Gerard Piqué

[BarcaOG]

Definitely. All in all not a good performance by Piqué but he was one of our best players.

Honestly Galning I have been around for a long time and you have consistently been one of the better posters here but your fixation with pique as of late is inexplicable. pique has been good this season, yes, but nowhere near how good he was in his first two years. you have consistently romanticized pique's performances this year, so much so that it has become your standard opinion that pique is fantastic. today he was directly involved in two of the goals we allowed. considering we lost by a margin of one, that's pretty significant. he was far from 'one of our best'.

 

[Gohan]

Honestly Galning I have been around for a long time and you have consistently been one of the better posters here but your fixation with pique as of late is inexplicable. pique has been good this season, yes, but nowhere near how good he was in his first two years. you have consistently romanticized pique's performances this year, so much so that it has become your standard opinion that pique is fantastic. today he was directly involved in two of the goals we allowed. considering we lost by a margin of one, that's pretty significant. he was far from 'one of our best'.

Lets just look at statistics, numbers.

Comparing Pique to Thiago Silva, according to many the best centre back in the world right now.

*Note* I am not saying Pique is better than T.Silva but this shows how much we are underrating Pique, and after one game we call him shit. I am just showing this to prove that all the bullshit towards him is not justified.

Silva.

Piqué

 

[Galning]

Honestly Galning I have been around for a long time and you have consistently been one of the better posters here but your fixation with pique as of late is inexplicable. pique has been good this season, yes, but nowhere near how good he was in his first two years. you have consistently romanticized pique's performances this year, so much so that it has become your standard opinion that pique is fantastic. today he was directly involved in two of the goals we allowed. considering we lost by a margin of one, that's pretty significant. he was far from 'one of our best'.

He was bad today but so was everyone else. He has been our best defender this year, no question about that either. To me, he was one of our best players this afternoon. Says it all that he was still shite though. I can't name 2 players who performed better than him today.

 

[footyfan]

Lets just look at statistics, numbers.

Comparing Pique to Thiago Silva, according to many the best centre back in the world right now.

*Note* I am not saying Pique is better than T.Silva but this shows how much we are underrating Pique, and after one game we call him shit. I am just showing this to prove that all the bullshit towards him is not justified.

Silva.

Piqué

And the numbers also say that all of Suarez, Ribery and Ronaldo have been better than Messi this season. It is difficult to use numbers to justify performances for a forward, let alone a frigging defender.

 

[Gohan]

And the numbers also say that all of Suarez, Ribery and Ronaldo have been better than Messi this season. It is difficult to use numbers to justify performances for a forward, let alone a frigging defender.

Comparing anyone to Messi right now isn't fair in terms of statistics because of his injury.

 

[footyfan]

Until yesterday, Bale had played a very similar amount of minutes to Messi (himself struggling with injury) but he has been more productive than Messi in the league (goals + assists)/min.

Hence, Bale in La Liga > Messi in La Liga.

 

[Semi-Neutral]

Until yesterday, Bale had played a very similar amount of minutes to Messi (himself struggling with injury) but he has been more productive than Messi in the league (goals + assists)/min.

Hence, Bale in La Liga > Messi in La Liga.

Such a small amount of statistics isn't enough to prove anything. You need to analyze things like key passes, dribbles, shot conversion rate, number of people marking them, pass accuracy, how many fouls they draw, how many times they're dispossessed, where they play on the field...

That's why Messi has a higher rating than Bale (for La Liga, may I add) on whoscored, despite having less goals and assists.

 

[footyfan]

Yes and all that is heavily dependent on the players' and team's style of play. I can arbitrarily make up my own statistical measures such as no.of touches required/goal or shots required/goal to judge who is the better finisher/goalscorer. Bale trounces Messi on both measures.

Does it mean much? Not really.

If you really did consider whoscored's ratings as your bible, you should be OK to accept that:

- Until yesterday, Messi has been the 4th best player this year
- Lewandowski has been better than Zlatan
- David Silva >>>> Iniesta and Xavi
- Real Madrid are better than Atletico
- Sidney Sam, Julian Draxler, Marco Reus, Neymar are all better wingers than Sanchez
- Pique is the 12th best defender in the world.
- Barcelona's best midfielder is the 50th best player in Europe.

 

[Semi-Neutral]

shots required/goal

That's just shot conversion rate and I really do doubt that Bale trounces Messi on that.

As for making up arbitrary statistics, yes anyone can do that, but a statistic alone doesn't mean anything. number of touches required/goal, the other example you brought up, isn't a good statistic because taking more touches doesn't lose you anything, since the ball is in your possession the whole time. A statistic is only valid if there's a clear correlation between it being higher and a player being better (or whatever), otherwise it is just an arbitrary number that doesn't mean anything.

I do admit that statistics aren't infallible. There's are certain things that can't (as of now) be expressed by statistics, such as "controlling a game" or impact on morale or leadership ability, but in the absolute majority of cases, statistics are indeed right. And they are certainly a more logical argument than just saying "this player sucks" or "nowhere near as good" without actually providing anything to back it up besides your feelings from watching the game.

