Read the match the way the numbers do.

For an hour this looked like a coin-flip. Both sides traded half-chances, the shot count sat level, and the scoreline stayed within a goal. Then the home press found a second gear, and the underlying numbers ran away from the visitors in a fifteen-minute window that decided the match.

The cumulative expected goals chart is the clearest read on the shift. Through 67 minutes the home side had built 1.55 xG to the away team's 0.71 - close, but already favouring the hosts. From there the line steepens sharply: 0.63 xG added in the final twenty minutes against a defence that had stopped stepping out. That is not a smash-and-grab. That is a team turning territory into clear sight of goal precisely when the opponent tired.

The away xG curve, by contrast, is almost flat after the half-hour. Their best spell came late and from distance - the kind of low-value attempts that inflate a shot count without troubling a goalkeeper. Strip those out and the chance quality gap is wider than the 2-1 suggests.