The Emirates FA Cup 2019/20

[The Lusophone]

Ah yes, two gifs completely discredit Maguire as a defender. No good defender has ever been beaten by an attacker or dribbled past at all.

[Malenko]

12 minutes ago, TCO said:

I don't think he has enough pace to start for any club and he's only going to get less mobile as he ages

Oh. Now I get where the "Dennis Bergkamp wasn't that good" argument was coming from.

[TCO]

14 minutes ago, MadJack said:

Ah yes, two gifs completely discredit Maguire as a defender. No good defender has ever been beaten by an attacker or dribbled past at all.

Not descrediting him as a defender, he is a good defender. I'm saying he's not close to as good as he should be for the fee and it's not based off one bad performance. Your £80mil defender shouldn't be getting done by Junior Stanislas in a tight 1v1 situation.

[RazorsEdge]

Maguire is a good defender but unfortunately we paid the English tax on him which is why his fee was so high. If he was a foreigner I couldn't see him above 30 or 40m, tbh.

[The Lusophone]

8 minutes ago, TCO said:

Not descrediting him as a defender, he is a good defender. I'm saying he's not close to as good as he should be for the fee and it's not based off one bad performance. Your £80mil defender shouldn't be getting done by Junior Stanislas in a tight 1v1 situation.

£80 million was the fee needed to sign him. Evidently United decided it was worth it. You pay a premium for English players and you pay another premium if you're Manchester United. Can't really be helped tbh - see how Sporting wanted more from us for Bruno Fernandes than they were willing to let him go to Spurs for as another example of that.

[Baddar]

This is my point. 

I feel Maguire has done well, and watching us week in, week out, he's improved our defence. But it's far from perfect, and he has looked a bit dodgy at times. He also looks uncomfortable running with the ball. Even yesterday he went in a circle and ran into his own man. 

But it's definitely the fee that's causing the criticism. Bruno will get similar next season (mainly from opposition fans) when the goals and assists inevitably slow down for a bit. 

[The Lusophone]

2 minutes ago, Baddar said:

This is my point. 

I feel Maguire has done well, and watching us week in, week out, he's improved our defence. But it's far from perfect, and he has looked a bit dodgy at times. He also looks uncomfortable running with the ball. Even yesterday he went in a circle and ran into his own man. 

But it's definitely the fee that's causing the criticism. Bruno will get similar next season (mainly from opposition fans) when the goals and assists inevitably slow down for a bit. 

Regardless of how comfortable he looks - the stats show he's doing that incredibly well. 4th in ball progression in the entire league and 1st in distance gained per dribble amongst defenders.

[Colly]

He's alright but I wouldn't swap him for Fede Fernandez.

Also what the hell is ball progression? Sounds like yet another terrible side effect of aging.

[stokeriño]

This is where the ball progression metric falls down... Dribbling/passing the ball 10 yards forward from the edge of your own box a hundred times during a match, usually without pressure, ends up looking better than players who actually have to deal with the opposition.

[TCO]

That metric is only useful for teams that instruct their CBs to bring the ball out. A very small amount of top teams will actually play that way and will often be given the room to do so.

As already said traipsing forward with the ball for 10 yards and playing a simple pass is going to look very good in the metrics..

[The Lusophone]

Which is why you also need to look at things like distance per carry and carriers per touch and what that brings to the whole team. 

Prior to the restart, Maguire led in distance per carry at 4.719 yards - that's better than all defenders, including full backs and wing backs - and above the likes of Fernandinho and Adam Webster who are widely considered to be amongst the best in the League at such things. Maguire's average distance per carry comes at a much lower rate than most of his contemporaries as well - the likes of Joe Gomez, Fikayo Tomori and Nicolas Otamendi attempt to carry the ball much more than Maguire, for much less return - less than 2.6 yards per carry for the former two, and less than 3.6 for Otamendi.

What this tells us is that not only is Maguire carrying the ball further than his contemporaries, he's also doing it in a more intelligent fashion and with more attacking intent. And since he hardly ever losses the ball - 0.1 dispossessions per game - that provides a more advanced position from which United can attack mid and low block teams from, a massive issue we had before his - and Bruno Fernandes's - arrival.

