed the odds again next year, maybe we should re-sign Harry Wilson and get a better striker for 2026/27 so we can keep on overperforming the odds.
And, let’s also hope that our young talented players, like Josh King (and ESR), start to learn how to finish more chances.
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Are we really lucky if Harry’s personal positive goals vs xG accounts for more than the rest of the team’s negative goals vs xG? I’d say the luck is that Harry hasn’t missed many games this season.
Interesting stuff. I’m not sure if xg & luck equates, as it’s more down to skill levels & composure. I feel we have been quite unlucky this season, but with subjective refereeing & var decisions