MILLWALL boss Gary Rowett has said that he uses stats and data in the buildup to games and when analysing his team’s performances.
The most common stat that’s almost universally utilised is expected goals [xG], a metric that measures how likely a team is to score based on their chances, factoring in certain elements such as the distance and the angle, as well as what the type of effort actually was (ie. a header, a weak-foot shot, etc).
For Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Sheffield United, Millwall registered an xG ratio of 1.17, meaning that they would’ve been expected to score once based on the chances they had. It shows that the Lions struggled to take the goalscoring opportunities that they were presented with, which ultimately saw them fail to find the back of the net.
However, matching their xG wouldn’t have been enough to get anything out of the game, especially when considering that the Blades scored twice from their ratio of 2.43, highlighting just how clinical they were.
When asked whether he takes this type of data into account, Rowett told NewsAtDen that he uses “every stat available in order to be as diligent as possible”.
“I think xG is a stat that certainly measures the quality of your chances, but I’m not sure it always gives complete context to where that chance is and who is falls to.
“I think it’s a reasonable indicator of whether you’ve created much, and we certainly created some moments against Sheffield United,” he added.
“It’s like anything. When you play one team, you work a lot together on little movement and then you have to play a different team, it’s never going to be quite as fluid as you’d like it to be. We spoke about it before, we brought in the likes of George Honeyman, Zian Flemming and Jamie Shackleton in those more forward positions to try and give us a little bit extra quality where we need it.
“Two of those players were unavailable in those forward areas, so it’s very difficult to judge whether we can improve those aspects. I believe we can and I believe we will, it’s just going to take a little bit more work, certainly away from home, to create a little bit more.
“We look at xG, we look at shots for and shots against, we have our own KPIs [key performance indicators] for where we see our team. We’ll always do that.”
Photo: Millwall FC