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One of those who doesnt like the use of advanced stats in football. I do watch a lot of football though. My reason is simple: The advanced stats as they are called (xG, xA, xPA, offense actions, defense actions) all end up as a mere tool for disregarding the actual result and providing arguments for which was the better team. Like team A won the match 1-0 but team B were the better team since they had more <<insert favorable stat>>. The idea behind stats should be to contextualize the game I watched a bit more, and not replace the game watching. Then there is also comparing the stats across games. In football(and every other game) there is a different difficulty level associated with each game (fatigue, condition, team condition, opposition condition, tactics, opposition tactics, teammates, chemistry, opposition mistakes, opposition players, adjustments, pressure, and even sheer luck on occasions), which makes the comparison redundant. An offensive team would always have more shots and more possession than a defensive minded park the bus kind of team. Like you said, right now no stat is good enough to give us an idea of how well a team played. Football is a game of spaces, and a lot of things depend on player movements (or lack of) and vision. I find those reports helpful which tells us where a certain team had the advantage and how they maximised it though. |