Is Alan Black finishing brilliantly, or borrowing goals from luck?
AC Milan’s striker has 10 Italian Serie A goals from chances worth 4.6 expected goals, a surplus that is hard to ignore and harder to explain away.
5.4 goals is the gap between Alan Black’s league return and the chances he has had. The AC Milan striker has scored 10 times in 30 Italian Serie A games, against 4.6 expected goals. Is it finishing skill, or a hot streak waiting to cool? The numbers offer evidence for both sides and a verdict for neither.
Black has taken 23 shots and put 17 on target. Ten have gone in: a 43 per cent conversion rate, and a return that makes ordinary arithmetic look underdressed. His latest league goal came on Sunday, 27 April, against Frosinone. It was the most recent contribution in a season that has kept producing more goals than the chances, on paper, promised.
There is a practical case for the skill argument. Seventeen shots on target from 23 attempts is no accidental relationship with the goal, and Black has repeatedly made chances count at a rate that his expected-goals figure does not anticipate. The counterargument is built into that same gap: finishing 5.4 goals above expectation is a substantial margin, and even a good run can make a player look more inevitable than he is.
At 32, the Scottish striker is a familiar name beyond Italy, with 177 club goals across 497 games and 57 goals in 109 appearances for his country. His AC Milan spell began with a £36.7m move from Liverpool on 30 June 2058. This season’s figures are less a career summary than a particular puzzle: 10 goals, 4.6 expected, and a conversion rate that would be difficult to maintain indefinitely.
Milan have not won the Italian Serie A since 2033/34, but Black’s surplus is not a title race forecast. It is a question about one striker and the space between opportunity and outcome. The more useful number, for anyone betting on what comes next, is 5.4.