Flekken: I have Flekken as 19/20 starting GKs in the league this season based on my own (rudimentary) stats. He’s rubbish. Should be Vicario - as much as I don;t really rate him that highly - he has the best stats when you look at quality of chances faced vs goals conceded and save % (Tottenham allow a lot of easy chances, he saves them a bunch).
Gvardiol: A big part in why City have struggled this season but he’s scored a few goals. Marvelous. Should be Antonee Robinson.
Saka: Good player but some of the stats to justify his inclusion are odd. “5th most shots” - what does that mean? 14th most successful dribbles… er what? Obviously this should be Salah.
Eze: Talented but I’m amazed he shows up statistically when he’s pretty much the definition of style over substance. He has 2 goals this season.
Havertz: “A respectable 16 goals”. Isak has 27 in the same time.
The Guardian’s coverage has been wonky at best recently. Remember they had Dani Carvajal as the 9th best player in the world (having not even been ranked the year before!) - ahead of Salah, Mbappe, Saka, Odegaard, Lewandowski, Rudiger, Saliba, van Dijk etc and so on.
I think the main take home is the post-game marks out of 10 ratings are an incredibly crappy way to reflect a player’s value and contribution. Or at least it is with the way the outlets that produce those ratings do it. More often than not a high score is a reflection of “did the player do something that I both noticed at the time and remember”. And just as often a mid score is a reflection of “the player has a role I dont understand and cannot evaluate his performance at it”.
The hamstring injury Fofana picked up in the early December game against Villa is now being reported as likely to end his season. 80 million quid and he’s going to have averaged fewer than 10 games a season over his 3 years there. He has been absent so much since signing for them that I dont think you can even reasonably include him in “important players Chelsea are missing through injury” conversations because he’s never played enough to be important to them.
So, Trent will be only one signature away from a straight swap with Carvajal, thus becoming world’s 9th best player by default. That’s some way to close down the deficit behind the 1st spot he covets so much…
