James Ward-Prowse

[CVByrne]

50 minutes ago, avfcDJ said:

This hasn’t gone away (I’ve seen what the club has said)

Good to hear. Assume price is likely the issue

[PaulMcGrath_5]

Just now, Tayls said:

I honestly don’t think we have the money for JWP….

You are honestly wrong.

[Tayls]

Just now, PaulMcGrath_5 said:

You are honestly wrong.

I’m not sure… City haven’t paid us the full 100m straight out, and we have spent the best part of, what, 95m already… plus wages that have to be in line as we are only on our third successive season in the prem.. 

[brommy]

39 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

 

20 minutes ago, Lerner's Driver said:

Off topic (but still relevant), is that Johnny Ball from 'Think of a number' fame?

 

18 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

Could well be, good spot

 

STOP GETTING BOND WRONG!

[Vive_La_Villa]

5 minutes ago, Tayls said:

I honestly don’t think we have the money for JWP….

Don’t worry, once we are relegated we can rebuild again

[Tayls]

1 minute ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Don’t worry, once we are relegated we can rebuild again

Finally, someone talking sense… glad you agree man. 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Tayls

[Tayls]

15 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

very few fees are paid as one sum. 99% are paid in installments. most clubs take out loans against future fees, guessing we have the capital to not have to do that

I have no doubt that we COULD buy him if we wanted to, but surely we have to weigh that up against the risks of either not finishing where we want to finish (European spots of some description) and the limitations around FFP. Let’s not forget we also paid out for Sanson in January which I’m guessing we still owe on. 

I just can’t believe we have this never ending pot of money that some seem to think we have. 

Someone please do prove me wrong… 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Tayls

[Delphinho123]

I find it slightly annoying that an injured Sanson is probably the reason we can't bring in a player like Ward Prowse. Never really got that signing. 

[Laughable Chimp]

5 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

It doesn't seem particularly astute analysis to take a few random specific statistics and say he's worse than this individual or that individual in our team, whilst ignoring things like volume and all around ability. Like, how much "worse" of a dribbler is he than Luiz and what the hell does that even mean in context? Is that what we would be looking to him for? Is he a "worse" shot creator than McGinn because of the position he takes up on the pitch? How about the fact the team he plays for were absolutely shit for months, does that not count for something? 

You say he's a "worse" defender than Nakamba, well that's an understandable conclusion if you're just looking at number on a bit of paper, Nakamba's defensive metrics are unreal. But we know he's just not a very good footballer, and his positioning is at times woefully short of the standard we require. You need to take a more rounded view. 

In short, you can't just make a judgement on a player by looking at the statistics alone. They might give you and idea of what they can bring, but you need the context as well.

You're right. I wasn't making any detailed analysis with that post, just giving my thoughts from what I see from the statistics and in some cases just reiterating what I said a week ago with my post on why I think James Ward Prowse is just Douglas Luiz with dead ball ability.

To address some of your concerns, 

- Ward-Prowse completes 0.39 dribbles per 90 minutes. That's about a single successful dribble every 3 games with a 65.2 percentage success rate compared to Luiz's 0.78 completed dribbles per 90 with a 72.7 percent success rate. Meanwhile, every other stat from progressive carries to carrying distance gives Luiz the edge if only slightly. I don't think any context is really necessary here, its pretty clear that Luiz is the better dribbler and ball carrier.

- Yes, I do think the ability to carry the ball and progress the ball is something that's very important for most midfielders(sans pure destroyers) including JWP and the role we would want him to play. Hence, why I thought it deserved a mention. 

- The question as to whether Mcginn and JWP take on the same position on the pitch is difficult to answer. Technically, Mcginn actually played DM for quite a lot of games last season according to whoscored whilst JWP played entirely in CM. So at first glance it seems like if anything this context makes JWP look worse. However, I understand that sometimes these sites listing their positions aren't that accurate. Plus their positions don't always define their roles and I think most of us would agree that even if Mcginn technically played at DM last season, he was never actually one in reality.

Sofascore has heat maps of these players but honestly, I suck at reading heat maps. Knowing that, both look rather similar to me.

Mcginn touches the ball in the attacking pen at 1.49 touches per 90 compared to JWP's 0.61 per 90 fbref. Their corresponding statistics in the attacking 3rd per 90 are 14.19 and 18.24 respectively. Several ways to take this. 1.49 compared to 0.61 is a large difference relatively but is it large enough in absolute terms to justify the difference in shot creation? I'm not so sure. Plus, as I've shown, in the attacking 3rd as a whole JWP actually has more of the ball in this position. Further caveats are that since I'm talking about open play, I should ignore touches that are from free kick positions in the attacking 3rd but I don't really have the data for that. Secondly, proportionally compared to the total amount of touches both players get, 23 percent of JWP's touches happen to be to the attacking 3rd whereas 30 percent for Mcginn.

