Speedboat League Christmas Special 2025/26

A deluxe edition, with an added "Banked It" league featuring projections. Ooooooo

Another week, another counterintuitive clash between perception, underlying performance and our old friend, “the only stat that matters”, the final scores.

Whilst Heart of Midlothian dispatched plucky contenders The Rangers 2-1 at Tynecastle, the respective xG’s were 1.27 to 2.17. Yet there were no howls of injustice from Ibrox regarding the outcome (well….) as most accepted they had been well beaten.

The xG’s reflected what we refer to as “game state”. Hearts were 2-0 up by halftime, and The Rangers huffed and puffed in the second half, creating limited chances while the home side was happy to contain. And when the Blues finally did score, it was in the last moments off a high xG chance, which ultimately meant very little.

Meanwhile, at Celtic Park, Wilfried Nancy experienced some “positive variance” for the first time when Aberdeen were reduced to 10 men. Albeit, as he stated, his side “provoked” this with good quality counter pressing. Thereafter, the shot count was 20-2 although, of course, Aberdeen scored!

The lesson being, single game xG tells us something but not everything, and drawing conclusions should be done carefully.

The Speedboat league gobbles all this up, and over time, hopefully settles down as a reasonable representation of performance over actual outcome.

This week, there is also a bonus view!