Laughable Chimp

As someone with a smarterscout account and has access to their data let me tell you I have serious concerns about how they get to some of their conclusions. In particular, they have this mechanism which adjusts for the quality of the league and its never explained how they do it and it just seems completely arbitrary. That's how they can make claims like "he's already a high performer by a premier league standard" or "probably a better tackler than two thirds of Premier League DMs". You can't really just adjust like that imo, or at the very least they need to released how exactly they make these adjustments.

Ah, consistency? We can only speculate about that. I also don't really buy into that narrative that much. Feels like a convenient bogeyman whenever referee results don't go our way.

I'm gonna go against the grain here. I thought that was a dive but I wouldn't have been so sure on it that I would've given it a yellow. If you look at the reaction on reddit, it seems like they mostly think the ref got it spot on. And its not just Man united or top 6 fans saying it. https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/n8fvch/ollie_watkins_second_yellow_card_against/ Usually when there's a large disagreement between the reaction on here and over there, I tend to agree with those guys more. And this is no exception. We're more prone to bias after all considering its our team and our player.

They probably have. But they've probably also figured that they can't change Bertie. What you see is what you get.

I know of this guy who's good at set pieces. His name kind of sounds like hurricane. No not that one.

It's more like meeting some people at the bar or some public place and just shooting the shit about football. At least, that's how I see this forum as. I'm not going to mince my words or anything whenever I talk about these players because it would be "talking behind someone's back". Its not like they're our friends that we're shitting on behind their backs. Of course I would prefer less abuse, but conversations like these are always hyperbolic in nature. There's still a massive difference between me saying Douglas Luiz is shit to some random people talking football then going up to him directly and saying it to him or at least saying it to him within earshot. Which is my analogy between this forum and social media.

Glad to see others are starting to see that he really isn't very good too. Because its just that, he isn't very good. If we sign a DM this summer, which we should, expect to see him dropped from the starting 11. He's not one of Smith's undroppables.

Looking through his ligue 1 stats before joining us. Seems like he was a very attacking oriented midfielder. Very high goals and assists rate for a CM in ligue 1 this season and last season. Very concerning weakness in passing though. Not really a neat and tidy player at all. In that sense he really does feel quite similar to Mcginn, but I'm not sure I can stomach watching these 2 constantly lose the ball with every pass if they play together. Edit: Just checked whoscored and as expected, they have his passing as a weakness but key passes as a strength.

There's a "grass is always greener" on the other side mentality I feel with a lot of wingers and attackers. Other players seem so much better when you're only watching their highlights and not watching them fail to pull off something the rest of the time. Probably quite a few fans of other clubs out there who are looking at someone like El Ghazi with envy at his scoring rate.

Going for Willock purely based on the short burst of form he's shown for Newcastle would be quite risky. I'd prefer to see how he does over a longer period of time. I also think that even if he can't break into Arsenal's midfield next season, he's young enough that they'll probably keep him around or at least loan him to another club to get minutes instead of outright selling him. I mean, he's only 21.

Will he? I never liked assuming people will just get better over time. Plenty of players actually drop off after their first breakout or debut season. Some remain around the same level and of course, there are those who do indeed get better. Time will tell which group he belongs too.

Selling Guilbert would be dumb tbh. I'm gonna make a prediction. With or without us, he's going to make the French national team in the next couple of years.

See, I think Ross Barkley is worth 20m pounds. However, if we finish in the top half I don't think we should be aiming to buy 20m pound players who've finished developing. They're not really gonna improve our squad that much anymore and its not like we're desperate for a player who plays his position. I say pocket the 20million and use it to fund other purchases instead.

Probably got them from here. https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/players/big_chance_created Grealish, Hourihane and Targett are level at 8 with el Ghazi next at 4.

I think out of last year's signings, only El Ghazi undisputedly improved. I don't buy the idea that our defenders have improved. Luiz has arguably regressed. Mings is still as error prone as ever. Targett I could see genuinely improvement in but idk about Konsa. I think what happened was that we significantly changed our style of play after lockdown because what we were doing clearly wasn't working. We learned to defend as a team much better but as a side effect, we lost a lot of cutting edge in attack(which is why almost all of our goals scored post lockdown last season went through deadball situations via Hourihane). This season we retained that post-lockdown solidity in defense after upgrading Guilbert with Cash and adding Martinez as goalkeeper improved our defense considerably. But at times, it feels like our attack has been very toothless. Originally we relied on the monstrous form of Grealish so now we had to rely on Watkins who's a great player but he isn't Jack Grealish. Traore is too inconsistent to be relied on heavily whilst we were lucky with El Ghazi's sudden increase in form. The point I'm trying to make here is that I don't think we're playing all that different to how we were post-lockdown last season. We just considerably upgraded some players. Watkins, Martinez and arguably Cash are some real quality players that I think could significantly threaten most starting 11s including some top teams.

