Foxes of Leicester
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Leicester City’s August stats reviewed: Attack Part 1

By Arnav Bhatia

Enzo Maresca, the Leicester City manager, looks on during the pre season friendly match between Northampton Town and Leicester City at Sixfields on July 15, 2023 in Northampton, England. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)
Enzo Maresca, the Leicester City manager, looks on during the pre season friendly match between Northampton Town and Leicester City at Sixfields on July 15, 2023 in Northampton, England. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images) /
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Leicester City
BURTON-UPON-TRENT, ENGLAND – AUGUST 09: Jamie Vardy of Leicester City is interviewed prior to the Carabao Cup First Round match between Burton Albion and Leicester City at Pirelli Stadium on August 09, 2023 in Burton-upon-Trent, England. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images) /

Non-Penalty Expected Goals per shot (np-xGps) is the average xG of all shots (excluding Penalties) taken by players of the club. This can be written as = (Total xG from all shots excluding penalties) / (Total number of shots excluding penalties). This helps in giving us an idea about the average quality of shots being taken by players. A higher np-xGps refers to a team creating better chances to score on average.

Leicester have the joint worst np-xGps in the entire league with 0.07. The league average is 0.95. A slim argument to be made in favor of Leicester is that they have taken the 5th highest number of shots in the league so far with 67. Given that Leicester are one of the better teams in the league and have the second highest average possession of the ball in the league, they are bound to try their luck from afar sometimes, and take half chances rather than playing it safe.

However, that argument also fails after further scrutinizing the data. The teams who have taken the more shots than Leicester all have higher np-xGps. The 8 teams who have taken more than 60 shots have an average np-xGps of 0.087.

Leicester have the 9th highest average distance of shots from goal in the league with the average shot taken by a player 18.1 yards from goal. To start with, shots this far from goal tend to have lower xG as they are harder to score and coupled with the fact that Leicester don’t have any particularly good long distance shooters, they are simply wasting opportunities.