This isnt a response to your take on VdV as I really know nothing about him other than he looks lightening fast. It’s more a general comment about my interest in player analysis via stats. Header success rate is one of those stats I have no feel for at all so dont know where a good defender should be. So I looked for info and found this…
Our defenders are completely absent from the list but it’s from winter 2020-21 and so the likely explanation is our defensive injuries and the constant rotation meant none of our players had made enough challenges at that time to qualify. But the interesting things is the complete disconnect between place in this list and objective assessment of who is a good defender.
It starts off right as Zouma at the time was still a good defender, but you can a long way down, with significant fall off the from the high 90s of the top of list, and still not find too many defenders in the list who many people would consider as objectively good. This is the stuff that fascinates me about data analysis. Clearly we are doing something right, but it cannot be with the data we have available to us because it does just lack so much nuance and context, and so I’d love to be a fly on the wall for a day to see what transformations of the publicly available data they are making and they model those into a story.
Oh the data a football club have are far more detailed. I somehow accidently got a professional subscription to WyScout a few years ago and the detail is significantly more.
I had my account removed a few days later unfortunately so fbref is the best we have.
What I would say about that list is that those at the very top tend to be aggressive style defenders - front foot defenders who look to make a challenge. Its about balance of course, being top of each stat category is not always required or even desirable at times - I hate overly aggressive CBs for example. I’m not entirely sure on the actual stats that article uses though, van Dijk had a 75% win ratio this season and ranked in the top 2% of CBs so having Zouma at 98% (he was 80% this season) would be crazy high.
Lovren and Maguire. There’s a thin line that these aggressive defenders have to sort out. Matip/Konate thread that line pretty well… Lovren/Maguire not so much…
And this is very essential to have on a high backline. One thing pep got sorted this year by simply playing 4 ball playing CB in his backline
Aye, exactly. It might initially seem self-explanatory, but unless you know what the criteria for a making a challenge is and the criteria for winning or not losing it these stats are difficult to understand. And when you see someone coming in at only one challenge not won over the course of half a season it suggests those criteria are not as self-explanatory as you’d at first assume.
But if I somehow found myself having access to WyScout I wouldnt have slept until they revoked my access
NEW: Liverpool are believed to have the ‘edge’ in the race to sign Wolfsburg defender Micky van de Ven according to Christian Falk of BILD. Jorg Schmadtke was the individual who brought Van de Ven to Wolfsburg in 2021
𝗡𝗘𝗪: Liverpool are monitoring Nicolo Barella but no way for £50m. #lfc [@FabrizioRomano]
But yes the latest long list of midfielders we’re tracking seems to be this Alan Varela kid of Boca, £10m release clause apparently. AlexiMac barely been here a week and already getting stuck in.
Never heard of it but just googled - seems you can do a free two week trial and if you like it it’s only 300 euro annually. How much is your sleep worth!?
It’s nice to see the link to Varela and all, but here’s what I want to know:
How would Suarez have played under Shanks? With Sir Roger as his strike partner, and the Anfield Iron straining the no dickheads policy after falling out with Crazy Horse and giving us an early taste of his political views? Maybe it might have worked if the suave but calming influence of Billy Liddell was time-warped in from post war Britain?
That’s the sort of speculation I need to see in the transfer rumour thread!