Honestly, there's so many ways to pull this that you could argue in several directions depending on which specific statistic you use and whether you consider the numbers relatively or in absolute terms. In my personal opinion, I don't think the differences in the positions both players take up actually matters that much in explaining the difference in shot creation. What perhaps matters more is the roles both players play. I don't think JWP is trying to pick apart defences with his carries and passes as much as Mcginn. Now, that also suggests he isn't particularly good at the job at open play shot creation that Mcginn in. He's not a new player, he's been around for a couple of seasons now. I think its clear if he happened to be good at this role, he'd actually been given this role. And as I mentioned in the post you quoted, him having a rate of only 1 assist in open play per 90 for the past 4 seasons suggest that this is true of him for a while now.

- As I also mentioned previously, I do not find the arguments that "he plays for a poor team" very convincing. Partly because I have 0 idea how to adjust the statistics to reflect that. There have been many cases of arguments being made for players these, only for them to move on to a better team to fail. Put simply, its a **** gamble to assume that a players performances being poorer in a poor team is because they play in a poor team and they'd magically become better if they went to a better team. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not. No one really knows. Plus, it could entirely be the case that Southampton being a shit team is due to JWP himself not being very good in open play.

My personal theory is that top-performing players at clubs are capable of performing at their level because the team has been built around them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. This makes them perform better than they actually are. On the other hand, they also clearly have worse teammates around them which should have a negative affect on their performance. I'd like to think both effects cancel out but most likely, which effect is stronger is very situational. Trying to guess which effect is stronger is not something I can do with the numbers I have. However, most of the time I see no real reason to think any single effect is stronger so I just assume that it cancels out. There's no point trying to adjust for something you can't predict. 

Hence, why I ignore arguments about how "player" plays for a poor team.

- I don't think its debatable that he's a worse defender than Nakamba. I'm rather confused by this problem you have because you don't seem to disagree with me that Nakamba is a better defender? You mention that he is not a very good footballer which I assume you mean to be in terms of being able to play the ball and to which I agree and also reflects in his on the ball statistics but that wasn't the point I was making here. I was just saying that he is better defensively than JWP.

You did mention a bit about positioning and honestly, positioning is one of those abilities that's not really captured in the statistics. Its why I don't like to look at defenders in particular centre backs stats because I think a lot of their ability comes from their ability to position themselves correctly and not necessarily tackling, intercepting and other active defensive stats which can measure. However, for a defensive midfielder, I think we should expect that a lot of his defensive statistics do correlate with how well he is defensively because they need to be active in breaking up play instead of just passively positioning themselves. Furthermore, I actually don't really think Nakamba is suspect positioning wise and I have no reason to think JWP is good at it.

-I've hope I've included enough context in the post above. I was gonna go on a rant a bit about "context" and just statistics here, not necessarily related to just football but felt like it was too long anyway.

 

 

[jacketspuds]

I thought we were also looking to sign Smith Rowe to play alongside Buendia and Grealish? So there would have been £70m or so for transfers this summer without any outgoings.

Obviously it doesn’t work exactly like that but we’ve now got a negative net spend this summer. We need to strike while the iron is hot and bring in reinforcements to the midfield area to really push us on and have us challenging the likes of West Ham, Everton, Spurs and Arsenal for a top 8 place.

Ward-Prowse would make a big difference to the team, and if we could get a better version of Nakamba in as well to provide different options that would be perfect. It’s all about options in terms of being able to play different formations.

[Peter Griffin]

8 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

You're right. I wasn't making any detailed analysis with that post, just giving my thoughts from what I see from the statistics and in some cases just reiterating what I said a week ago with my post on why I think James Ward Prowse is just Douglas Luiz with dead ball ability.

To address some of your concerns, 

- Ward-Prowse completes 0.39 dribbles per 90 minutes. That's about a single successful dribble every 3 games with a 65.2 percentage success rate compared to Luiz's 0.78 completed dribbles per 90 with a 72.7 percent success rate. Meanwhile, every other stat from progressive carries to carrying distance gives Luiz the edge if only slightly. I don't think any context is really necessary here, its pretty clear that Luiz is the better dribbler and ball carrier.

- Yes, I do think the ability to carry the ball and progress the ball is something that's very important for most midfielders(sans pure destroyers) including JWP and the role we would want him to play. Hence, why I thought it deserved a mention. 

- The question as to whether Mcginn and JWP take on the same position on the pitch is difficult to answer. Technically, Mcginn actually played DM for quite a lot of games last season according to whoscored whilst JWP played entirely in CM. So at first glance it seems like if anything this context makes JWP look worse. However, I understand that sometimes these sites listing their positions aren't that accurate. Plus their positions don't always define their roles and I think most of us would agree that even if Mcginn technically played at DM last season, he was never actually one in reality.

Sofascore has heat maps of these players but honestly, I suck at reading heat maps. Knowing that, both look rather similar to me.

