By Batong Go To PostIt's pre-season m5I know, I didn't even have the game on. Just got the notifications on my phone, and QPR had scored like 3 in 5 minutes when I posted that.
Any stat interested people here, I've been tinkering around with this database for a while today, which looks at a recent metric called DAVIES*.
https://samgoldberg1882.shinyapps.io/ShinyAlph/
Davies is an approximation of a statistic called Goals Added, which tries to calculate how every on the ball action contributes to the chance of a goal being scored. So when a player makes a tackle and recovers the ball, that will obviously increase the chances that the team scores a goal, thus increasing their Goals Added.
Davies takes this score, then subdivides it two more times. First, every player is put into one of 9 play style categories. Your typical striker or winger will be put into the "Finisher" or "Dribbler" play style. A CM might be considered an "Attacking Central Progressor" or "Defensive Central Progressor".
Players are then sorted by age. To calculate Davies, you'll take very 25 year old "Finisher", and look at how many more "Goals Added" they contribute compared to the average for those two categories. As you can probably imagine, public awareness of stats lags well behind what nerds or clubs themselves will be looking at, so this will give a better idea of how stat-aligned clubs are scouting compared to something like xG.
To use the above link, filter Season to "2021", set CurrentAge to something suitable like 17-27, set Minutes to minimum 1000, then sort by DaviesPer90. You can then further filter by Playstyle to find like for like replacements for certain players. So for example if you wanted to figure who Liverpool might sign to bolster their attack, you'd look at Finishers (all 4 of the current lot are finishers) and then conclude that Marcus Thuram is probably the most likely target.
*If you're wondering why the name is so stupid, its because Alphonso Davies was marked as a superstar in the metric just from his MLS data.
https://samgoldberg1882.shinyapps.io/ShinyAlph/
Davies is an approximation of a statistic called Goals Added, which tries to calculate how every on the ball action contributes to the chance of a goal being scored. So when a player makes a tackle and recovers the ball, that will obviously increase the chances that the team scores a goal, thus increasing their Goals Added.
Davies takes this score, then subdivides it two more times. First, every player is put into one of 9 play style categories. Your typical striker or winger will be put into the "Finisher" or "Dribbler" play style. A CM might be considered an "Attacking Central Progressor" or "Defensive Central Progressor".
Players are then sorted by age. To calculate Davies, you'll take very 25 year old "Finisher", and look at how many more "Goals Added" they contribute compared to the average for those two categories. As you can probably imagine, public awareness of stats lags well behind what nerds or clubs themselves will be looking at, so this will give a better idea of how stat-aligned clubs are scouting compared to something like xG.
To use the above link, filter Season to "2021", set CurrentAge to something suitable like 17-27, set Minutes to minimum 1000, then sort by DaviesPer90. You can then further filter by Playstyle to find like for like replacements for certain players. So for example if you wanted to figure who Liverpool might sign to bolster their attack, you'd look at Finishers (all 4 of the current lot are finishers) and then conclude that Marcus Thuram is probably the most likely target.
*If you're wondering why the name is so stupid, its because Alphonso Davies was marked as a superstar in the metric just from his MLS data.
By sohois Go To PostAny stat interested people here, I've been tinkering around with this database for a while today, which looks at a recent metric called DAVIES*.thank you Mike
https://samgoldberg1882.shinyapps.io/ShinyAlph/
Davies is an approximation of a statistic called Goals Added, which tries to calculate how every on the ball action contributes to the chance of a goal being scored. So when a player makes a tackle and recovers the ball, that will obviously increase the chances that the team scores a goal, thus increasing their Goals Added.
Davies takes this score, then subdivides it two more times. First, every player is put into one of 9 play style categories. Your typical striker or winger will be put into the "Finisher" or "Dribbler" play style. A CM might be considered an "Attacking Central Progressor" or "Defensive Central Progressor".
