thingonaspring
Nico Claesen
Firstly, I totally understand what you're saying, and I used to give a lot more credit to assist in the past than I do now, because some players like Luka Modric made me re-evaluate things like that.
What does it say about Ozil? Does it say he's created less chances for his team-mates? Or that somebody in the goal-scoring stakes is letting him down and not converting them?
Does it say that the team as a whole have got worse this season? Or is it just purely down to the individual?
You can't say, without looking into further stats to back it up*, which is why I still believe it's a pretty meaningless stat. It makes nice reading and all of course, and suggests somebody has done particularly well. Even when you take a set of stats, and base it across an average, it can look very different to the season totals. E.g. Has Ozil been that much worse than Eriksen based on that?
Of course, I think Eriksen has had a much better season than Ozil, but when you look at purely stats, it might not be as far apart as you'd think. I'd also perhaps suggest a certain Mr Lineker had a few tap-ins...
But I'm drifting off-topic for the thread here, because this is an entirely separate conversation really.*Ok, you can to a certain extent by virtue of the fact you might have tracked the player/team for the season so have an overview on it. But if you just saw these stats written down, it would be hard to ascertain for sure that somebody had a poor season, based on a stat like that. Hence in my mind it's pretty meaningless, especially taken in isolation.
