Wanderers claim they have left 13 POINTS behind in League One this season

RESEARCH conducted by Wanderers into their XG this season suggests the clubs is 13 points behind where it should be in the table.

The club’s analysts have examined the 44 games so far and found that six points have been ‘gained’ but 19 lost in matches where their XG has far outweighed their opponents, leaving a net 13-point deficit.

Data analysts use XG as a way to assess the relative quality of a goal-scoring chance in numerical form and Ian Evatt admits there have been too many occasions this season where his team have ended up on the wrong side of the equation.

Nevertheless he has faith that the team can stick to its principles and finish this season successfully, whether that involves a late automatic promotion twist or a play-off campaign.

“I have felt for weeks now, with one or two exceptions, that we have been performing well, we just haven’t had the results to back that up,” he said.

“We have a lot of really intelligent data people behind us – and I know data can be manipulated to whatever suits your narrative – but it backs up what we have done performance-wise, we just haven’t had the results. That is something we need to look at and change.

“The game is subjective and everyone has an opinion on how it should be played. Some people probably hate that we have 70 per cent possession at home, they’d rather have 30 per cent and win, of course.

“It is subjective, I am fine with that. The way we have set our team up to play on Tuesday, having 79 per cent possession on our data set and an XG of 2.7 compared to their 0.4 suggests you should win the game. We drew 2-2.

“The data suggests you win that game 99 times out of 100 and that is where my frustration lies.

“The same numbers say we have left a net 13 points out there this season, and that’s being kind, compared to the performances at times.

“We just have to get on with it, though. We did most things right on Tuesday but not where it counts. You can apply the same thing for Saturday against Portsmouth.

“You saw last weekend with Liverpool and Arsenal, then again with Manchester City on Wednesday night, a team that on merit deserved to win the game doesn’t always do it and I feel like that has happened to us far too often this season.

“We also shouldn’t forget the good stuff that has happened as well, there has been an awful lot of that too. We are still fighting, we are still going to push and try to make this happen, then we can analyse what went right, what went wrong in the summer.”