₦airaland Forum

BossKratos:


Mr N! I've been privy to your long debate with coogar regarding scholesy and lamps! But let me be clear, In pure footballing terms! As in skill, controlling the game, vision, passes, standing in the game, trophies won, appreciation by legends and their peers? Paul scholes trumps your boy lamps! I'm not even going 2 bother with all that further math that you and coogar were engaging in! Just be honest with your banter 4 ONCE! You, I and the rest of the free world all know this! Shalom!

coogar:
stats say scholes copped 138 assists in 36,000 minutes. it's a better rate than frankie lampard's stats.

nihilist - how does it feel when i scoop poop out of your brains and rub it in your face? you just lost another one......again!

raumdeuter:
I am not sure how this would work. And I wont interfere with that exercise

but Lampard played a different role from what Schole did. Lampard played further up the field than Scholes Did. Lampard in many seasons played as an AM. Lampard did little with play making in his hey days

Lampard played off the striker in a 4-3-3 and most knockdowns were to Lampard. he was almost around the opposition box.

Scholes played as a midfielder in a 4-4-2 where he has little responsibility upfield and did more playmaking

coogar:
no english player is really good apart from scholes. the stats are there. when the pressure hits, they crumble.

weedtaker:
abeg u fit post picture of de bolded
.
.
. Ok o

afrodoc2:
Paul Scholes was better than Frank Lampard. The stats are equivocal but the eye test makes the decision easy.

Even in La Liga Susaeta and Chori Castro have about same assist figure as Iniesta, does not make them his equal.

In Bundesliga you have people like Farfan and Gonzalo Castro competing with Robben in terms of assists.

Apart from goals scored for strikers which is fairly simple using just the stats for other positions is going to lead to inaccurate and skewed results.

The style of play of both players and of their teams means Lampard is likely to edge it in terms of goals and assists. Scholes was a better footballer.

coogar:
he's ginger.
ginger folks lack self confidence cos you are extremely self conscious of their condition. scholes never sought the limelight like the rooney, lampard, gerrard, beckham. thierry henry always asked that question - "how come scholes never even won the PFA?"



see this fool!

you are tool that brainfarted about 45PL assists. confronted with stats, you crawled back into your shell. you re-farted with your brain again by saying solano copped more assists than giggsy.

fart in the brain means there's a fecal-producing machine in your cranial cavity. this is exactly the reason this community of pundits believe you have poop for brains. nihilist, you are a recto-cranially inverted peasant. you wear your arse on your head.

coogar:
this is stüpidity!
beckham was also a runner-up twice @ballon d'or. nobody would say beckham was a better player than scholes at any point in scholes' career.




all-time scorer's table is what it is. however, when we are talking comparison with another player, variables like minutes spent is considered. why do sites like transfermarkt, whoscored, eplindex take their time to compute per minute? get out of here with your village analyses. the same guy that told us 1 hour ago that scholes had only 45 assists in the PL. trust me, you actually don't have any credibility to argue stats......you are a football-illiterate.



you are unbelievably stüpid
how does solano has a better assist rate than giggs? giggs has about 280 premier league assists - are you crazy?



so how come scholes has never won PFA award and mediocre players like lampard, gerrard & rooney have won it. scholes is ginger - they are the most hated folks in the northern hemisphere. this is why he was not outspoken as a player as well. a player that never had a football agent & he just signs wherever contract offered to him. he has a very quiet personality unlike the celebs like rooney, lamps & gerrard!



na you now!
a fool like you first argued scholes had only 45 PL assists. after you got schooled, you quickly reverted to form and changed the line of argument that we should take just the absolute numbers.

lampard is better? how many league titles has he won compared to scholes? even if we count from the roman era cos chelsea's history started in 2003....scholes still won more league titles.

how many UCL has lampard won compared to scholes? when lampard comes out of retirement and wins a league title for his club, you can mention him in the same breath as scholesy!

you are talking runner-up to ballon d'or. beckham did in 99 & 2001 and he cannot polish scholesy's boot at any point in his career. another pointer that these awards are a popularity contest.

