Now confirmation has come through that Ralf Rangnick will become Manchester United’s new interim manager, it’s likely that the German has been working very hard behind the scenes analysing his new squad.
He’s sure to have examined United's current strengths, and more importantly it’s weaknesses, in a bid to try and improve faltering form and salvage some success from the campaign.
And while there’s undoubtedly several areas he will be eager to improve during his relatively short tenure, one of the more pressing problems looks to be the defence.
At present, only four Premier League sides have conceded more league goals than United’s total of 22.
As football is quite a high-variance sport by nature, things like bad luck or elite finishing from opponents can impact a goals against record to paint a more severe picture than is reasonable, especially when the campaign is still relatively in its infancy.
It’s why metrics such as Expected Goals (xG) have grown into prominence. xG is a metric that determines just how good a shooting chance is by utilising historical shot data.
It considers a range of factors including the distance from goal, the angle of the shot, what part of the body was used and what the quality of the assist was like.
A penalty, for example, has a rough xG value of around 0.76 — effectively indicating that it has around a 76 per cent, or three in four chance of leading to a goal, on average.
As xG isn’t impacted by whether a shot results in a goal or not, it tends to provide a deeper level of analysis about how a team is performing in both boxes.
Taking it back to United and their defence, at present they have a combined xG-against (xGA) of 22.4. Worryingly, only Watford, Newcastle United and Norwich City have a bigger combined total in the league this season.
And that total is more than each of Manchester City's and Chelsea’s xGA total combined (21.1).
That encapsulates just how far United have fallen behind their two league rivals this season, as well as how important having strong defensive foundations are if you want to be successful. It doesn't reflect well on Harry Maguire and company.
None of the above would have evaded Rangnick’s attention, and it’s sure to be something the new United boss aims to fix quickly in these opening weeks of his tenure.
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