Hi, everyone. This is my first 'serious' post on the Round Table. (Please don't make fun of me!) I would just like to say something about statistical analysis in football.
Football lies in the 'living' domain of observable phenomena. It's 'alive' in the sense that it is dynamic. There's so much going on, there are so many variables. You can predict with Newton's laws how long it will take for something to land on the ground that has been dropped at a particular height. You can't do that with the human body. You can't do that with an economy. You can't do that with football. It evades the conventional scientific and statistical attempts to model it. Really, if you wanted to have a scientific way of modelling the dynamics of a football match, you wouldn't use probability theory or statistics. (You would use chaos theory!) Yes, we can be astute about which statistics we pay attention to (e.g. clear-cut chances created, through balls, shots on target, tackles+interceptions, possession in the opposition's third etc.), but ultimately, nothing beats the intuitive impression that you get from watching a game. That is, provided that you're a careful observer.
Along that line of thought, the 'intuitive impression' that I got from watching the first ten minutes of the game yesterday, even apart from the brilliant set-piece goals that we scored, was that we were going to destroy this opponent. Why? Because they could hardly keep the ball for more than ten seconds. True, their overall possession stats read higher than ours, even for the first twenty minutes (if I'm not mistaken), but a human being watching the game could see quite clearly that they couldn't sustain possession for long enough to do anything meaningful with it. We were too quick to win the ball back or to force them into errors, and they weren't quick enough in transitioning from regaining possession to getting into scoring positions. We, on the other hand, were lightning quick, thanks to the instinctive genius of Suarez, Sturridge, Coutinho and Gerrard, but also to the less-obviously-instinctive-but-nonetheless-effective and well-trained efficiency of Henderson, Sterling and everyone else on the pitch. Even Cissokho, who has faced some pretty insensitive though predictable ridicule by our fans in the past months, was better and quicker on the ball than he usually is.
Another insight that you can get from watching the game but not from the common statistics that you usually find in newspaper articles or stats websites, is the relative pace advantage that we had in attack compared with their defence. (No conventional stats that I'm aware of tell you how quick Daniel Sturridge's acceleration was in the game.) As Michael Owen offered repeatedly in his co-commentary of the match on BT Sport, you cannot do anything about pace, and Sturridge and Sterling have this in abundance. Arsenal's relatively high line - which can be seen statistically through 'average position' graphics - didn't exactly help their cause either. I think it's a sign that Wenger, like other managers this season, really underestimated our firepower. It's also a sign, I think, that other managers in this league really aren't as tactically flexible as you need to be - as in fact Rodgers has demonstrated himself to be. (Mourinho is the only obvious Premier League example that I can think of who compares to Rodgers in this respect, although one of the experts will surely correct me on this.)
I think it's fair to say that it is the 'intuitive impression' which really makes it worth being a football fan, or any sports fan. Excitement doesn't usually come from statistical or other observations. It is that familiar gut instinct-through-experience which gives you the vicarious pleasure or pain of fandom. The intuitive impression that I got yesterday throughout the match is that Arsenal did not even come to close challenging us. It was as if we were playing against a mid- or lower-table side. Even after 4-0, we were the better side for seventy minutes. Generic statistics would tell you otherwise. Intelligent statistical analyses might paint a more accurate picture, and are certainly worth looking at, and I understand that the engineers and statisticians amongst us enjoy the definitiveness that only numerical information can - whenever there is actually good method of interpreting what it means. As a mathematician by training I also like to look at well-developed statistics-based arguments. But first and foremost, I try to observe the games. I've no doubt that the veterans - the professionals - like PoP and so forth, would only agree with me. Maybe everyone will. Stats are great when they are done properly - which is rare in journalism and media - but they must always be reconnected and reevaluated with respect to what could be seen on the pitch. In any domain of life, experience is so important. It gives you the accurate and dependable 'gut-instinct' that is exactly the result of years and years of organic data collection, like an 'evolution of ideas' as you observe something, form a theory, have the opinion questioned by a later observation, forcing you to refine your theory, and so on.
A note on Rodgers: I have a hunch that this match will be remembered in years to come as the moment that Brendan Rodgers 'arrived'. He was up against a veteran of Premier League and European football - in fact the most experienced manager in this league. Both managers are dealing with injury problems, although Wenger has the superior squad depth. Both managers have been receiving praise in the media this season and their teams performing well, but Wenger's has been top of the table for the majority of the season. Both managers have been cultivating their own fairly precise ideas about football into their teams, although Wenger has been building his side for several years, whereas Rodgers has only had about eighteen months. Given these facts, Rodgers's team had no right to demolish Wenger's so comprehensively. The fact that he did is a testament to the fact that he is a very high operator. If there was any doubt remaining as to Rodgers's potential as a manager or of the potential of the team that he is building here, it's now gone. The sky is the limit.