Players are then sorted by age. To calculate Davies, you'll take very 25 year old "Finisher", and look at how many more "Goals Added" they contribute compared to the average for those two categories. As you can probably imagine, public awareness of stats lags well behind what nerds or clubs themselves will be looking at, so this will give a better idea of how stat-aligned clubs are scouting compared to something like xG.
To use the above link, filter Season to "2021", set CurrentAge to something suitable like 17-27, set Minutes to minimum 1000, then sort by DaviesPer90. You can then further filter by Playstyle to find like for like replacements for certain players. So for example if you wanted to figure who Liverpool might sign to bolster their attack, you'd look at Finishers (all 4 of the current lot are finishers) and then conclude that Marcus Thuram is probably the most likely target.
*If you're wondering why the name is so stupid, its because Alphonso Davies was marked as a superstar in the metric just from his MLS data.
that's really interesting actually
By Anya Taylor-Sad Go To Postzirkzee will never make it because he's an idiot
What a sitter
By Elchele Go To Postzirkzee will never make it because he's an idiotHe chose Parma, a relegated team and then, fighting for relegation in January, over us
he is a very much an idiot
By sohois Go To PostAny stat interested people here, I've been tinkering around with this database for a while today, which looks at a recent metric called DAVIES*.smh messi will always remain underrated even as the GOAT
https://samgoldberg1882.shinyapps.io/ShinyAlph/
Davies is an approximation of a statistic called Goals Added, which tries to calculate how every on the ball action contributes to the chance of a goal being scored. So when a player makes a tackle and recovers the ball, that will obviously increase the chances that the team scores a goal, thus increasing their Goals Added.
Davies takes this score, then subdivides it two more times. First, every player is put into one of 9 play style categories. Your typical striker or winger will be put into the "Finisher" or "Dribbler" play style. A CM might be considered an "Attacking Central Progressor" or "Defensive Central Progressor".
Players are then sorted by age. To calculate Davies, you'll take very 25 year old "Finisher", and look at how many more "Goals Added" they contribute compared to the average for those two categories. As you can probably imagine, public awareness of stats lags well behind what nerds or clubs themselves will be looking at, so this will give a better idea of how stat-aligned clubs are scouting compared to something like xG.
To use the above link, filter Season to "2021", set CurrentAge to something suitable like 17-27, set Minutes to minimum 1000, then sort by DaviesPer90. You can then further filter by Playstyle to find like for like replacements for certain players. So for example if you wanted to figure who Liverpool might sign to bolster their attack, you'd look at Finishers (all 4 of the current lot are finishers) and then conclude that Marcus Thuram is probably the most likely target.
*If you're wondering why the name is so stupid, its because Alphonso Davies was marked as a superstar in the metric just from his MLS data.
By Xpike Go To Postunlucky el salvadorWe lost Quioto and Elis to injuries. Basically our two best players.
rip honduras
Our coach has Covid and is isolated and our assistant coach is managing the U23 at the Olympics in Tokyo. Basically there was no chance we could pull this one off
Fun article from Coxxy in the Athletic today
In recent times, there’s been a notable shift in the perception of footballers.
A decade ago they were presented as spoilt, overpaid and ignorant, obsessed with cars and WAGs, and completely distanced from the common man.
But Raheem Sterling, once portrayed in that manner, is now considered an intelligent and thoughtful young man and was awarded an MBE for services to racial equality. His England team-mate Marcus Rashford led a selfless and highly effective campaign to help feed children in poverty, for which he was also awarded an MBE — as was Jordan Henderson, for his charitable work during the pandemic.
Footballers are happy to become involved in political issues, often appearing to attract more support than politicians themselves. Something equivalent to Tyrone Mings’ criticism of the home secretary after England’s elimination from Euro 2020 would not, you suspect, have happened in the “golden generation” era.
