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There's a reason why eye-witness testimony is considered the least reliable form of evidence
Really, we seem to have built a judicial system that swears by it?
Eriksen was pony against Huddersfield by his own standards for sure, but he was also demonstrably poor technically by any footballers standards. Huddersfield's number 7 was streets ahead of him, and he hardly got the ball at his feet.
This is a crowning condemnation of stats based analysis versus anyone who knows what football looks like using their eyes.
It's like saying a machine gunner in an infantry section gives great covering fire if you are prepared to ignore the fact that he killed or wounded half his section during attacks
Kind of hard to be enthusiastic about him at the moment, when you see how he plays
You know what you said
Because you could lose the ball 25 times, get dispossessed 5 times leading to goals against, miss 15 sitters, make 30 shit crosses, not run after your man, make wrong passes, and be crap for 90 minutes. For ten games.
But you could also tap the ball 2 meters to someone who scores in those ten games.
It doesn’t mean you had a good game.
In other words: if you concoct the most absurd scenario possible, your point makes sense.
I'll stick to reality, where 10 assists in 10 games would make you a Player of the Month candidate, multiple times.
It’s an exaggerated point but it still shows you how ten assists ins ten games is simply ten passes in ten games.
What if a player blasts the ball over the bar twice, when he could have laid it for a tap in?
Then gets dispossessed and we concede?
Then takes three poor corners
Two poor free kicks
Doesn’t back track all game
But makes an assist in the 80th minute but we lose. Has he had a blinder?
Is that an absurd scenario?
It happens all the time....ten assists in ten games could be ten completed passes in ten games and very little else.
The stats look great to someone who didn’t watch the player and that’s my whole point.
Which resulted in 10 goals.
Apparently he had a better game than anyone else on the team, other than the guy whose goal he provided, so maybe he's not the problem?
Sure, and I get your point, but they also reveal how much that player ACTUALLY contributed, not just the things that your eyes tell you he didn't do. In other words, the stats are telling you that your eyes are misleading you, because while you watched a player make some mistakes and not get everything right, telling yourself that he's been poor, in actuality the player in question created a goal every single game.
I don't know about you, but I'd have that guy on the pitch every single game.
What if we lost those ten games though partly through his other poor play
No that’s my point....his ten good passes in ten games doesn’t mean he was better than anyone else on the pitch. The guy that scored may have been shit too, and missed four sitters.
One action doesn’t reflect a performance over 90 minutes. A keeper can make a world class save but have a nightmare game and drop 3 clangers.
And this is the problem.
Because you are clinging to the ten assists and refusing to entertain the fact that by changing up the team, we may have scored 20 and have more points.
It’s not about personal stats....I don’t care if Kane scores just four goals in a season if the team score 120 and we win the league.
Again, if you concoct an absurd scenario, then sure, you have a point. But that's not the reality of the situation.
In which case you'd be invoking the statistic of 1 goal in 5 attempts to indicate how crap they were. What if someone else's eyes told them that the 'sitters' were tricky chances?
I'm not refusing anything. I'm pointing out that 1 assist a game is an enviable contribution, and if they did it 10 games in a row then clearly their value to the team is, at least, the creation of a goal every game. There's no way I can understand that as poor, even if they did indeed fluff a bunch of other chances.
Nor would I, but then again if Kane only scored 4 out of our 120 goals no-one would be saying he had a good season. By comparison, with Eriksen, we're talking about a player who is consistently one of the greatest assist providers in the league, every single year.
Those statistics matter, even if someone's eyes tell them a different story.
Ok take 3 games then....an assist in every game doesn’t mean he played well. It’s the same thing....pick as many games as you see fit and my point still stands.
An assist is one pass, and does not reflect a whole performance.
It’s funny that every scenario I lay out is “absurd” but you happily and readily accept the assist for ten games in a row stat.
When has that ever happened?
Why isn’t that one as absurd?
It’s unrealistic when it suits you
I didn’t say his assists didn’t matter, I said they don’t mean he had a great game or played well if he got an assist
Just like I’m saying he can have an absolutely amazing game, with 0 assists and 0 goals
And why couldn’t Kane have a good season but only score 4? What if his link up play was integral to us winning the title?
I don't agree with that at all. The larger the sample size, the more revealing the statistic. 3 games is a small sample size, and yes, you could argue that 3 assists over that period is not much to be impressed by.
10 games is triple the sample size, and thus a better reflection of consistency. 20 games would be be even moreso, and so on. If someone got an assist every game for 20 games, that's actually a FANTASTIC performance, regardless of whether or not the team as a whole won something.