Its goals per 90 minutes, essentially the goal scoring rate of a player. Which is obviously high considering he's scored 1 goal in less than 2 games worth of minutes. Can't really take per 90 minutes stats that seriously for players who haven't played very much though, that average will likely go down over time as he gets more minutes. Since we're in the mood for statistical tables though, here's one for last season that I recently found. The highlighted column is for GCA90, or goal creation actions per 90 minutes. Basically, the stat looks at a goal scored and sees who is involved in the creation of that goal(ignoring the final shot). Stuff like assists, dribbles, winning fouls and even winning the ball from the opposing player would count as a goal creation action provided the move ended up as a goal and happened late enough in the move. In layman's terms, it measures how involved the players are in creating goals. Think of it as a more fleshed out assist statistic. As the column shows, Davis was involved in more goal creation actions per 90 minutes than pretty much anyone else in our team last season. Even higher than Jack Grealish did last season. Its not just a weird quirk from last season. He's average for this stat is highest for this season too. Although as mentioned above, since he's barely played this season, we should expect the average to fall as he plays more minutes. Still, so far its way higher than anyone else's bar Grealish's. All this is to say, when he gets on the pitch he creates chances and these chances do end up into goals. Should be noted that having such a high GCA90 stat is even more impressive considering he's a striker and the job of a shot creator or goal creator actually falls more to wingers and attacking midfielders.

I appreciate his highs, but his lows are a lot more frequent. Almost too frequent. He's an okay player. Can definitely improve on him though(and the rest of our other wingers bar Grealish for that matter).

Never understood this obsession with overall play. At the end of the day, its your final output that matters. And in terms of final output, goals are as undebatable as it gets. I don't care if a player plays like complete crap for most of the game if he is somehow banging them in at a rate of 1 goal per game every game. A bit of an extreme example, I know but gets the point across. And at this point in time, I think El Ghazi's scoring rate more than covers for his deficiencies in other areas. I'd certainly prefer him rather than most more well-rounded wingers.

We probably still need someone like Jack Grealish on the right wing though. At least, someone not completely outside his level if we want to keep moving upwards. Trez, El Ghazi and Traore are fine for we are at now but I don't see any of these guys starting for us if we want to get into the European places.

Keinan who?

I think Barkley has something to offer to this team and for the right price I would certainly want him. Unfortunately I don't see Chelsea offering him to us for the right price.

BRING ON LORD KEINAN.

Can't we just all agree that people calling for Smith out are idiots(and yes, they do exist) and also that there can be valid criticisms of Dean Smith and his management? The reason some of us are annoyed with this thread is that it feels like you really can't criticize the guy at all before someone from the Dean Smith fan club calls us entitled for expecting better and shutting down any criticism. Then they proceed to categorize us as people who want Smith out when the majority of us do not want that all. As for you @DCJonah, I don't think there was ever a scenario that could reasonably happen this season that would make you turn against Smith. Last season, you blamed every failing of the team on seemingly everyone but the manager and insisted on Smith the entire way. When everyone and their mother thought we were relegated last season, you changed your tune from "Smith is the best chance to keep us up" to "Smith is the best chance to get us up from the Championship again". They're not necessarily wrong opinions by themselves, but it does make me ask how unbiased you are regarding Dean Smith. Because it seems like it really didn't matter what happened last season, you were solidly behind Dean Smith no matter what and were willing to use whatever arguments to justify supporting him. You claim this season that he has done very well for us and I don't disagree, but I get the feeling you would be just as fervent a Smith supporter had we finished in top 4 this season or if we finished dead last. Just my 2 cents. To some extent, you have to believe the on field results should matter in some respect no? If you're always going to be blindly supporting him, what''s the point of arguing?

Business as usual in this thread I see.

I think his ceiling is midtable tbh.