Mcginn touches the ball in the attacking pen at 1.49 touches per 90 compared to JWP's 0.61 per 90 fbref. Their corresponding statistics in the attacking 3rd per 90 are 14.19 and 18.24 respectively. Several ways to take this. 1.49 compared to 0.61 is a large difference relatively but is it large enough in absolute terms to justify the difference in shot creation? I'm not so sure. Plus, as I've shown, in the attacking 3rd as a whole JWP actually has more of the ball in this position. Further caveats are that since I'm talking about open play, I should ignore touches that are from free kick positions in the attacking 3rd but I don't really have the data for that. Secondly, proportionally compared to the total amount of touches both players get, 23 percent of JWP's touches happen to be to the attacking 3rd whereas 30 percent for Mcginn.

Honestly, there's so many ways to pull this that you could argue in several directions depending on which specific statistic you use and whether you consider the numbers relatively or in absolute terms. In my personal opinion, I don't think the differences in the positions both players take up actually matters that much in explaining the difference in shot creation. What perhaps matters more is the roles both players play. I don't think JWP is trying to pick apart defences with his carries and passes as much as Mcginn. Now, that also suggests he isn't particularly good at the job at open play shot creation that Mcginn in. He's not a new player, he's been around for a couple of seasons now. I think its clear if he happened to be good at this role, he'd actually been given this role. And as I mentioned in the post you quoted, him having a rate of only 1 assist in open play per 90 for the past 4 seasons suggest that this is true of him for a while now.

- As I also mentioned previously, I do not find the arguments that "he plays for a poor team" very convincing. Partly because I have 0 idea how to adjust the statistics to reflect that. There have been many cases of arguments being made for players these, only for them to move on to a better team to fail. Put simply, its a **** gamble to assume that a players performances being poorer in a poor team is because they play in a poor team and they'd magically become better if they went to a better team. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not. No one really knows. Plus, it could entirely be the case that Southampton being a shit team is due to JWP himself not being very good in open play.

My personal theory is that top-performing players at clubs are capable of performing at their level because the team has been built around them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. This makes them perform better than they actually are. On the other hand, they also clearly have worse teammates around them which should have a negative affect on their performance. I'd like to think both effects cancel out but most likely, which effect is stronger is very situational. Trying to guess which effect is stronger is not something I can do with the numbers I have. However, most of the time I see no real reason to think any single effect is stronger so I just assume that it cancels out. There's no point trying to adjust for something you can't predict. 

Hence, why I ignore arguments about how "player" plays for a poor team.

- I don't think its debatable that he's a worse defender than Nakamba. I'm rather confused by this problem you have because you don't seem to disagree with me that Nakamba is a better defender? You mention that he is not a very good footballer which I assume you mean to be in terms of being able to play the ball and to which I agree and also reflects in his on the ball statistics but that wasn't the point I was making here. I was just saying that he is better defensively than JWP.

You did mention a bit about positioning and honestly, positioning is one of those abilities that's not really captured in the statistics. Its why I don't like to look at defenders in particular centre backs stats because I think a lot of their ability comes from their ability to position themselves correctly and not necessarily tackling, intercepting and other active defensive stats which can measure. However, for a defensive midfielder, I think we should expect that a lot of his defensive statistics do correlate with how well he is defensively because they need to be active in breaking up play instead of just passively positioning themselves. Furthermore, I actually don't really think Nakamba is suspect positioning wise and I have no reason to think JWP is good at it.

-I've hope I've included enough context in the post above. I was gonna go on a rant a bit about "context" and just statistics here, not necessarily related to just football but felt like it was too long anyway.

 

 

Thx for posting, some good analysis there. My view on JWP (without the analysis) is that he would not improve our team other than for set pieces and as such we should not buy him. I would prefer a better player on the ball. But that is just my opinion, I could be wrong and I will support him if he becomes one of ours

[calcifer]

1 hour ago, Lerner's Driver said:

Off topic (but still relevant), is that Johnny Ball from 'Think of a number' fame?

Useless information of the day, it is actually Ron Paul.

 

[Phil Silvers]

53 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

You're right. I wasn't making any detailed analysis with that post, just giving my thoughts from what I see from the statistics and in some cases just reiterating what I said a week ago with my post on why I think James Ward Prowse is just Douglas Luiz with dead ball ability.

To address some of your concerns, 

- Ward-Prowse completes 0.39 dribbles per 90 minutes. That's about a single successful dribble every 3 games with a 65.2 percentage success rate compared to Luiz's 0.78 completed dribbles per 90 with a 72.7 percent success rate. Meanwhile, every other stat from progressive carries to carrying distance gives Luiz the edge if only slightly. I don't think any context is really necessary here, its pretty clear that Luiz is the better dribbler and ball carrier.

- Yes, I do think the ability to carry the ball and progress the ball is something that's very important for most midfielders(sans pure destroyers) including JWP and the role we would want him to play. Hence, why I thought it deserved a mention. 

- The question as to whether Mcginn and JWP take on the same position on the pitch is difficult to answer. Technically, Mcginn actually played DM for quite a lot of games last season according to whoscored whilst JWP played entirely in CM. So at first glance it seems like if anything this context makes JWP look worse. However, I understand that sometimes these sites listing their positions aren't that accurate. Plus their positions don't always define their roles and I think most of us would agree that even if Mcginn technically played at DM last season, he was never actually one in reality.