There are, certainly, those who don’t appreciate this sort of thing and would prefer footballers to stick to playing football. But even they probably wouldn’t dare of going for the old stereotype about footballers being dim-witted. It no longer works. The public no longer think of footballers as being detached from society. They think of them as, broadly speaking, decent people.
The next shift in perception should concentrate not upon what footballers are like as people, but what they’re like as footballers. Granted, some are hero-worshipped and earn a tremendous living, but Premier League footballers are essentially still underrated, both by the general public and devoted football fans.
There’s a tendency to put all high-achieving sportspeople into one group, regardless of their sport. A top-flight footballer is considered roughly as talented as a top-flight rugby player or cricketer.
But think about the maths. Rugby and cricket are popular sports in England, but there are certain barriers to entry, and they are — to varying extents — played in quite particular environments. Rugby, especially, is largely the domain of private schools, which accounts for around seven per cent of pupils in the country.
Using anecdotal evidence, looking back at my primary school class, only one lad played rugby. One was a very handy cricketer. But over half the boys would have said their dream job was to be a footballer. Immediately, the competition to be the best footballer in our class was about 10 times harder than being the best rugby or cricket player.
On top of that, only around 10 countries actually take rugby and cricket seriously enough to regularly produce players capable of playing in the English top flight, whereas football is not merely the default sport in Britain, it’s also the most popular sport across the world. Even prominent sporting nations that didn’t traditionally excel at football — Australia, USA, Japan, China — have dramatically developed their domestic leagues over the past couple of decades. To be playing for the best cricket or rugby side in Britain, you’re competing against a small fraction of the population in Britain, and then the best from a small number of countries around the world.
In football, to play up front for Liverpool you need to be better than the best player from football-mad Senegal, the best from football-mad Egypt, and extremely good ones from other football-mad countries like Portugal, Brazil and Belgium, never mind everyone who grew up on football-mad Merseyside.
In fact, there doesn’t appear to be a single Merseyside-born forward currently playing in the Premier League. The last one was possibly Wayne Rooney, born in 1985. Highly-rated Leeds youngster Joe Gelhardt, born in 2002, might be the next one.
In other words, the best forward, of all those born between 1986 and 2001 in Liverpool, the footballing city in England, was not good enough to be a Premier League regular.
Every club cricketer claims to have played against a future Australian international who was knocking around in the home counties one English summer, and every amateur rugby player has seemingly trained with a second division side, which sounds impressive in football terms, but the difference between the top and amateur level is not actually that large in those sports, because those at the top have not, relatively speaking, seen off the same amount of competition as footballers.
In football, the gap is massive. I was a decent enough footballer. There was never any hope of me making it as a professional, but I very much can play football, in the same way that someone who can strum a few songs can reasonably say they can play the guitar. A couple of years ago, I played in a match that was filmed, and I could put together a short compilation of passes and an outside-the-box goal that would make me look quite good (if I omitted the goal I conceded when caught in possession on the edge of my own box, which resulted in a sweary argument with a television presenter).
I played 11-a-side from the age of eight until university, often with players who were considerably better than me. And yet, to my knowledge, absolutely none ever became a professional. Some were released from clubs and ended up in other occupations, and one played in the semi-professional Isthmian League. That’s it, from literally hundreds of keen footballers. Either playing alongside me was utterly ruinous to their hopes, or the competition is absolutely ferocious.
I once played a match alongside a bloke who — I was told beforehand — used to play for Oxford United. He absolutely ran the game throughout, cutting through the opposition at will, exchanging passes with his younger brother like Cassano and Totti for Roma. He was astonishingly good.
On that basis, I assumed this was a former League One-level attacking midfielder. Nope — when I Googled him, it turns out he’d spent just 18 months in the first team, when Oxford were only in the fifth tier, and he was a right-back. He spent the remainder of his career in lower divisions. He was head and shoulders above everyone else that day, and yet by the standards of professional football, had been on the fringes, in the least glamorous position of all.