Bleep outta here!

coogar:
you are a consummate retärd!
the only thing that never lies in this world is the number. stats are facts not your idiötic opinion backed up by jamie redknapp.

world class players like xavi, henry, edgar davids, zidane, alonso, etc have all said scholes is the messiah of the midfield in the last 20 years.
.

absolute figures cannot cut it here cos one of the players played more games. 11,000 mins more and he also scored an obscene number of penalties to pad up the stats. the ratio of awoof pen between the two maestros is 50:1 to lampard. why then should we count absolute numbers when math has given us the opportunity to check the rate!

only an idiot with pöop for brains & condensed spittle would make analytical conclusion based on absolute numbers. only a slowpoke would expect a player that played 11,000 less minutes to have the same numbers. some things cannot be thought in adulthood - i fear you have gone past enrolling into adult classes now to learn when to apply proportion.

coogar:
that's not my business....

the real issue is between lampard & scholes
other players in the EPL aren't as gifted as lampard. i am not saying lampard is a poor player, i am saying scholes is just better than him in everything.

coogar:
isn't this when the number of minutes played come into play? why are Chelsea fans so moronic with numbers?

lampard played 47,934 mins(minus city's stats)
scholes played 36,086 mins

lampard played 11,000 more minutes translating to 122 league games more than scholes.

oya, calculate how many minutes it takes scholes to cop an assist & how long it took lampard.

as per goals.....
scholes scored only one penalty for man utd. lampard scored 50. if you calculate the open play goals, scholes is more prolific.

coogar:
you are still a goat!

98 assists in 32,300+ league minutes. that's what we should respect? do the math of the number of minutes it takes the fat cow to cop one assist!

coogar:
45 assists?
you are a goat!

opta only started counting assists in the premier league in 06/07. scholes has been playing for united since 96 circa.

it's shameful that you think scholes only has 45 assists. if we begin diss chelsea fans now, you would start hyperventilating....

scholes has 138 assists for man utd.

argue with stats....

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0EA8GQIcAAaNKG.jpg

ElFenomeno1:
The new CR7 is no longer loved by scummies

coogar:
https://www.nairaland.com/871307/official-manchester-united-fan-thread/831#25282238

this was where you & airbornelacer ran away last year after being buried alive.

coogar:
how many times do you want me to school you on this ish? when you see stats, you run away. do google search on this forum, the stats are there.

coogar:
truth of the matter is - we wanted him and he dumped us for barca. if you are saying barca signing a crock shows how unimportant they see their defence then you can argue the same for man utd.....



hahahaha
compare this to terry that has never played further than the q-finals of any international competition. even the miserable UCL chelsea won in munich was without terry.

terry did his best to knock his own club out of the competition when he deliberately got himself sent off in a game chelsea were winning on aggregate before his brain-fart!



no english player is really good apart from scholes. the stats are there. when the pressure hits, they crumble. the golden generation had so much promise but they delivered nothing. the last good english side were in the 90s when linekar, shearer & owen led the line.

gerrard, lampard, parker, barry, etc stunk the whole joint tournament after tournament and yet the british media idolise them on sports pages. look at rooney's form lately. no journo has really written about his lethargic form cos you dare not criticise the england captain.

if rooney was a foreign player, he would be hiding in a bunker by now with the barrage of criticisms directed his way. anywhere in the world, it's the captain that carries the team. in man utd, the team is carrying rooney & nothing is said about it in the media.

if you cannot see this bias you shouldn't be following football!



every time chelsea had faced barca, they played that system. rearguard action that never ever exposes terry to the threat of messi & co......and yet idiotic chelsea fans always beat their chests that barca have never beaten them.



terry had the protection rooney has now. english captains never get criticised for poor form on the pitch. they are next to the queen as far as immunity is concerned. the media gas them up to heavenly status and when they get to tournaments, they play worse than togo & botswana.

Dhellake:
A lot of sense in this, imagine analysing Mikel, Cleverly and the likes from numbers alone, this guys sometimes completes up to 90% of passes attempted, but like the writer said, The computer won't show if the passes are sideways or backwards or forward.

Some of this clubs can be so dumb, spend £10m on a player they've never seem in flesh.


Great for the guys producing the numbers though, I don't mind doing that kind of job

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist” – Friedrich Nietzsche.


The battle lines have been drawn, and the armies are setting up their camps. A cold wind blows. Welcome to football’s war zone. Are you on the side of the Football Men, or the Boffins?

To the north, the data analysts and statisticians calculate the probabilities of their ideal time and location to spring an attack. There are hushed discussions over ExpG and regression analysis, drowned out by the sounds of frantic typing and computer fans whirring. They will not sleep tonight.

To the south, the Football Men are waiting in file to choose their suits of armour and weapons. Row upon row of warm coats await their selection, a huge pile of half-chewed pencils to their side. Flat caps are less plenty in number – only the officers are afforded such a privilege.

If that all seems too parodical, it matches the mood of a week in which it feels as if there is a football war brewing. Brendan Rodgers’ sacking as Liverpool manager was always likely to cause great fall-out, but few anticipated this.

