by Mr Angry »
28 Oct 2020 11:33
WoodleyRoyal and what happened before xg became a thing? did teams not go up? i don't even know how it works, as i've never looked into it. But surely you win games on a football pitch and not an excel spreadsheet
It's the same with "assists"; Giggs has the most "assists" in the Premier League era, but when he retired, I can't recall anyone mentioning this impressive fact, nor indeed, giving a toss about it...... these, and all the other detailed statistics that anoraks like to w*nk over, are another example of the Americanisation of the game, as it can be directly traced back to the Oakland Athletic's "Moneyball" strategy.
An example of where it is bollox; one of the reasons Coutinho was brought by Barcelona from Liverpool for €160 Million was on the basis of his assists - his assists (and goals) in his first half season following his January transfer in 2018 appeared to justify the investment (18 games, 8 goals, 5 assists) which was comparable to the half season he had in 2017/18 for Liverpool (14 games, 7 goals, 6 assists).
However, the following season he was played out of position by Barcelona, and his stats plumetted; 34 games, 5 goals and 2 assists. He then fell out of favour with new management, who farmed him out on loan to Bayern Munich where he played just 4 League games in 2019/20 for a return of 0 goals, and 0 assists (and was the scapegoat for Bayern's terrible start which saw the Manager replaced and the team then go on the unbeaten run which eventually saw them win the Champions League as well as the Bundesliga) and he is now back at Barcelona (because Munich didn't take up their clause to buy him, and because no-one else wanted to pay either the salary Barcelona wanted for him nor his massive salary) where this season he has had 5 League games, 1 goal and 2 assists.
In other words, Barcelona paid €160M for 14 league goals and 9 league assists across 1 full season, 1 half season, and the start of this season and have seen the value of the player collapse.
So much for relying on statistics.