A couple of years later, I was playing in a match at Old Trafford arranged by one of Manchester United’s sponsors, where a group of English journalists thrashed a Russian equivalent team. The “managers” for the day, Denis Irwin and Quinton Fortune, generously came off the benches at half-time to help the beleaguered Russian side.
Irwin had been retired for 15 years, Fortune for a decade. Yet together they absolutely bossed the game, ignoring their flagging team-mates and evading challenges from sprightlier opponents by knocking a series of diagonal balls to one another, like one of those “three professionals against 100 schoolkids” games you’ve probably seen on YouTube. They were both still brilliant and turned a 4-0 half-time scoreline into a more respectable 5-3. At one point, I closed down Irwin as he received the ball on the edge of his own box, and after a couple of seconds panicking and trying to remember whether Irwin was left- or right-footed, he’d turned past me and was gone. Class is permanent.
And yet class isn’t actually enough. Gone are the days when mercurial wingers could rely on natural pace and trickery while leaving defending to others. Today, everyone has to press and track back, play their part without the ball. Furthermore, academy coaches devise remarkably complex training drills to improve players’ spatial awareness and increasingly fill their heads with tactical information. If you don’t take that detail on board, others will, and they’ll become better than you. It’s a huge learning process to transform from a talented teenager to someone capable of playing professionally. Besides, in the age of intense scouting and statistical analysis, any possible weakness is identified and exploited ruthlessly.
Perhaps the most brutal thing in the modern game is the consistency required. In some other high-profile occupations, a brief period of brilliance is enough to sustain stardom forever. Some actors, for example, get lucky from a casting in a successful film and live off that for decades. In music, The Killers made a massive album in 2004, an all right album in 2006 and relatively little of note thereafter, yet were headlining the most recent Glastonbury, in 2019.
To provide an admittedly odd comparison, Danny Rose was voted the best left-back in the Premier League in both 2016 and 2017. Yet in 2020, at the age of 30, he was omitted from the Tottenham squad because, basically, he wasn’t considered good enough. He didn’t play all season.
And therefore, the most underappreciated players are those at the top — or at least, those on the fringes of the top, who have tasted tremendous success and are struggling to maintain that level. I recently heard someone suggesting Danny Drinkwater had “wasted his career”, and while recent years have been difficult, he will retire with a Premier League winners’ medal and three England caps, which isn’t too shabby.
It’s worth considering the perception of Jesse Lingard early last season, before his highly successful loan to West Ham. He was treated as an embarrassment, a failure, a waste of talent. Even ignoring his incredible rejuvenation earlier this year, Lingard had already scored in a victorious FA Cup final and a victorious League Cup final, and at a World Cup. He hadn’t done badly.
Joe Hart is treated as a joke figure these days, but has played 75 times for England, won the Premier League twice and kept the most Premier League clean sheets for four years in a row. The ability and dedication required to reach this level are absolutely insane, and even if these players end up featuring next season at the bottom-placed Premier League team, they’re still in the top 0.1 per cent of every Englishman of their generation who grew up wanting to play football.
Perhaps this is the result of me being a season ticket holder at a seventh-tier club and realising how far down the pyramid you can find genuine quality, but I am genuinely irritated every time it’s implied a Premier League footballer is anything short of an elite athlete. I realise that, if a corner doesn’t clear the first man, the fan shouting that the culprit is “useless” is not attempting to provide a comprehensive analysis of his ability, but I can’t help thinking that we’d all appreciate top-flight football more if we more regularly thought about how good these players are.
By n8 dogg Go To PostFun article from Coxxy in the Athletic today
TLDR:
Premier League footballers are really good at football; The Killers are shite.
