Snowball Perhaps I should be clearer.
WE-ARE-BETTER-OFF-WITHOUT-GLYFI
There's an exericse I teach when critiquing stories. When a few people are convinced a story is good (when in fact it isn't)
or when a few simply cannot see why a story is rated when they think it's bad, I get them to "try and mark the opposite way."
Now, why don't you and Hoop, for example try to work out WHY,
if Gylfi is such a good player (and he is) we got better results
last season when he didn't play, under Rodgers, under McDermot
and with the two sets of results combined, and again (so far) we
are getting better results THIS season.
If, instead of arguing for the sake of it in the face of very clear statistics,
you actually did the mind exercise, you might get somewhere.
It's a piece of piss to explain that. It's because good as he is, Gylfi was one important, but small part of what goes into a performance and result. Gylfi is not responsible for two Matt Mills cock ups against Scunthorpe, or Federici gifting the ball to Earnshaw against Forest.... but for that there's two games that look quite different. Clearly the reverse also works that he could have put away some of the chances he missed last season, or when he hit the woodwork this season.
Football is a complex game, played in many different locations, in many different conditions, with different tactics, different oppositions, different combinations of players in the side you support and ultimately managed and played by humans, who in themselves offer enormous variation.
Why don't you try looking at the bigger picture, rather than getting tunnel vision looking at some extremely limited statistics about one tiny aspect of the team and it's performances. Because those statistics are taken completely out of context of all the other myriad variables that combined to give us the list of results of you are using.
EDIT: Remove a player with ~ 20 goals and ~ 10 assists from midfield and don't replace him there and you are weaker. Gylfi scored from a freekick this season,hit the woodwork twice, and had a decent penalty conversion rate last season iirc. There is no reason to believe he wouldn't have converted an equivalent number of chances to those Harte managed, maybe more.
With Armstrong back and looking good we have an improved defence without the need of Harte (not that I don't want him here). Khiz is an improvement in squad depth certainly, but so far this season the jury has to be out on his contribution given his two games, one sending off and one poor passage of play leading to a soft goal. Even so, is half a dozen games with Harte, some defensive cover and the possibility of having money available for more players in January (the amount available or quality of the player still very much far from clear) good enough to replace Gylfi and make us as strong if not stronger without him than with him? IMO No.
But then it hasnt compromised our season much and has helped the finances so we can live with it.
A fundamental of statistics and their interpretation must surely be that correlation =/= causation, which is what you are suggesting.