[Colly]

Positing my own opinion, as an analyst by trade and a football fan by choice, these devoid of context stats mean so little in a sport that isn't as straightforward as the American sports they're trying to ape. Without knowing how much pressure a player is put under how can you describe "average distance per carry" as an outcome rather than a measure?

Danny Simpson at Newcastle was at one point described as statistically the best fullback in the league largely down to a high number of goal line clearances. Plenty of fans latched onto that without even thinking about the fact that the reason he was making goal line clearances was that he was 30 yards out of position failing to stop crosses coming in. Paul Dummett tends to be well up in terms of "aerial duels won" largely because he's a 6 foot centre half who's become a full back. Extreme examples, but football (soccer) can't be simplified into distance based stats in the same way American football can.

That's not to say that they're completely meaningless, and something like that might be useful for a scout to see to actually assess it in real life, but as a meaningful comparison with other defenders I'm fairly dismissive.

P.S. You should definitely all click that link.

[Szumi]

Harry's got a nice big concrete slab on his head, but give me a VVD and Joe Gomez pairing any day of the week 👍

[gunnar hendershow]

1 hour ago, Colly said:

Positing my own opinion, as an analyst by trade and a football fan by choice, these devoid of context stats mean so little in a sport that isn't as straightforward as the American sports they're trying to ape. Without knowing how much pressure a player is put under how can you describe "average distance per carry" as an outcome rather than a measure?

Danny Simpson at Newcastle was at one point described as statistically the best fullback in the league largely down to a high number of goal line clearances. Plenty of fans latched onto that without even thinking about the fact that the reason he was making goal line clearances was that he was 30 yards out of position failing to stop crosses coming in. Paul Dummett tends to be well up in terms of "aerial duels won" largely because he's a 6 foot centre half who's become a full back. Extreme examples, but football (soccer) can't be simplified into distance based stats in the same way American football can.

That's not to say that they're completely meaningless, and something like that might be useful for a scout to see to actually assess it in real life, but as a meaningful comparison with other defenders I'm fairly dismissive.

P.S. You should definitely all click that link.

I've been trying to find a really solid analytical approach to football (soccer) but it's really hard to have them cover individual performances which is often the point of using them. I think some team-based statistics are helpful though. And then you have some less advanced analytics that I think would be useful such as number of scoring chances created (i.e. how often a Midfielder is getting the ball into space where a player can potentially score or shoot) and number of on-target shots (i.e. shots that either must be blocked by a defensive player or saved by the keeper). But on the defensive side it's hard to judge a lot of individual ability. Perhaps most significantly because a defensive line in football (soccer) functions almost exactly like an offensive line in (American) football where they are blocking a QB or RB as a unit. A back four is similarly essentially blocking the GK in a similar way. The objective is in theory to prevent the GK from seeing the ball and to play it out before it can reach him. Or knock forwards off their mark so that they are unable to generate an opportunity that doesn't allow the GK to make the save. Obviously in my eyes the first statistic is a lot more important in judging a defense. You don't want to be giving up shots. 

I really enjoy sports analytics but in a lot of sports they have to be team-based and a lot of times you only find out how good an individual player is once they leave the lineup. If an NFL team averages only letting their QB get pressured 5 times a game and then a tackle gets injured and suddenly they're letting their QB get pressured 9 times a game it tells you a lot. Similarly if a defense allows 6 scoring chances per 90 minutes with a Full Back but 10 without him it tells you that the player is valuable towards reducing the likelihood of the opposing team scoring.

Anyway, I feel like cricket and baseball are much more tailored for insane analytical detail around individual performances than basically any other popular sport. 

[Colly]

Also darts.

[Colly]

I just did a quick Google and no footballing sentence ever has made me want to vomit more than this:

"Mo Salah led the Premier League last season for combined xG output following a progressive carry."

[Adam]

A progressive carry? So, running with the ball then?

[gunnar hendershow]

Incredibly innovate strategy from Klopp yet again, just having his forwards pick up the ball and carry it. Genius.

[The Lusophone]

1 hour ago, Adam said:

A progressive carry? So, running with the ball then?

It's more about what you do with the ball when you have it as I understand it. So like xg ranks quality of chance progressive carry takes into account the quality and effect of the carry?

[FLiam]

Harry Maguire would be far better with an experienced defender alongside him. Even though he's 27.