By n8 dogg Go To PostGoing here today ladsCareful with your sun cream today than.
https://www.wingfest.co.uk/
By Cleff Go To PostEnjoy N8Was going to say, that can't be good for your ingestion
Also, RIP your angus tomorrow
Not to join in the weather olympics but I would kill someone for a 20-25 degree week this time of year. I was out in the park all day remarking on how beautiful and pleasant a day it was, at 33 and 60% humidity
That article was all over the place
First they talked about how footballers changed their behaviour and the they complained about lack of An attacking minded Liverpudlian
First they talked about how footballers changed their behaviour and the they complained about lack of An attacking minded Liverpudlian
I agreed with Cox's point, but I'm not sure why he felt the need to put down other sportspeople to make it. It's especially ridiculous to talk about cricketers only competing against a handful of countries, when some of those countries are the Indian subcontinent and the 1.5+ Billion people who live there. Football is still going to be more popular than cricket, but it's not some chasm like he implies
It's so sad Japan taxpayers (I guess most of the buildings were done thanks to their money) had to pay so much for the olympics, had a 1 year delay and still can't attend the event.
If I'm the Japanese prime minister, I'd have demanded for another year delay so the people could enjoy the event. World Cup next year is on the second semester anyway, it wouldn't be an issue.
If I'm the Japanese prime minister, I'd have demanded for another year delay so the people could enjoy the event. World Cup next year is on the second semester anyway, it wouldn't be an issue.
By Willkiller Go To Postbbigg ppicc
I reckon he'll be alright m8
just because it's cloudy doesn't mean the sun's uva-rays aren't destroying your skin.
always wear sunscreen, lads.
Victor Fischer from being the best player in the league for a year, maybe one and a half, to not even making the bench, and having 18 year olds start instead.
All looking good on the Varane front. But €45m seems too low. Would be an outrageously good deal. Surely he'd be more expensive than that?
By Vini.lad Go To PostIt's so sad Japan taxpayers (I guess most of the buildings were done thanks to their money) had to pay so much for the olympics, had a 1 year delay and still can't attend the event.
If I'm the Japanese prime minister, I'd have demanded for another year delay so the people could enjoy the event. World Cup next year is on the second semester anyway, it wouldn't be an issue.
Ultimate decision rests with the IOC. I don’t think they wanted two olympics in the same year.
By Cleff Go To PostAll looking good on the Varane front. But €45m seems to low. Would be an outrageously good deal. Surely he'd be more expensive than that?I think we have some new and surprisingly competent individuals in charge of transfer negotiations.
By Daz Go To PostI think we have some new and surprisingly competent individuals in charge of transfer negotiations.Could be another Di Maria though..
cant believe we are still wasting our time and money will this fucking clown Thorup. Fucking joke of a manager
Fans certainly had enough
Fans certainly had enough
Bring me Kubo
By Killer7 Go To PostI don't know who Moe is but none of the usual Madrid sources are posting 45m. I reckon it'll be 55m with some add-ons or something. Anything around 55m-60m is a good deal for both parties.
Absolute steal at that price. Boufasi also states the player has agreed to come.
By sohois Go To PostI agreed with Cox's point, but I'm not sure why he felt the need to put down other sportspeople to make it. It's especially ridiculous to talk about cricketers only competing against a handful of countries, when some of those countries are the Indian subcontinent and the 1.5+ Billion people who live there. Football is still going to be more popular than cricket, but it's not some chasm like he implies
Think it partially comes from the fact he openly and viscerally hates sports that are not football.
By Frustrated_me Go To PostBring me Kubo
I don't know who Moe is but none of the usual Madrid sources are posting 45m. I reckon it'll be 55m with some add-ons or something. Anything around 55m-60m is a good deal for both parties.
"Moe" is probably the most informed football journalist re France and French footballers there is. Altho I think he's about to move on from football transfer stuff soon.
Another French journalist is jumping onto the story. Hopefully we actually get him in the next week or two.
Copenhagen fans just sang Ståle Solbakken for a good 5 minutes, Thorup being humiliated. This is yet another match that feels like it's setting new standards, for how poor we can be. RAUS
