xG Stat rating

One number, built from goals, assists, chances, passing, defending and keeping

The rating folds everything a player did in a match into one number: goals, assists, chances created, passing, defending, and for goalkeepers, shot-stopping. Every contribution is valued in goal units, the same currency expected goals uses, so a pass and a tackle sit on one scale.

Each action's value is normalised against what the same position produced across the league this season. A striker's goal and a centre-back's goal count for different amounts, because each is judged against his own position's usual output.

A match reads on a tighter scale than a season

A single match rating centres on 6.9 and rarely strays outside 6 to 8. It is scaled to sit on the tight band that single-match ratings normally use elsewhere.

A season rating centres on 6.5 instead, and the best season of the year comes in around 8.4. Averaging dozens of matches flattens the swings any single game shows, so the season scale stretches the gaps out to keep the number meaningful.

A rank needs more evidence than a rating

A rating can appear early in the season, because it is a single estimate that already shrinks towards average when minutes are few. A rank is a stronger claim: it says a player is the Nth best at his position this season, not just roughly this good.

That claim needs real evidence: rated minutes worth at least half the season played so far, 1,710 minutes by the last gameweek. Below that floor a player keeps his rating with no rank, and nobody above him loses a place.

Positions are judged only against their own

Attacking output and defensive output sit on different scales, so mixing positions would reward strikers for shooting and punish defenders for not shooting. Every rating is compared only with other players in the same position, league and season.

Position is decided by where a player features across the whole season, not by the role he filled in one match. A winger stationed at right-back for a single game is still ranked as a winger. That match's rating, though, is calibrated against the right-back pool he actually played in.

Leagues rated from match stats

Some leagues are rated from match stats rather than from every event in the match. The rating is built by the same engine on the same scale, so a 7.2 reads the same way, but from counts alone: shots, chances, passes, tackles, saves and the rest.

What it cannot see: how far a pass or carry moved the ball, how good the chance a pass created was, pressing, and the attack a lost ball started. On the Premier League, where both ratings can be built, the two agree closely: a correlation of 0.87 match by match, 0.96 for goalkeepers, and the same season order for nine players in ten.

A rating built from match stats is compared only with other ratings in the same league and season. It is never ranked beside a Premier League rating, and no list mixes the two.

Attack, Possession, Defence: the areas beneath the rating

Outfield players are broken into three areas: Attack, Possession and Defence. Goalkeepers get their own three: Shot-stopping, Command and Distribution.

Each area carries its own rank. That rank compares a player only against others in his own position, the same cohort the overall rating uses. A full-back's Attack rank says nothing about a striker's, because the two are never measured against each other.