Baleforce
Ron Henry
A lot of things get talked about post game, what if that card was given, what if the pen was scored, what if the keeper didn't slip, i'm fed up with it, its irrelevant, all that matters is what did happen.
Leading on from something in another thread, something i've seen a lot of on GG in the last year, is the idea of taking a player out of a result.
Let's use the first game of the season as an example, we beat West Ham 1-0 thanks to a brilliant header from Eric Dier, 3 points. Now lets remove him from the game, no goal, 0-0, 1 point right? I say wrong.
You can't leave it at that, how are we taking him out of the game? Did we just have ten men, that makes it easy, nothing he did would have been replaced by anyone else, which of course is nonsense, we have to allow for all the tackles and pressures he produced, how many West Ham goals did his performance stop, we have absolutely no way of quantifying that. Did someone else play that day, Verts maybe? How can we grade the Dutchman's hypothetical performance, he might have put in a brilliant cross, or scored that header himself, he might have given away a penalty or an own goal.
I see it repeatedly being used as a stick to beat managers with, Redknapp and Crouch, AVB and Bale, Sherwood and Ade, and now Poch and Kane, although not long ago it was Poch and Eriksen.
Is there any point in doing this, can any accurate data be gleamed from it, is there anything there to learn, what am I missing?
Leading on from something in another thread, something i've seen a lot of on GG in the last year, is the idea of taking a player out of a result.
Let's use the first game of the season as an example, we beat West Ham 1-0 thanks to a brilliant header from Eric Dier, 3 points. Now lets remove him from the game, no goal, 0-0, 1 point right? I say wrong.
You can't leave it at that, how are we taking him out of the game? Did we just have ten men, that makes it easy, nothing he did would have been replaced by anyone else, which of course is nonsense, we have to allow for all the tackles and pressures he produced, how many West Ham goals did his performance stop, we have absolutely no way of quantifying that. Did someone else play that day, Verts maybe? How can we grade the Dutchman's hypothetical performance, he might have put in a brilliant cross, or scored that header himself, he might have given away a penalty or an own goal.
I see it repeatedly being used as a stick to beat managers with, Redknapp and Crouch, AVB and Bale, Sherwood and Ade, and now Poch and Kane, although not long ago it was Poch and Eriksen.
Is there any point in doing this, can any accurate data be gleamed from it, is there anything there to learn, what am I missing?