Sofascore has heat maps of these players but honestly, I suck at reading heat maps. Knowing that, both look rather similar to me.

Mcginn touches the ball in the attacking pen at 1.49 touches per 90 compared to JWP's 0.61 per 90 fbref. Their corresponding statistics in the attacking 3rd per 90 are 14.19 and 18.24 respectively. Several ways to take this. 1.49 compared to 0.61 is a large difference relatively but is it large enough in absolute terms to justify the difference in shot creation? I'm not so sure. Plus, as I've shown, in the attacking 3rd as a whole JWP actually has more of the ball in this position. Further caveats are that since I'm talking about open play, I should ignore touches that are from free kick positions in the attacking 3rd but I don't really have the data for that. Secondly, proportionally compared to the total amount of touches both players get, 23 percent of JWP's touches happen to be to the attacking 3rd whereas 30 percent for Mcginn.

Honestly, there's so many ways to pull this that you could argue in several directions depending on which specific statistic you use and whether you consider the numbers relatively or in absolute terms. In my personal opinion, I don't think the differences in the positions both players take up actually matters that much in explaining the difference in shot creation. What perhaps matters more is the roles both players play. I don't think JWP is trying to pick apart defences with his carries and passes as much as Mcginn. Now, that also suggests he isn't particularly good at the job at open play shot creation that Mcginn in. He's not a new player, he's been around for a couple of seasons now. I think its clear if he happened to be good at this role, he'd actually been given this role. And as I mentioned in the post you quoted, him having a rate of only 1 assist in open play per 90 for the past 4 seasons suggest that this is true of him for a while now.

- As I also mentioned previously, I do not find the arguments that "he plays for a poor team" very convincing. Partly because I have 0 idea how to adjust the statistics to reflect that. There have been many cases of arguments being made for players these, only for them to move on to a better team to fail. Put simply, its a **** gamble to assume that a players performances being poorer in a poor team is because they play in a poor team and they'd magically become better if they went to a better team. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not. No one really knows. Plus, it could entirely be the case that Southampton being a shit team is due to JWP himself not being very good in open play.

My personal theory is that top-performing players at clubs are capable of performing at their level because the team has been built around them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. This makes them perform better than they actually are. On the other hand, they also clearly have worse teammates around them which should have a negative affect on their performance. I'd like to think both effects cancel out but most likely, which effect is stronger is very situational. Trying to guess which effect is stronger is not something I can do with the numbers I have. However, most of the time I see no real reason to think any single effect is stronger so I just assume that it cancels out. There's no point trying to adjust for something you can't predict. 

Hence, why I ignore arguments about how "player" plays for a poor team.

- I don't think its debatable that he's a worse defender than Nakamba. I'm rather confused by this problem you have because you don't seem to disagree with me that Nakamba is a better defender? You mention that he is not a very good footballer which I assume you mean to be in terms of being able to play the ball and to which I agree and also reflects in his on the ball statistics but that wasn't the point I was making here. I was just saying that he is better defensively than JWP.

You did mention a bit about positioning and honestly, positioning is one of those abilities that's not really captured in the statistics. Its why I don't like to look at defenders in particular centre backs stats because I think a lot of their ability comes from their ability to position themselves correctly and not necessarily tackling, intercepting and other active defensive stats which can measure. However, for a defensive midfielder, I think we should expect that a lot of his defensive statistics do correlate with how well he is defensively because they need to be active in breaking up play instead of just passively positioning themselves. Furthermore, I actually don't really think Nakamba is suspect positioning wise and I have no reason to think JWP is good at it.

-I've hope I've included enough context in the post above. I was gonna go on a rant a bit about "context" and just statistics here, not necessarily related to just football but felt like it was too long anyway.

 

 

Crikey. Long post, if it gets 20 likes I'll read it, Good luck.... laughable.... chimp.

[Steero113]

1 hour ago, Laughable Chimp said:

You're right. I wasn't making any detailed analysis with that post, just giving my thoughts from what I see from the statistics and in some cases just reiterating what I said a week ago with my post on why I think James Ward Prowse is just Douglas Luiz with dead ball ability.

To address some of your concerns, 

- Ward-Prowse completes 0.39 dribbles per 90 minutes. That's about a single successful dribble every 3 games with a 65.2 percentage success rate compared to Luiz's 0.78 completed dribbles per 90 with a 72.7 percent success rate. Meanwhile, every other stat from progressive carries to carrying distance gives Luiz the edge if only slightly. I don't think any context is really necessary here, its pretty clear that Luiz is the better dribbler and ball carrier.

- Yes, I do think the ability to carry the ball and progress the ball is something that's very important for most midfielders(sans pure destroyers) including JWP and the role we would want him to play. Hence, why I thought it deserved a mention. 

- The question as to whether Mcginn and JWP take on the same position on the pitch is difficult to answer. Technically, Mcginn actually played DM for quite a lot of games last season according to whoscored whilst JWP played entirely in CM. So at first glance it seems like if anything this context makes JWP look worse. However, I understand that sometimes these sites listing their positions aren't that accurate. Plus their positions don't always define their roles and I think most of us would agree that even if Mcginn technically played at DM last season, he was never actually one in reality.

