Now, I already know exactly what you’re thinking – “It’s real points that count, not expected ones!”
And yes, you’re right, points win prizes and that’s why the real league table is the only one that matters.
But expected points (xPTS) are useful for football analysts because they can serve as a decent indicator of whether a team over or under-performed across the course of a season.
Expected points are calculated by comparing the quality of goalscoring chances a team makes (xG) and concedes (xGA) in every match throughout the campaign, and shows what the impact would have been on the team’s points total.
In theory, it measures how genuinely strong a team’s attacking and defensive performance was.