PSG-Monaco 1-2: the day before, we published three things to watch. We got one right and two wrong

The verdict, before the numbers

At the Parc des Princes, Monaco won 1-2. It is their third straight win, their third consecutive victory over PSG, and it puts them top of Ligue 1, two points clear of Lyon and Lille.

PSG are twelfth. The reigning champions have two points after three matchdays.

And yet — this is the point of the whole article — last night PSG played their best match of the season, and not by a little.

What we wrote, and how it turned out

The day before the match we published a preview with three things to watch. We wrote them beforehand, so now we read them back, including the ones where we got it badly wrong. It is the only way these analyses are worth anything.

First: «PSG's box entries. If they stay below six, the match goes badly»

Wrong as a prediction.

PSG made twelve, double the threshold we set. Against Rennes they made nine, at Lille three. The problem we had diagnosed — an attack that never arrived where it hurts — was gone last night.

And PSG lost anyway, at home.

So the diagnosis was right (PSG were creating almost nothing) but the indicator was no use for predicting the result. That is not a nuance: it means we found a real problem and drew the wrong conclusion from it.

Second: «Monaco's PPDA. If it goes above fifteen, they have sat deep, and the match becomes a siege without shots»

Half right, half wrong.

Monaco's PPDA was 23.5: they sat deep, exactly as predicted, letting PSG make nearly twenty-four passes before going to disturb them.

But it was in no way a siege without shots. PSG took twenty-three of them, with two big chances. The siege happened, the shots happened. What never arrived was the second goal.

Third: «if PSG score first, Monaco's template for the evening collapses»

Wrong, and clearly so.

PSG scored first, on the half-hour, through Marquinhos: the ball forced over the line off his chest from a corner, his twenty-eighth Ligue 1 goal in his fourteenth season in the competition. It is also the biggest chance of the match: 0.87 expected goals.

Monaco's template did not collapse at all. They levelled through Nazinho just after the hour and turned it around through Idumbo. If the plan was to go ahead and manage the game, Monaco simply showed they can do the opposite as well.

The number that explains the night

Monaco took four shots in ninety minutes. Four. They produced 0.60 expected goals. They scored twice.

PSG took twenty-three shots, produced 2.52 expected goals, pressed harder than at any point this season — PPDA 5.4, against 12.6 versus Rennes and 9.8 at Lille — and scored once.

Bluntly: PSG played the match they needed to play and lost anyway. Anyone watching the scoreboard saw the third slip-up of a team in crisis. Anyone watching the chances saw the champions' best performance of the season, punished to the maximum.

Monaco, though, cannot keep going like this

Now the part we did get right in the preview, and it is the one that matters most.

Monaco have nine points out of nine. Their expected points are 4.01. A gap of almost five points after three matches.

The figure that holds up least is the defensive one: in three matches Monaco have given up chances worth 4.44 goals and have conceded one. Against Marseille they allowed ten box entries and won 2-0. Last night they allowed twelve and won again.

In the preview we wrote that if Monaco started conceding, those points would come back down to size. Last night they did not start, and the gap grew further. The prediction did not come true, but the reason we made it is still entirely there, and bigger than before.

The same applies to Lille, second with seven points from 2.08 expected: the most violent gap in the whole of Ligue 1. We deal with that separately, because the match that produced it deserves its own piece.

The honest bit

Three matchdays condemn nobody, and absolve nobody either. PSG on two points is a fact; PSG with the best attacking output of their season is another fact. They coexist.

But two points really do cost. Nobody puts expected points on the table. If PSG keep playing like this the results will come; in the meantime, though, they have already dropped points that will not come back.

And we got two indications out of three wrong. We write that because it is the deal: if we publish what to watch before a match, we come back afterwards to say how it went, including when it makes us look bad. An analysis that only gets checked when it was right is not an analysis, it is fandom with numbers on top.

Look at the numbers yourself. In the Meritometro you will find the verdict on every Ligue 1 match based on chances, in the Nerd Zone you can go back through PSG-Monaco shot by shot, and the preview we published is still online, unedited.