Football Manager 2021 Review: 9 Ups And 3 Downs
5. xG Is Finally Here!
As an ideal, some football fans may hate it, but others absolutely adore xG - and now, xG has finally made its way to the Football Manager series.
A good percentage of FM fans have been clamouring for xG to hit the franchise for the past couple of releases, and now there's finally a Football Manager game that has this extra detail included in it. Like so many other features of FM21, this is something that you can make the most out of it you really want to, or something that other gamers may choose to largely ignore.
For those wondering what xG even is, the breakdown of xG from Opta reads:
Expected goals (xG) measures the quality of a shot based on several variables such as assist type, shot angle and distance from goal, whether it was a headed shot and whether it was defined as a big chance.
Basically, the higher your xG numbers, the more goals you should expect your team to be scoring. And if they're not scoring the goals to match the xG figures, that's when a manager needs to be asking serious questions of their attacking players, of their system, and of their management style.