51 Great xPectations with Paul McDonald.

The Function Room

This week I do some basic drills, some shuttling runs on the massive world of statistics in sport. Former accountant Paul McDonald has many hats, but he is now a sports stat specialist, company founder and originator of the expected transfer values algorithm, trying to bring some sense back to crazy world and numbers of football transfers fees.

He talks me through xG – the expected goals phenomenon that you may have heard thown around, expected Threat and expected Transfer Value.

Along the way we discuss players as different as Juan Riquelme and Denis Irwin and whether stats will kill football.