Always thought that football is really hard to make stats for. It's just so simple and the virables are too many.
Stats in sports like baseball and cricket can paint a picture but not in football.
For instance in moderen football even the positions are loosely defined. They aren't as they used to be.
You have liquid formations, wingers that cut inside to shoot or classic winger who cross.
Wingers who are more defensive oriented because the team have attacking wing backs. Wingers who are playing as strikers and so on.
Then you have different leagues, refs and so on.
I too like to see some stats but I never think that you can judge a player out from only stats. Take firmino. He wouldnt look worldclass in stats but I know he is a worldclass player because I watch him play regularly.
Stats are facts, just that. The number of tackles, or passes, and so on, those are facts - they're just information. How you use that information is what will be of any importance. Statistical analysis can be good and it can be bad, just like any other type of interpreting information. And there's a reason why every top manager use statistical analysis these days, that's because they can give you an edge. You won't hear the likes of Klopp and Pep speaking against it, but you know who did? That Portuguese bloke relegated with Swansea.
The idea that, for stats to be useful, they need to paint a full picture, is quite silly if I'm being honest. They're incomplete, just like visual observation is, because a person can't possibly process that much information and our memories are proven to be unreliable. So to say someone is "against statistics" is a bit like saying coaches should be blindfolded during matches, it's just unnecessarily denying the potential usefulness of information. It makes no sense.
Even in sports like baseball, where numbers have come the furthest of all sports to help identify players contributions (with stats such as WAR), there will always be space for debate, for visual analysis, for "traditional" scouts. In reality there's no such a thing as a statistician or a football analytics person who has ever denied the importance of more traditional methods of evaluation - it's a false polemic created by football conservatives, people who don't really understand their work or who label all statistical analysis as "bad" based on examples of bad practices (of which there are many on the internet)
« Last Edit: Jun 23, 2018 03:35:45 pm by Diego LFC »
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