Oh hello Multi.
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Oh hello Multi.
chrismpw
Player Valuation: £70m
Truth.
Allardyce started this stats obsession and I hate it. It's caused players to play to get stats (easy passes to the nearest teammate) rather than take risks and entertain.
I'm interested in top scorers, as it means the team are providing good chances for that striker, and clean sheets as it means the team us working well as a unit. Stats apply to a team and anybody who judges a player just on stats really has no clue on how stats should be interpreted.
I think that people who have played football regularly are less likely to use stats.
People of my generation had sport as a recreation because there were no android or iPhones and no football manager or stat data bases, we, therefore, are more inclined to judge a player by how he plays. In my opinion the best way. Check the stats, if you must, to back this up, but, always trust what you have seen on the pitch, not on a database.
People of my generation had sport as a recreation because there were no android or iPhones and no football manager or stat data bases, we, therefore, are more inclined to judge a player by how he plays. In my opinion the best way. Check the stats, if you must, to back this up, but, always trust what you have seen on the pitch, not on a database.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
Relying on your eyes allows you to do things like buy Davy Klaassen when a quick look at some stats would show, and did show at about the time we made the deal, that he wasn't actually suited to the Premier League. To act like statistics have no value at all is naive as is acting like you can put together a whole team without watching people play. It's a balancing act.
It's the Americanisation (or should that be Americanization) of the game. It start with the formation of the Premier League and SKY with the squad nos. and american style sports coverage and now it's moved on to stat based journalism. The game's becoming a non contact sport just like basketball. There'll be Tailgate Parties soon, mark my words.
Zezti
Player Valuation: £70m
There are some things that are impossible to quantify and no stats will tell you. For example, how he stepped up and became the first player for a long time for us to put in a very good showing at the pit.
Stats can be used for a basic overview of a player but it ultimately takes the eyes and judgement of someone who knows football to truly understand what a player is about. If stats could tell you everything, why would Marcel and co travel around to see potential targets playing first hand?
Stats can be used for a basic overview of a player but it ultimately takes the eyes and judgement of someone who knows football to truly understand what a player is about. If stats could tell you everything, why would Marcel and co travel around to see potential targets playing first hand?
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
Ironically when it comes to soccer Americans are terrible with stats. Yes the idea comes from baseball but it isn't Americans pushing countries and clubs to actually do it as much as logic and the results that have come from more data driven clubs and national set ups have. I can't be bothered to find it but theres a long article on how Belgium used stats to rebuild their whole youth setup and it sparked this current team they have.
Hangleton
Player Valuation: £25m
He’s No Delle Ali but he’s got good stats.
Stats are useful but the stats used by clubs are way more detailed than any of the ultra basic stats shown on screen or the publicly viewable Opta stuff. Anybody who bases their view of any aspect of football bar the result on those basic stats isn't looking very hard.
Most football statistics don't appear to handle positional play well. They don't handle managerial expectation for a particular setup. They don't handle a player that 'keeps things ticking' because those actions don't regularly result in particular trackable 'events' that modern statistics heavily utilize.
Stats work very well in American sports because of two things football lacks:
Football doesn't have the same fundamental structure, and thus attempting to overlay American-style counting stats doesn't fit perfectly.
That doesn't mean stats don't have value - they do! But the value is, as yet, highly imperfect. And tbh, if they were perfect, there would be little reason to play the game - just run it through the sims.
Stats work very well in American sports because of two things football lacks:
- Discreet events
Baseball is a series of discreet events. It is easy to quantify how each player handles individual events (batting with runners in scoring position against left handed pitchers, for example) because it is a discreet sport.
- Large sample sizes
Basketball works well with statistics due to large sample sizes - many shots per game, many passes per game, a small court.
Football doesn't have the same fundamental structure, and thus attempting to overlay American-style counting stats doesn't fit perfectly.
That doesn't mean stats don't have value - they do! But the value is, as yet, highly imperfect. And tbh, if they were perfect, there would be little reason to play the game - just run it through the sims.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
This is true. There are a few places available that have some more useful stuff but nothing approaching what is available to actual decision makers through places like Wyscout.
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £90m
The more advanced football statistics really don't have a sample size problem. The discreet events thing is basically the entire problem that the designers of these things are trying to solve. I'd argue that they've had some success but there are still issues.
If goals from outside the box had counted double, he'd've had 90.
Yeah, I agree with the assertion that the stats the clubs are working with are probably a totally different level. Sample size though is a problem, especially for specific use-cases and positions. How much can you tell from a striker that gets 2-3 chances a game? That he should get more? Isn't that dependent on his midfield? 2-3 chances a game over 38 games is an entirely different sample size level than 20 chances a game over 82 game season, or 4 chances a game for 162 game seasons.
I also feel like it's a matter of time before they get it worked out. I'm just not on the stats bandwagon currently because the public stuff is very Meh. It's *better* than just counting goals and assists, I guess, but it certainly doesn't tell as much as the eyes. Yet.
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