 

[UberNjufer]

Until yesterday, Bale had played a very similar amount of minutes to Messi (himself struggling with injury) but he has been more productive than Messi in the league (goals + assists)/min.

Hence, Bale in La Liga > Messi in La Liga.

do you really believe that?

 

[footyfan]

Messi needed 75 shots to score 9 goals, 2 of which were penalties. And since members on this forum always discredit penaldos, especially in Ronaldo's case, Messi needed 73 shots to score 7 goals. Bale needed 38 shots to score 8 goals. Trouncing.

Number of touches required/goal can be a measure of how much influence a player needs to have to score a goal. Some teams desire players who are extremely efficient with their touches when relating to their productivity (goals + assists).

Most statistics barely mean anything, because every player's role and responsibilities is different, so a direct comparison based on statistics is just plainly wrong. Besides, you don't know whoscored's algorithm to calculate a rating based on the raw statistics. Maybe they favour some statistics over others that makes no sense in certain situations? Another concern is them not even getting the raw data correct. Have you ever wondered how they actually count every single pass, interception, tackle, was dribbled, was fouled, shot, save all in the same game and for both teams in live time? The possibilities for errors there are too many to ignore. And it's typically one person doing this entire thing for one team.

What are your thoughts on this?

- Until yesterday, Messi has been the 4th best player this year
- Lewandowski has been better than Zlatan
- David Silva >>>> Iniesta and Xavi
- Real Madrid are better than Atletico
- Sidney Sam, Julian Draxler, Marco Reus, Neymar are all better wingers than Sanchez
- Pique is the 12th best defender in the world.
- Barcelona's best midfielder is the 50th best player in Europe.

Edit: And I must say, this is just very very wrong in a lot of the cases:

because taking more touches doesn't lose you anything, since the ball is in your possession the whole time.

 

[Semi-Neutral]

OK, first of all, one of these just isn't true.

- Lewandowski has been better than Zlatan (Zlatan 7.95 average rating, Lewandowski 7.81)

As for some of the others, I don't understand what's so bad about them. Iniesta has been clearly worse than Silva this season, and Xavi hasn't been at his best either (though one of his main roles, controlling the game, isn't statistically quantifiable like I said on the last page). Real may very well have been better than Atletico this season, we were better than Valencia today but lost, so I don't see what's so shocking about that.

For the others, as well as your main argument, I agree. That's why I said that statistics alone aren't infallible and why no one is only using them. And indeed, perhaps whoscored's algorithm isn't optimal. They don't include cup competitions, they don't include aerial duels won, they don't factor the quality of opposition into the algorithm... Statistics are simply a tool used to show something. Saying Pique is better than Thiago Silva based on their statistics on whoscored isn't correct. Saying Pique is comparable to Thiago Silva because they have similar statistics is. In general, you have to admit, whoscored is pretty accurate, and that's without the perfect algorithm. Players you would describe as good or ones that played well generally get good ratings, and vice versa. Sure, there's an occasional Max Kruse (don't even know who he is, but apparently he's the 7th best in the world), but that's the flaw with their system and that's what people must be able to tell. No one is saying "go purely by stats", we're just saying "hey look at these stats, he's not that bad".

 

[footyfan]

On league stats, Lewa has been better.

And it's not just the occasional Max Kruse (in fact you picked the wrong example because Max Kruse has actually been really good), whoscored also says that Liverpool are the best team in the EPL, madness. Ricardo Rodriguez is not comparable to Thiago Silva or Pique because he has similar stats.

Truth is I used to like whoscored's stats until I realized that it's one person behind a computer counting everything about 1 team. For example, how do they even count the number of touches each player has every game when the ball is zipping around so fast? Along with counting the myriad of other statistics they analyze?

 

[Semi-Neutral]

or example, how do they even count the number of touches each player has every game when the ball is zipping around so fast? Along with counting the myriad of other statistics they analyze?

It's almost certainly possible to make a program to do that, I have no idea how you could do it but I'm confident with a high quality stream the computer can tell the difference between when the ball is at the foot of a player and when it's not and calculate that. That is an interesting question though, because there's no way one guy or even a group of people could do that.

 

[raskolnikov]

Messi needed 75 shots to score 9 goals, 2 of which were penalties. And since members on this forum always discredit penaldos, especially in Ronaldo's case, Messi needed 73 shots to score 7 goals. Bale needed 38 shots to score 8 goals. Trouncing.

Number of touches required/goal can be a measure of how much influence a player needs to have to score a goal. Some teams desire players who are extremely efficient with their touches when relating to their productivity (goals + assists).

Most statistics barely mean anything, because every player's role and responsibilities is different, so a direct comparison based on statistics is just plainly wrong. Besides, you don't know whoscored's algorithm to calculate a rating based on the raw statistics. Maybe they favour some statistics over others that makes no sense in certain situations? Another concern is them not even getting the raw data correct. Have you ever wondered how they actually count every single pass, interception, tackle, was dribbled, was fouled, shot, save all in the same game and for both teams in live time? The possibilities for errors there are too many to ignore. And it's typically one person doing this entire thing for one team.

What are your thoughts on this?



Edit: And I must say, this is just very very wrong in a lot of the cases:

Since when did you became such a madridista? Thought you was a Barca fan:icon_confused: