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dhickl

And the team with the most worst XI players of the PL is....

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http://www.teamtalk.com/news/worst-pl-xi-season-man-utd-player-included?

Not a surprise it is 2 defenders and a defensive midfielder.

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Don''t be sorry as it must be a couple of days since we had a player bashing thread started. I am sure Highland and Derby to name but two will be along shortly to help this thread along.

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The stats are from ''Who Scored'' who say this

WhoScored.com Ratings are based on a unique, comprehensive statistical algorithm, calculated live during the game. There are over 200 raw statistics included in the calculation of a player''’s/team’''s rating, weighted according to their influence within the game. Every event of importance is taken into account, with a positive or negative effect on ratings weighted in relation to its area on the pitch and its outcome.

Interestingly they also state that a player has to be below a score of 6 to be Poor, and score over a 7 to be good.

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To be fair it''s not really a surprise is it and is consistent with views often expressed on this board about said individuals. RM is actually the best of the worst in terms of the rating.

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Nothing to see here. As said above, nothing we don''t know already - Brady is a better LB than our only LB, Martin is better off played elsewhere than CB, and Dorrans hasn''t been picked because he isn''t playing well enough.

Lies, lies, damn statistics and lies!

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a) it''s some knobhead''s opinion rather than fact
b) we were the third placed team in the Championship last season, therefore "statistically" the worst team in the PL this season, therefore statistically the fact we only have 3 is something to celebrate.
c) I can''t feel my legs

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[quote user="shaunieboy77"]Quality journalism.. Statistically David Nugent should be in the next England squad.[/quote]

Eh? Based on what stats?

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I love this OP, the sort of guy that delights in finding something negative about our club. You are no supporter my man, just a journeyman who might as well ferk off😄

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There is something interesting here, though it is little to do with the pathetic journalism or the cheap shot OP. It''s about the continuing development of football analytics. Put briefly, approaching any subject matter analytically presupposes measurability (as anyone conversant with the history of science for example knows very well). The process begins by focussing on quantifiable parameters and ignoring unquantifiable qualitative ones. In the case of football the basic stats we have become familiar with represent the most obviously quantifiable types of event, essentially those that can be counted by an observer equipped with a tablet -- hence touches, passes, clearances, tackles, shots, crosses, interceptions etc. etc. plus such parameters as distance run, length of pass, number of goals scored/conceded and so on. What people need to realize is that the data recording these easily countable events represent the lowest level of analysis, not the end product, an essential component in describing what actually takes place during a game but contributing nothing in themselves from an explanatory point of view; they tell us something about what happened in a match but nothing about why. Explanation requires recognising the applicability of a different order of concept altogether, such as space on the one hand and space-utilising units (as opposed to individual players) on the other. As the authors of The Numbers Game put it (p.304): "With the growing availability of positioning data and x-y co-ordinates for players and ball, analysts will be able to employ the mathematical tools of algebraic geometry and network theory to gain more insights into the game. The focus will move away from the ball and the counting of ...... ''ball events'' .....[and] attention will shift to players away from the ball, the clusters they form, the spaces they enclose, and the way the ball and information move about the network they compose."

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I suspect I''ll be one of the few posters here who find that fascinating, wcc. It has always been my contention that the sheer complexity of the game means it''s not amenable to analysis. However, with the enormous increase in computing power we are probably getting to the stage where we can start to make meaningful models using a large proportion of the huge number of parameters operating in a match. It''s a bit like weather forecasting really.

However -like the weather forecast - it can only go so far, & involves, as a subset, a composite of the most difficult & unpredictable variables there has ever been: human beings.

So I don''t think the fascination of football will be destroyed any time soon!

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Good point WCC - I certainly agree it''s at a very basic level so far. And still dependant on poor sods watching a game and e Teri g data about what the players are doing (I always wonder if anyone has looked at bias in this process).

One point that hit home when I read Moneyball about baseball was when they were part way into the season and things weren''t going to plan. The main character says there "haven''t been enough games to be statistically significant yet". And this was after 40 games or so - in other words, more than an entire Prem season (the baseball season is something ridiculous like 160 games). This is baseball which is a much easier game to apply stats to than football - every player does a series of very similar tasks, repeating numerous times.