Sofascore has heat maps of these players but honestly, I suck at reading heat maps. Knowing that, both look rather similar to me.

Mcginn touches the ball in the attacking pen at 1.49 touches per 90 compared to JWP's 0.61 per 90 fbref. Their corresponding statistics in the attacking 3rd per 90 are 14.19 and 18.24 respectively. Several ways to take this. 1.49 compared to 0.61 is a large difference relatively but is it large enough in absolute terms to justify the difference in shot creation? I'm not so sure. Plus, as I've shown, in the attacking 3rd as a whole JWP actually has more of the ball in this position. Further caveats are that since I'm talking about open play, I should ignore touches that are from free kick positions in the attacking 3rd but I don't really have the data for that. Secondly, proportionally compared to the total amount of touches both players get, 23 percent of JWP's touches happen to be to the attacking 3rd whereas 30 percent for Mcginn.

Honestly, there's so many ways to pull this that you could argue in several directions depending on which specific statistic you use and whether you consider the numbers relatively or in absolute terms. In my personal opinion, I don't think the differences in the positions both players take up actually matters that much in explaining the difference in shot creation. What perhaps matters more is the roles both players play. I don't think JWP is trying to pick apart defences with his carries and passes as much as Mcginn. Now, that also suggests he isn't particularly good at the job at open play shot creation that Mcginn in. He's not a new player, he's been around for a couple of seasons now. I think its clear if he happened to be good at this role, he'd actually been given this role. And as I mentioned in the post you quoted, him having a rate of only 1 assist in open play per 90 for the past 4 seasons suggest that this is true of him for a while now.

- As I also mentioned previously, I do not find the arguments that "he plays for a poor team" very convincing. Partly because I have 0 idea how to adjust the statistics to reflect that. There have been many cases of arguments being made for players these, only for them to move on to a better team to fail. Put simply, its a **** gamble to assume that a players performances being poorer in a poor team is because they play in a poor team and they'd magically become better if they went to a better team. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not. No one really knows. Plus, it could entirely be the case that Southampton being a shit team is due to JWP himself not being very good in open play.

My personal theory is that top-performing players at clubs are capable of performing at their level because the team has been built around them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. This makes them perform better than they actually are. On the other hand, they also clearly have worse teammates around them which should have a negative affect on their performance. I'd like to think both effects cancel out but most likely, which effect is stronger is very situational. Trying to guess which effect is stronger is not something I can do with the numbers I have. However, most of the time I see no real reason to think any single effect is stronger so I just assume that it cancels out. There's no point trying to adjust for something you can't predict. 

Hence, why I ignore arguments about how "player" plays for a poor team.

- I don't think its debatable that he's a worse defender than Nakamba. I'm rather confused by this problem you have because you don't seem to disagree with me that Nakamba is a better defender? You mention that he is not a very good footballer which I assume you mean to be in terms of being able to play the ball and to which I agree and also reflects in his on the ball statistics but that wasn't the point I was making here. I was just saying that he is better defensively than JWP.

You did mention a bit about positioning and honestly, positioning is one of those abilities that's not really captured in the statistics. Its why I don't like to look at defenders in particular centre backs stats because I think a lot of their ability comes from their ability to position themselves correctly and not necessarily tackling, intercepting and other active defensive stats which can measure. However, for a defensive midfielder, I think we should expect that a lot of his defensive statistics do correlate with how well he is defensively because they need to be active in breaking up play instead of just passively positioning themselves. Furthermore, I actually don't really think Nakamba is suspect positioning wise and I have no reason to think JWP is good at it.

-I've hope I've included enough context in the post above. I was gonna go on a rant a bit about "context" and just statistics here, not necessarily related to just football but felt like it was too long anyway.

 

 

[Dante_Lockhart]

34 minutes ago, Phil Silvers said:

Crikey. Long post, if it gets 20 likes I'll read it, Good luck.... laughable.... chimp.

I've liked it. Purely because I want to get it to 20 likes so you have to read it.

[chrisvilla4]

1 hour ago, Laughable Chimp said:

You're right. I wasn't making any detailed analysis with that post, just giving my thoughts from what I see from the statistics and in some cases just reiterating what I said a week ago with my post on why I think James Ward Prowse is just Douglas Luiz with dead ball ability.

To address some of your concerns, 

- Ward-Prowse completes 0.39 dribbles per 90 minutes. That's about a single successful dribble every 3 games with a 65.2 percentage success rate compared to Luiz's 0.78 completed dribbles per 90 with a 72.7 percent success rate. Meanwhile, every other stat from progressive carries to carrying distance gives Luiz the edge if only slightly. I don't think any context is really necessary here, its pretty clear that Luiz is the better dribbler and ball carrier.

- Yes, I do think the ability to carry the ball and progress the ball is something that's very important for most midfielders(sans pure destroyers) including JWP and the role we would want him to play. Hence, why I thought it deserved a mention. 

