Stuttgart-Cologne 4-1: four goals from half an expected goal, and Cologne did not score one of their own

The verdict, before the numbers

At the MHPArena Stuttgart beat Cologne 4-1 and banked their first three points of the season, seven days after conceding five in Munich.

The 4-1 suggests a one-sided match. The pitch said something else, and the numbers are on the pitch's side.

The most open match of the weekend

Thirty-nine shots in total: twenty-two Stuttgart, seventeen Cologne. 6.38 combined expected goals, the highest figure of any match played in Europe between Thursday and Saturday.

For scale: on the same round, Ipswich-Liverpool produced 1.34 between them. Here they produced almost five times as much.

Stuttgart finished on 3.52 expected goals, Cologne on 2.86. There is a difference, but it is the difference of a match in the balance, not of a 4-1.

Four goals from fifty-one hundredths

This is the number that makes the article.

The four Stuttgart attempts that ended in the net were worth, all together, 0.51 expected goals. Half a goal. Four goals came out of half an expected goal.

Here they are in order:

El Khannouss, just before half time: 0.10 expected goals. Prömel, on the hour: 0.12. Demirović, in the 75th: 0.25. The only one of the four the model rated as even half a real chance. Vagnoman, at the death: 0.03. Three hundredths. The best goal of the night and the least probable of them all.

Since the season began, across the big five leagues, no side that has scored four goals in a match has started from less. It is the coldest finishing we have measured this year, ahead of Inter against Monza (four goals from 0.58) and Como at the Ferraris (four goals from 0.72, just twenty-four hours earlier).

And there is another thing that does not show up on the teamsheet: Stuttgart had twenty-two attempts but entered the opposition box eight times. They scored four goals while getting the ball into the dangerous area eight times in ninety minutes.

Cologne did everything except score

At the other end is the side that really deserves the piece.

Cologne produced 2.86 expected goals. They had seventeen attempts. They created two big chances. And they finished the match having scored none of their own: the only goal on the board in their favour is an opposition own goal nine minutes from time.

Anyone who watched saw exactly that: a first half belonging to Stuttgart, a second in which Cologne pushed for the equaliser, had the chances to get it, and were hit for 2-0 on their opponents' first counter of the half.

The PPDA tells it well: Stuttgart 12.4, Cologne 24.4. Cologne allowed Stuttgart nearly twenty-five passes before going to disturb them. They attacked plenty and pressed hardly at all, and in the Bundesliga that combination gets punished.

Over two matchdays Cologne have produced 5.17 expected goals — more than Stuttgart, more than Borussia Dortmund, more than Leverkusen — and have three points. This is not a side that cannot play. It is a side that so far has let everyone in at the back: twenty box entries conceded in two matches.

And Stuttgart, seven days after the hammering

It is worth lining up Stuttgart's two matches too, because the contrast is sharp.

In Munich they lost 5-1 producing 1.25 expected goals and conceding 4.08. Yesterday they produced 3.52. Those are two different teams inside seven days, and the second is far closer to what this squad ought to be.

The two-matchday ledger, though, remains precarious: five goals scored from 4.77 expected, six conceded from 6.94 given up. Stuttgart concede an enormous amount, and so far they have got away with it by scoring plenty.

The honest bit

Four goals from 0.51 are not a method. They are one night, and they need saying for what they are even when they suit us. If Stuttgart keep conceding seventeen shots a game, the Sunday will come when those shots go in.

Cologne are not the team of their three points. They are creating like an upper-mid-table side. If they fix the defensive phase — and "fix" here means one thing, stop letting opponents into the box twenty times in two matches — the points will come.

And two matchdays are two matchdays. It goes for everybody, and it goes here too: the 5-1 in Munich and yesterday's 4-1 are the same Stuttgart, and the truth is probably somewhere in between.

Check for yourself. In the Meritometro you will find the verdict on every Bundesliga match based on chances rather than results, and in the Nerd Zone you can go back through Stuttgart-Cologne shot by shot, with the value of each attempt.