So I''m still very dubious about what stats add to our knowledge of football - although I think this is a good thing actually. The things which make football the best sport also make it hard to analyse statistically

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ron obvious wrote: "So I don''t think the fascination of football will be destroyed any time soon!" There is surely no reason see greater understanding as decreasing the fascination. Are we less fascinated by the night sky because of what astronomy has taught us about what we are actually seeing? I think for most people it works the other way, the more you understand, the greater the pleasure and fascination.It''s Character Forming wrote: "I''m still very dubious about what stats add to our knowledge of football."Depends on who "our" refers to and which stats-based conclusions in particular. If we are talking about fans generally, the research on the effectiveness or otherwise of corners would be an example. (The story is that when Mourinho first took over at Chelsea he was mystified by the excitement that winning a corner generated over here, because he knew that in reality very few goals come from corners while, on the other hand, they more often than not lead to the defending team regaining possession. So continental teams, among whom this is more or less common knowledge, will almost always play a corner short to retain possession and keep pressure on the opposition -- as witness Barcelona v Arsenal on Tuesday night.) If we are talking about players and coaches, they are already applying what has been learnt about space and it''s utilisation by player units (rather than individuals). Whenever a substitution is made nowadays the on-coming player is seen studying a tactics board while receiving last minute instructions from a coach. They are not simply being told to go on with fresh legs and run about!Thanks both of you for responding in the spirit of the post itself. I was rather expecting several put-downs amidst a barrage of ridicule [:D]. (Plenty of time for that yet I guess! [;)] )

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We have three of the "worst" 11 players, yet there are still 3 teams below us in the table. How many of their players are in the list?

This is yet another example of why the application of statistics is very often utter bollocks.

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Stats can be useful but they don''t always give you the full picture.

Having said that, if I had to pick our weakest defender this season it''d be Martin or Olsson and if I had to pick our weakest midfielder it''d be Dorrans.

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[quote user="GJP"]Stats can be useful but they don''t always give you the full picture.

Having said that, if I had to pick our weakest defender this season it''d be Martin or Olsson and if I had to pick our weakest midfielder it''d be Dorrans.[/quote] The point is that "weakest" is being defined here purely in terms of, analytically speaking, the most superficial elements (I mean defined by whoscored.com and also our critical fans). This explains in large part the discrepancy between, for example, the fans'' view of Russ Martin (an unmitigated disaster at CB) and his managers'' view of him (not just AN, but also Strachan and Lambert, as well as his peers as reflected in his inclusion at CB in last year''s Championship Team of the Season). What people need to focus on is not what these superficial "ball event"-counting stats appear to tell us, but what they don''t tell us. To ask themselves not "How can Alex Neil be so stupid as to keep selecting RM at CB over Ryan Bennett" but "Given that Alex Neil is not stupid and knows more about football than me, what am I missing which explains his preference for RM over RB?" I remember some years ago a stat appeared which showed that Man U''s Vidic made fewer tackles than almost any other CB in the EPL. Did people draw the conclusion that there was a major weakness in Vidic''s game? Of course not. What the "absurd" stat did was cause people to better appreciate Vidic''s positional sense and control of space.

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Following up on that last post, the best football City have played this season IMO was in the first half against West Ham (a). For 30 minutes we played West Ham off the park, reducing their midfield and defence to desperation and their attack to arm-flailing impotence while Bilic watched on ashen-faced on the touch-line. Despite in the end only drawing the game, our performance got rave reviews. All three of our supposed "weakest" players, Martin, Olsson and Dorrans featured in the starting eleven for that game. The other noteworthy point about that game is that the spine of our team was, with one exception, exactly as Parma had much earlier anticipated in his Tactics Masterclasses analysing the way Alex Neil aspired to have us play -- Russ Martin (the "modern" CB) at RCB, Alex Tettey at midfield pivot and Wes Hoolahan the play maker behind the solitary striker (the exception being that the latter was Jerome rather than Grabban).

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I might be called old fashioned.... But urm, I''d rate all of the Aston Villa squad as the worst team in the league. You know, like, bottom... Least points. Normally a handy guide I thought. The officials at the premier league certainly like to use that approach I found...

Or are they going to start relegating individual players?

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I found the section in that book (the Numbers Game) about corners interesting but IMO it is incorrect and based on flawed application of statistics.

They point out that the chances of scoring from any given corner are very low and go on to ASSUME that it is therefore better to simply play a pass from the corner and keep possession. Football has few goals so the chance of scoring at ANY given point in a game (excluding penalties) is very very low.

But the valid comparison is between a corner (including a set piece where you''re in a good position to play in a cross) and a normal passage of play when you have the ball in an attacking area. Now I don''t have the stats to hand but I''d bet that corners/set pieces on average result in more goals than each time you have the ball in an attacking area. (It wouldn''t be that hard but TBH I can''t be bothered). Football fans know this instinctively, hence why we celebrate getting a corner (but we don''t celebrate a corner the same way as a goal - which the book says we do - there''a no comparison).

Teams like Barcelona don''t put the ball into the box from a corner for the same reason they don''t try to get the ball to a winger who can cross it from wide - it''s not their style of play which is focused on threading passes through the middle to create chances.

For a team like City playing in the Prem, corners/set pieces will always be a key chance to score and I don''t feel the need to look at stats to back that up.

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