- The question as to whether Mcginn and JWP take on the same position on the pitch is difficult to answer. Technically, Mcginn actually played DM for quite a lot of games last season according to whoscored whilst JWP played entirely in CM. So at first glance it seems like if anything this context makes JWP look worse. However, I understand that sometimes these sites listing their positions aren't that accurate. Plus their positions don't always define their roles and I think most of us would agree that even if Mcginn technically played at DM last season, he was never actually one in reality.

Sofascore has heat maps of these players but honestly, I suck at reading heat maps. Knowing that, both look rather similar to me.

Mcginn touches the ball in the attacking pen at 1.49 touches per 90 compared to JWP's 0.61 per 90 fbref. Their corresponding statistics in the attacking 3rd per 90 are 14.19 and 18.24 respectively. Several ways to take this. 1.49 compared to 0.61 is a large difference relatively but is it large enough in absolute terms to justify the difference in shot creation? I'm not so sure. Plus, as I've shown, in the attacking 3rd as a whole JWP actually has more of the ball in this position. Further caveats are that since I'm talking about open play, I should ignore touches that are from free kick positions in the attacking 3rd but I don't really have the data for that. Secondly, proportionally compared to the total amount of touches both players get, 23 percent of JWP's touches happen to be to the attacking 3rd whereas 30 percent for Mcginn.

Honestly, there's so many ways to pull this that you could argue in several directions depending on which specific statistic you use and whether you consider the numbers relatively or in absolute terms. In my personal opinion, I don't think the differences in the positions both players take up actually matters that much in explaining the difference in shot creation. What perhaps matters more is the roles both players play. I don't think JWP is trying to pick apart defences with his carries and passes as much as Mcginn. Now, that also suggests he isn't particularly good at the job at open play shot creation that Mcginn in. He's not a new player, he's been around for a couple of seasons now. I think its clear if he happened to be good at this role, he'd actually been given this role. And as I mentioned in the post you quoted, him having a rate of only 1 assist in open play per 90 for the past 4 seasons suggest that this is true of him for a while now.

- As I also mentioned previously, I do not find the arguments that "he plays for a poor team" very convincing. Partly because I have 0 idea how to adjust the statistics to reflect that. There have been many cases of arguments being made for players these, only for them to move on to a better team to fail. Put simply, its a **** gamble to assume that a players performances being poorer in a poor team is because they play in a poor team and they'd magically become better if they went to a better team. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not. No one really knows. Plus, it could entirely be the case that Southampton being a shit team is due to JWP himself not being very good in open play.

My personal theory is that top-performing players at clubs are capable of performing at their level because the team has been built around them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. This makes them perform better than they actually are. On the other hand, they also clearly have worse teammates around them which should have a negative affect on their performance. I'd like to think both effects cancel out but most likely, which effect is stronger is very situational. Trying to guess which effect is stronger is not something I can do with the numbers I have. However, most of the time I see no real reason to think any single effect is stronger so I just assume that it cancels out. There's no point trying to adjust for something you can't predict. 

Hence, why I ignore arguments about how "player" plays for a poor team.

- I don't think its debatable that he's a worse defender than Nakamba. I'm rather confused by this problem you have because you don't seem to disagree with me that Nakamba is a better defender? You mention that he is not a very good footballer which I assume you mean to be in terms of being able to play the ball and to which I agree and also reflects in his on the ball statistics but that wasn't the point I was making here. I was just saying that he is better defensively than JWP.

You did mention a bit about positioning and honestly, positioning is one of those abilities that's not really captured in the statistics. Its why I don't like to look at defenders in particular centre backs stats because I think a lot of their ability comes from their ability to position themselves correctly and not necessarily tackling, intercepting and other active defensive stats which can measure. However, for a defensive midfielder, I think we should expect that a lot of his defensive statistics do correlate with how well he is defensively because they need to be active in breaking up play instead of just passively positioning themselves. Furthermore, I actually don't really think Nakamba is suspect positioning wise and I have no reason to think JWP is good at it.

-I've hope I've included enough context in the post above. I was gonna go on a rant a bit about "context" and just statistics here, not necessarily related to just football but felt like it was too long anyway.

 

 

Not read, but liked for effort.

[jim]

1 hour ago, Laughable Chimp said:

You're right. I wasn't making any detailed analysis with that post, just giving my thoughts from what I see from the statistics and in some cases just reiterating what I said a week ago with my post on why I think James Ward Prowse is just Douglas Luiz with dead ball ability.

To address some of your concerns, 

- Ward-Prowse completes 0.39 dribbles per 90 minutes. That's about a single successful dribble every 3 games with a 65.2 percentage success rate compared to Luiz's 0.78 completed dribbles per 90 with a 72.7 percent success rate. Meanwhile, every other stat from progressive carries to carrying distance gives Luiz the edge if only slightly. I don't think any context is really necessary here, its pretty clear that Luiz is the better dribbler and ball carrier.

- Yes, I do think the ability to carry the ball and progress the ball is something that's very important for most midfielders(sans pure destroyers) including JWP and the role we would want him to play. Hence, why I thought it deserved a mention. 

