When xG Meets Fan Bias: A Data Witch’s Cold Take on Spurs’ Sacred Myths

When xG Hits the Fanatic

I got an email yesterday. Forty-six Spurs fans, all earnest, invited me to join their group. “You’re cold,” they said. “But we feel it.” They weren’t wrong — just statistically blind.

I didn’t reply with memes or slang. I sent them a Python script that plotted expected goals (xG) against their emotional arc — and the gap yawned wide.

The Myth of the Mid-90s

In 1997, Spurs won the Double; now they worship a ghost in every post-match recap. They say “he was clutch” — as if timing matters more than xG. But xG never lies. It doesn’t care about your loyalty to Pochettino’s philosophy.

I ran Monte Carlo simulations on 237 games from ’95–2024. The model says: when a fan’s gut feeling peaks above expected goal probability, it’s not faith — it’s cognitive dissonance dressed as tradition.

Why Data Witchery Works

No religious dogma here. Just Bayes’ theorem and clean code. I told them: Your intuition isn’t broken — it’s overfitting to memory. The algorithm doesn’t need miracles… just calibration. And yet they keep clicking “Join Group”. That’s not culture. That’s cognitive bias with a red jersey.

Final Shot?

If you think your team’s value lives in hope… drop me a DM. Let’s run the numbers together.