I took your example in the spirit it was intended; a hypothetical situation. But this doesn't mean that spiraling that hypothetical out to absurd extremes doesn't eventually make the whole discussion become absurd.
You said that 10 assists in 10 games could be considered poor if it didn't result in what you wanted. I'm simply saying to you that what you wanted isn't necessarily a fair, objective measuring stick, and that contribution would still be an elite contribution, regardless.
And I'm not arguing with that. I agree with you, it's entirely possible to have a magnificent game without scoring or assisting. But, what I am arguing is that if someone DOES assist a goal every single game for 10 games, that's not a poor performance over that period.
What if it was? Do you think it was more integral than someone who got 15 assists and 10 goals?
But I’ve explained to you that while it’s a fantastic STAT, it says nothing about the overall performance.
Otherwise you can judge a player via Opta over an entire season having never watched a single game. Don’t you think that’s ridiculous?
This is why people who don’t watch Liverpool think Van Dijk is better than Maldini now
No, I never said 10 assists in 10 games could be a poor stat.
I said the player could have still been poor for the 90 minutes of those games, and by not playing him we could have scored more.
He could play well and we lose.....but an assist isn’t what means he played well
It says nothing about his performance though
Again, if I miss the game and read that a player got an assist, do I have the right to argue against someone who was at the game who says the player was poor?
Well if he had a hand in 75 goals then yes....because the other guy had a hand in 25.
I don’t think Lampard was as good in attack as Dele and Eriksen but that didn’t stop him scoring 15-25 odd goals in a season every year for ten years
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Stats can be made to support any argument, for or against.
Almost all of the stats quoted are meaningless and are concocted for the benefit of the gambling companies and their hapless punters.
Pretty much the only thing that matters is the Mark 1 eyeball, knowledge of the game and common sense.
Eriksen had a good game yesterday, but was awful in parts (free-kicks, attempted tackles, missed passes etc). Stats don't convey this fact.
Almost all of the stats quoted are meaningless and are concocted for the benefit of the gambling companies and their hapless punters.
Pretty much the only thing that matters is the Mark 1 eyeball, knowledge of the game and common sense.
Eriksen had a good game yesterday, but was awful in parts (free-kicks, attempted tackles, missed passes etc). Stats don't convey this fact.
Spot on
Well of course, but again that's not the reality. No-one is saying that stats alone alone should dictate someone's impression of a player. I just said that stats provide context, insight and evidence to support opinions.
You know, just like how you're suggesting that someone who squandered 4 sitters, lost the ball 5 times and botched 3 free-kicks had a bad game. You are literally invoking stats to evidence your opinion, and when you think about it, that's ALL anyone can actually do.
What I'm saying is that looking at stats helps you determine whether or not someone has a point. Let's take an example of a supporter watching from the stands. He has no access to replays, no access to zoomed-in camera angles, no access to information such as how far that player has run, how many passes they've made, etc. All he has, is his limited perspective of what is happening, in real-time, undoubtledly heavily influenced by the emotions he is feeling during any given moment of play. Every single missed pass feels like a clanger. Every scuffed shot feels like a howler. Every time the opposition breaks, it feels like the player didn't track back enough. Every corner which fails to beat the first man feels like a waste of time.
Maybe he doesn't know that the player had a 93% pass completion rate. Maybe he doesn't know that the player has covered more distance than anyone in the game, and made the second-most tackles. Maybe he doesn't know that the shot he scuffed was actually because an opposition player subtly fouled him, but the ref didn't spot it. Maybe the player finally gets an assist in the end of the game, but it's too late to overturn the 2 goals the opposition scored because the defense went to sleep.
What if that supporter then leaves the ground, thinking that the player had a poor game, when in fact the player was one of the best performers on the pitch, and it just didn't FEEL like it, because the team lost?
That's precisely where stats can help that supporter understand what actually took place, and what their eyes missed, and why all the newspapers gave the player a rating of 8 for the game. If someone wants to double down on "well I know what I saw and stats can't tell me otherwise", then the whole idea of debating it becomes pointless.
Do you not agree with that? That's my whole point.
Again, if you're going to invent whatever circumstances you like, any time you like, then there's little point in discussing this, isn't there?
I think Frank Lampard was one of the best midfielders of his generation, born out by the fact that he scored more goals than most strikers.
What kind of straw-man rubbish is this - when has that ever happened in a single game? Behave
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Still a better season than the likes of Dele for example. Even Kane never really hit a rhythm due to ongoing injuries, etc.We all agree he had average season. Still 12 asissts, most in PL.