- The question as to whether Mcginn and JWP take on the same position on the pitch is difficult to answer. Technically, Mcginn actually played DM for quite a lot of games last season according to whoscored whilst JWP played entirely in CM. So at first glance it seems like if anything this context makes JWP look worse. However, I understand that sometimes these sites listing their positions aren't that accurate. Plus their positions don't always define their roles and I think most of us would agree that even if Mcginn technically played at DM last season, he was never actually one in reality.

Sofascore has heat maps of these players but honestly, I suck at reading heat maps. Knowing that, both look rather similar to me.

Mcginn touches the ball in the attacking pen at 1.49 touches per 90 compared to JWP's 0.61 per 90 fbref. Their corresponding statistics in the attacking 3rd per 90 are 14.19 and 18.24 respectively. Several ways to take this. 1.49 compared to 0.61 is a large difference relatively but is it large enough in absolute terms to justify the difference in shot creation? I'm not so sure. Plus, as I've shown, in the attacking 3rd as a whole JWP actually has more of the ball in this position. Further caveats are that since I'm talking about open play, I should ignore touches that are from free kick positions in the attacking 3rd but I don't really have the data for that. Secondly, proportionally compared to the total amount of touches both players get, 23 percent of JWP's touches happen to be to the attacking 3rd whereas 30 percent for Mcginn.

Honestly, there's so many ways to pull this that you could argue in several directions depending on which specific statistic you use and whether you consider the numbers relatively or in absolute terms. In my personal opinion, I don't think the differences in the positions both players take up actually matters that much in explaining the difference in shot creation. What perhaps matters more is the roles both players play. I don't think JWP is trying to pick apart defences with his carries and passes as much as Mcginn. Now, that also suggests he isn't particularly good at the job at open play shot creation that Mcginn in. He's not a new player, he's been around for a couple of seasons now. I think its clear if he happened to be good at this role, he'd actually been given this role. And as I mentioned in the post you quoted, him having a rate of only 1 assist in open play per 90 for the past 4 seasons suggest that this is true of him for a while now.

- As I also mentioned previously, I do not find the arguments that "he plays for a poor team" very convincing. Partly because I have 0 idea how to adjust the statistics to reflect that. There have been many cases of arguments being made for players these, only for them to move on to a better team to fail. Put simply, its a **** gamble to assume that a players performances being poorer in a poor team is because they play in a poor team and they'd magically become better if they went to a better team. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not. No one really knows. Plus, it could entirely be the case that Southampton being a shit team is due to JWP himself not being very good in open play.

My personal theory is that top-performing players at clubs are capable of performing at their level because the team has been built around them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. This makes them perform better than they actually are. On the other hand, they also clearly have worse teammates around them which should have a negative affect on their performance. I'd like to think both effects cancel out but most likely, which effect is stronger is very situational. Trying to guess which effect is stronger is not something I can do with the numbers I have. However, most of the time I see no real reason to think any single effect is stronger so I just assume that it cancels out. There's no point trying to adjust for something you can't predict. 

Hence, why I ignore arguments about how "player" plays for a poor team.

- I don't think its debatable that he's a worse defender than Nakamba. I'm rather confused by this problem you have because you don't seem to disagree with me that Nakamba is a better defender? You mention that he is not a very good footballer which I assume you mean to be in terms of being able to play the ball and to which I agree and also reflects in his on the ball statistics but that wasn't the point I was making here. I was just saying that he is better defensively than JWP.

You did mention a bit about positioning and honestly, positioning is one of those abilities that's not really captured in the statistics. Its why I don't like to look at defenders in particular centre backs stats because I think a lot of their ability comes from their ability to position themselves correctly and not necessarily tackling, intercepting and other active defensive stats which can measure. However, for a defensive midfielder, I think we should expect that a lot of his defensive statistics do correlate with how well he is defensively because they need to be active in breaking up play instead of just passively positioning themselves. Furthermore, I actually don't really think Nakamba is suspect positioning wise and I have no reason to think JWP is good at it.

-I've hope I've included enough context in the post above. I was gonna go on a rant a bit about "context" and just statistics here, not necessarily related to just football but felt like it was too long anyway.

 

 

 

[Zhan_Zhuang]

Some of us are way off the mark if we expect Ward-Prowse to add dribbles and running with the ball to our game.

It's not his main attribute. We have Bailey, Traore and Buendia specifically more attuned for that.

Ward-Prowse would be bought to help us retain possession and keep the ball, not giving it way cheaply as we currently do so often. 

[thunderball]

1 hour ago, Laughable Chimp said:

You're right. I wasn't making any detailed analysis with that post, just giving my thoughts from what I see from the statistics and in some cases just reiterating what I said a week ago with my post on why I think James Ward Prowse is just Douglas Luiz with dead ball ability.

