Shorey best left back in the premiership

[Hoop Blah]

Well, the reason statistics are useful is because you can't watch every performance of every keeper simulatenously. It is useful to watch games, but if you only watch games, the big four keepers look a lot better than they are. They face significantly less shots than the other teams, so it is pretty easy for them to deny the other team of goals.

Furthermore, if you watch games, flashy looking saves are going to be more impressive than equally impressive saves based more on positioning.

Certainly, watching every match is the best way to do it, but even then, you have to organize what you've seen in some way. Statistics can help with that.

I'm guessing you don't get to watch much football?

If you actually watch a number of games you can judge a players ability by seeing what they do and how they play. Looking at stats doesn't tell you anything more than what events took place during a game.

[helmem]

Someone should delete this account.

[kingthor]

The saves per game stat is silly - it means that a keeper playing behind a good defence will look worse than a keeper behind a bad defence, because the latter will face more shots. Better to have a save percentage - as they do in, for instance, the NHL - so you can see what proportion of shots a keeper saves.

Not that I'm really very much in favor of any of these statistics; what's wrong with subjectivity?!

The saves per game stat is silly alone. I did not use it alone. I also looked at the goals conceded. This, in effect, is the same as looking at a save percentage. For example, if a keeper played 30 games, made 7 saves per game, and allowed 30 goals, this is more impressive than a keeper that played 30 games, made 4 saves per game, and allowed 30 goals. Surely, you are right, the save percentage is a better quantitative assessment, but I had trouble finding those statistics, and did not want to bother determining them myself.

Watching a game is the best way to judge a player’s talent, but you can also be deceived by the quality of a player based on watching a game. A forward who makes a lot of good runs and gets a lot of shots, but does not help his team score is not a good forward. A forward who can beat players on the dribble but cannot score or pass is useless. You get more from watching players, as you see how they hold possession, make decisions, etcetera, but I do think that statistics are useful as well, especially in the case of keepers and forwards. While there are more dimensions to being a good keeper than keeping the ball out of the net, and there are also more to being a good forward than helping one’s team score, these are the two primary purposes of these positions, and in fact, I’d argue these two attributes are infinitely more important than other attributes. If we had a forward who put in 20 in a season, I doubt we’d complain if was an utter liability on defense, and if we had a keeper who made the most saves of any keeper in the Premiership, I doubt we’d complain about his distribution. Wait…We do have the keeper with the most saves in the Premiership…and many supporters complain about him constantly.

I am obviously an idiot. Forgive me. ï

[kingthor]

(And if there is a mod that visits this thread, please do delete helmem...I started at least 2 accounts to get onto this forum because I never got the confirmation email...that is one of them, and I accidently logged into it today).