That it should be the departure of Rodgers which ignited this feud between football’s two distinct camps of analysis – numbers vs eyes – is bizarre. Lest we forget, this is the coach who once said “if you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79% chance of winning the game”. One suspects the captains of both armies would raise their eyebrows at that statement.

You probably know the articles by now. There was that one on Wednesday, one more on Sunday in a similar vein. The dismissal of statistics as nonsense has formed much of the football media storyline this week, at least in part assisted by the news vacuum of the international break. Numbers are ruining football, reads the charge.

You know the responses too. Data analysts moved instantly onto the defensive on social media after their industry was attacked in so obvious a manner and on so mainstream a stage. Neither camp displayed their best side to camera. Preciousness is a difficult look to pull off.

This is a straw man argument that has escalated into a straw man war. Scarecrows are fighting scarecrows, throwing bales of hay at each other from afar.

Every professional football club that can afford to use data analysis, does so. We can presume that they are not all grossly mistaken. The vast majority use such methods for scouting potential signings, and many do so to great effect. Talk of a ‘stats only’ approach is not just overstated, it is almost entirely fictional.

“When we’re looking at players we have instant access to video material or statistical analysis,” said Southampton Head of Football Development Les Reed, speaking to Gary Neville in January. “That’s one way we can compare potential recruits with our own academy players. That helps all of our decision-making.

“We’ve got a fantastic group of eyes-on scouts and fantastic analysts – so the idea is that they can challenge each other all the time. We have conflicting views and debates, but we have enough back-up to say ‘this is right, this is right’. Everybody comes out good friends.”


The picture Reed paints is not one of war, but peace. The conclusions from Football Men that statistics don’t tell the whole story is emphatically backed by any worthwhile analyst. Sworn enemies actually believe in the same principle, but neither accepts that the other can be right.

Yet there is an extra layer to this disagreement. Much of the distrust of statistics is not against numbers per se, but a resistance to what they represent. To many in the game, data analysis breaks down something beautiful into its component parts until it is no longer enjoyable. It’s like having ten tubes of paint on the wall rather than the Mona Lisa.

To the Football Men, there is something inherently romantic about watching a game on a cold (temperature has been an important theme of the week), wet Wednesday night in football’s geographical and literal bleak midwinter. It’s a persuasive argument, too. It is here where football’s magic is to be found, not in the hard drive of a computer. This is the game in its purest form, in parks and playgrounds rather than stadia and studios. Joy is comprised of experiences, not numbers.

It is that last sentence which has, sadly or otherwise, become irrevocably lost. Football is a results-driven business. When the result becomes king, efficiency becomes of paramount importance. If a blend of statistical analysis and ‘eyes-on’ (to use Reed’s term) allows for greater accuracy in decision-making, it becomes a no-brainer. It doesn’t matter about your notions of romance; football sold its heart a long time ago.

There are faults on both sides of the argument. Data analysts are regularly guilty of having blind faith in their work, just as the vice versa is true. But that is precisely why both can make a happy marriage. Think of it as a team of chefs, not ‘too many cooks’.


Unfortunately, future successes and failures are now celebrated and mourned for point-scoring purposes. If Brentford crash and burn, people will crow. If Jurgen Klopp succeeds with Liverpool’s transfer committee, shouts of “I told you so” will drown out the songs on the Kop. Some are guilty of supporting their own visions and ideals more than most support their own clubs.

The truth is obvious to everyone else: No method is perfect. That’s precisely why football remains so loved and addictive. It is the eternal hunt for a non-existent perfect formula.

The use of statistics has, at least to some extent, bastardised our opinions. They have become the social media argument-winner, the over-simplification of complicated concepts. ‘Shock stats prove that Mata is Premier League’s best finisher,’ farts out the headline, cue the rolling of one million eyes.

Again, the sensible ones in both camps sit in agreement. Of course this is vacuous nonsense. It’s also a thousand times removed from how clubs are using data.

Sport’s unique allure is that it is part art form, part science. It is also a game of endless opinions. We each prefer different players, different goals and different styles, so it stands to reason that we have vastly different opinions on how art and science should cohabit. The only true mistake is to think that there is a right way, and an only way.

Each morning, when Liverpool's principal owner John W Henry and director Michael Gordon wake up in Boston, their inboxes ping with emails from the club's head of technical performance.

Michael Edwards, who is based at Liverpool's Melwood training ground, has become FSG's go-to guy in England after aligning himself with the data-driven model of the group's baseball team, the Boston Red Sox.
This cosy relationship with FSG, dropping the owners emails throughout the day and increasing his power at the club, led to a strained relationship with former manager Brendan Rodgers.

Edwards encourages staff to use his nickname 'Eddie', giving a matey feel to the working environment. It is understood Rodgers has another name for him.
Edwards fell perfectly into place with FSG's Moneyball strategy, the statistical model designed to extract maximum value in the transfer market. Clearly, with the club 10th in the league and paying up to three times the going rate for players, it needs refinement.
Despite a lack of playing experience at any relevant level, Edwards, who earns £300,000 a year, has a big say on Liverpool's notorious transfer committee. He would arrive for meetings with Rodgers, managing director Ian Ayre, chief scout Barry Hunter and head of recruitment Dave Fallows armed with the latest data on potential targets.

The committee have yet to explain how they came up with the figure of £29million to sign Brazilian forward Roberto Firmino from Hoffenheim, who finished eighth in the Bundesliga last season.
Divock Origi, billed as 'a world-class talent' by Rodgers when he was signed from Lille, could not even come off the bench in the club's last two league games. There are countless other errors.
After each Liverpool game Edwards emails analysis and data to the club's owners in America, detailing where the match was won and lost. It has made for grim reading this season.

Liverpool's transfer committee have yet to explain how they came up with the figure of £29million to sign Roberto Firmino
Divock Origi has failed to make an impact since joining Liverpool

Edwards has used his relationship with FSG to strengthen his hand at the club, becoming a trusted source of information to a group of people who are obsessed with statistical analysis.
There is a relationship with Bill James, the American stats guru who is employed by the Red Sox to provide Henry and Gordon with data for their baseball team.
Edwards can tap away at a laptop and within seconds tell you how many assists the 24-year-old Turkish left back Eren Albayrak has made for Rizespor this season (four).

Edwards and his team of analysts have invented a new language for football. Strikers are all about goal expectancy, chances created and the percentage of successful passes in the final third. Old-school managers just want to know if the boy can put the ball in the net.
Defensive midfielders are judged on interceptions and the number of challenges won in the centre of the pitch.
The increasing influence of analysts, young men who have no experience of scouting or recruiting players, has meant the end of the road for good football men such as Mel Johnson. He was the scout who recommended Liverpool sign talented young winger Jordon Ibe from Wycombe but was sacked, shamefully, in November 2014. Former academy director Frank McParland has also left.

Instead a new breed sits in air-conditioned offices, cutting up videos from matches all over the world and burying their heads in the stats. Edwards, along with his vast team of analysts, constantly monitors the opposition, providing detail about playing positions, style, routines, set-pieces and other important matchday information.

They profile players based on their last 10-20 appearances, gathering information and helping Rodgers build a presentation for his players before matches that was usually a maximum of 10 pages on each team. It is a useful, but far from infallible, tool.
Edwards, who is in his late thirties, began his career as part of the video analysis team at Portsmouth before leaving to work with Harry Redknapp again when he became Tottenham manager.
There, Edwards struck up a relationship with Ian Graham at Decision Technology, a data firm collecting statistics on players from all over the world.
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy paid Decision Technology a fortune each season for their services, trusting their analysis and using Edwards, in his newly created role as head of performance analysis, to make sense of it all.

Edwards was head-hunted by Damien Comolli when the Frenchman became director of football at Liverpool, turning down an increased salary of £250,000 a year at White Hart Lane to join the Anfield revolution. Levy was distraught.
Since then he has emerged as a senior figure at Liverpool, empowered by FSG to make the call on big transfer targets after gaining their trust since his arrival in 2011.
His relationship with Rodgers deteriorated shortly after the former Liverpool manager signed a contract worth £6m a year just a week after Liverpool finished within two points of claiming the Barclays Premier League title.
They clashed over transfer strategy, although Rodgers went on record to insist that he always had the final say over the recruitment of players earmarked for the first-team squad.
In the end, Edwards had his number.

The most startling revelation of the week emerged from Brendan Rodgers’ sacking at Liverpool.

It wasn’t that his replacement Jurgen Klopp likes heavy metal. Or was a Reds’ fan as a boy.

No, the most eye-popping ­information aired in the past seven days was a report detailing the influence some bloke with a laptop has over the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group.

They pay ­someone called Michael Edwards £300,000 a year to advise them on which statistics to look at when ­making policy decisions.

Never mind what Rodgers might have thought – but I suppose that does not matter now. The barely believable part of all this is that Edwards is in no way, shape or form alone in his position.

At Aston Villa, a similar bloke with a laptop, Paddy Reilly, has infiltrated the upper echelons and is now charged with making similar recommendations.

It is Reilly who oversaw the invasion of the French Foreign Legion into Villa Park this summer. His salary too is well into six figures.

An experiment that is going so well the club has won just one match in the Premier League this season and Tim Sherwood is two games from the sack.

At West Brom, there was a team of them – before Tony Pulis arrived.

A room at the club’s training ground was surrendered to banks of TVs and hard drives in which track-suited geeks record and interpret data from more games than you can shake a stick at.

For all the effect they have, it’s ­nothing better than a con.

Justin SetterfieldOld school: Pulis rules the roost at Albion
I have used the three clubs above as examples. But these people are in place at every club in the Premier League, with varying degrees of influence.

Unfortunately, for the likes of ­Edwards, all the analysis in the world didn’t stop Emre Can from booting the ball into his own defender at Everton, allowing Romelu Lukaku to level.

And all the passing accuracy figures in the world don’t matter to a Villa team that can barely pass water.

And all the data about the latest whizz-kid in Kazakhstan doesn’t matter if the Baggies waste £10million on Brown Ideye – a striker, I’m informed, that no one ever saw play in the flesh.

It is this generation of computer nerds – and every Premier League club has them – who are spinning the ­football- obsessed public a line in order to make themselves part of the ­‘marginal gains’ elite.

As if regurgitating a ­breakdown of the passes completed, crosses delivered and blocks made makes them look good. It doesn’t matter one iota. Not one.

Statistics themselves cannot tell you whether those passes were backwards, forwards or sideways. Furthermore, if they are being used as a basis for ­signing players, we really are in trouble.

What should be key components of any scouting mission? You might think the player’s athleticism would count.

You can get that from data – despite the fact that it’s far better to don your big coat and sit in a cold stand for two hours actually ­watching them play.

What about a player’s character? Their hunger? Their determination? Their positional sense? Their ability?

Are they brave? Do they take the ball in tight situations when their side is losing? Does anyone want to put in the hard yards anymore? And that includes managers, too, some of whom have favourite agents on speed-dial.

Do these boffins speak to their ­contacts in the game who might point them in the right direction or, even better still, say, ‘Don’t touch him with a bargepole?’

Nah, if you can’t get it from the ­computer, it doesn’t matter. Let’s face it, if the target can run an average of 12km a game with a body-fat index of 4.5 per cent, he’ll do for us.

Twelve months ago, everyone was waxing lyrical about Brentford’s model.

Don’t see too many doing likewise now that half of their players have buzzed off from the Bees and Mark Warburton is proving his coaching ­credentials again up at Rangers.

If you asked me who has been the most consistent centre-half outside the top four for the last five years, my answer would be Swansea’s Ashley Williams.

I don’t care what statistics say. I’ve watched him countless times. He’s a leader and Crystal Palace were right to try and prise him away in the summer.

I accept unreservedly that some ­analysis has a use. If there is an issue with goals conceded at set-pieces, that can be worked out on the training ground. Or if a ­full-back doesn’t cover the near post.

I get that – so clearly to dismiss it all as rubbish would be over-the-top.

But to have entire buying policies at clubs dictated by boys and girls who can trot out a compelling PowerPoint ­presentation before owners who are desperate to base their entire business plans on them is an utter nonsense.

For there is only one piece of data that determines the direction any club is taking: The scoreline.

And as long as I live, that ain’t gonna change. No matter what the geeks say.

Griffon:
Diego Simeone?

Mourinholic:
He said he can't even explain it

sod09:
yes during Carew, riise, mgp...

Mourinholic:
Airmark is already my NL moniker of the year!!!!
So much class that he cant stop schooling them

airmark:
Nani was a goat. That would have been one of ronaldo's best goals of his career. He was so angry that he immediately dropped the captain's band on the ground. That drama involved 3 actors, ronaldo, nani and pique who was swimming without water.

dopeJemi:
Smh

funlord:
Sorry mate, I don't seek attention from scuzzy dullards like you! By the way what are you doing on a man united thread then? Seeking for the attention you cannot get on your sahara bayern thread I guess? Ruminate on that thought 1st DUMSCHLAU!( Its german! Read it up)

Now its clear you were losing your train of thought in your argument with nihilist which was why you made such a dumb comment! I'm not suprised, everyday I see people banter with you here you are constantly accused of shifting the posts in your logic, back tracking, or never making sense! Your lack of wits is enshrined in the constitution so I can't help you with that! For you to call the effort of winning league championships "LOCAL"! Well I guess you won't feel bad if I christened you EBELE from today henceforth!

Now kindly _fuck off and die! Your daftness tends to go viral, and I don't like germs!