To address some of your concerns, 

- Ward-Prowse completes 0.39 dribbles per 90 minutes. That's about a single successful dribble every 3 games with a 65.2 percentage success rate compared to Luiz's 0.78 completed dribbles per 90 with a 72.7 percent success rate. Meanwhile, every other stat from progressive carries to carrying distance gives Luiz the edge if only slightly. I don't think any context is really necessary here, its pretty clear that Luiz is the better dribbler and ball carrier.

- Yes, I do think the ability to carry the ball and progress the ball is something that's very important for most midfielders(sans pure destroyers) including JWP and the role we would want him to play. Hence, why I thought it deserved a mention. 

- The question as to whether Mcginn and JWP take on the same position on the pitch is difficult to answer. Technically, Mcginn actually played DM for quite a lot of games last season according to whoscored whilst JWP played entirely in CM. So at first glance it seems like if anything this context makes JWP look worse. However, I understand that sometimes these sites listing their positions aren't that accurate. Plus their positions don't always define their roles and I think most of us would agree that even if Mcginn technically played at DM last season, he was never actually one in reality.

Sofascore has heat maps of these players but honestly, I suck at reading heat maps. Knowing that, both look rather similar to me.

Mcginn touches the ball in the attacking pen at 1.49 touches per 90 compared to JWP's 0.61 per 90 fbref. Their corresponding statistics in the attacking 3rd per 90 are 14.19 and 18.24 respectively. Several ways to take this. 1.49 compared to 0.61 is a large difference relatively but is it large enough in absolute terms to justify the difference in shot creation? I'm not so sure. Plus, as I've shown, in the attacking 3rd as a whole JWP actually has more of the ball in this position. Further caveats are that since I'm talking about open play, I should ignore touches that are from free kick positions in the attacking 3rd but I don't really have the data for that. Secondly, proportionally compared to the total amount of touches both players get, 23 percent of JWP's touches happen to be to the attacking 3rd whereas 30 percent for Mcginn.

Honestly, there's so many ways to pull this that you could argue in several directions depending on which specific statistic you use and whether you consider the numbers relatively or in absolute terms. In my personal opinion, I don't think the differences in the positions both players take up actually matters that much in explaining the difference in shot creation. What perhaps matters more is the roles both players play. I don't think JWP is trying to pick apart defences with his carries and passes as much as Mcginn. Now, that also suggests he isn't particularly good at the job at open play shot creation that Mcginn in. He's not a new player, he's been around for a couple of seasons now. I think its clear if he happened to be good at this role, he'd actually been given this role. And as I mentioned in the post you quoted, him having a rate of only 1 assist in open play per 90 for the past 4 seasons suggest that this is true of him for a while now.

- As I also mentioned previously, I do not find the arguments that "he plays for a poor team" very convincing. Partly because I have 0 idea how to adjust the statistics to reflect that. There have been many cases of arguments being made for players these, only for them to move on to a better team to fail. Put simply, its a **** gamble to assume that a players performances being poorer in a poor team is because they play in a poor team and they'd magically become better if they went to a better team. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not. No one really knows. Plus, it could entirely be the case that Southampton being a shit team is due to JWP himself not being very good in open play.

My personal theory is that top-performing players at clubs are capable of performing at their level because the team has been built around them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. This makes them perform better than they actually are. On the other hand, they also clearly have worse teammates around them which should have a negative affect on their performance. I'd like to think both effects cancel out but most likely, which effect is stronger is very situational. Trying to guess which effect is stronger is not something I can do with the numbers I have. However, most of the time I see no real reason to think any single effect is stronger so I just assume that it cancels out. There's no point trying to adjust for something you can't predict. 

Hence, why I ignore arguments about how "player" plays for a poor team.

- I don't think its debatable that he's a worse defender than Nakamba. I'm rather confused by this problem you have because you don't seem to disagree with me that Nakamba is a better defender? You mention that he is not a very good footballer which I assume you mean to be in terms of being able to play the ball and to which I agree and also reflects in his on the ball statistics but that wasn't the point I was making here. I was just saying that he is better defensively than JWP.

You did mention a bit about positioning and honestly, positioning is one of those abilities that's not really captured in the statistics. Its why I don't like to look at defenders in particular centre backs stats because I think a lot of their ability comes from their ability to position themselves correctly and not necessarily tackling, intercepting and other active defensive stats which can measure. However, for a defensive midfielder, I think we should expect that a lot of his defensive statistics do correlate with how well he is defensively because they need to be active in breaking up play instead of just passively positioning themselves. Furthermore, I actually don't really think Nakamba is suspect positioning wise and I have no reason to think JWP is good at it.

-I've hope I've included enough context in the post above. I was gonna go on a rant a bit about "context" and just statistics here, not necessarily related to just football but felt like it was too long anyway.

 

 

But is this a case of there are Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics?

What does your instinct tell you? If you had to make an instant judgement call, say like when Han, Luke and Leia fell into the trash compactor in Star Wars?

(PS, I value cerebral posts like yours, thank you)

[Killeen30]

4 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Talking of winning fouls I wonder how many Grealish would have won for this season now the refs don’t seem to be giving the soft ones.

To be honest I don’t care. Let him work away at Man City. Let’s move on! 
 

Not getting at you btw!