There is a brad pitt movie based on i think the anerheim angels where their players are all recruited on stats.
Cant remember the title but it took a while and minutes in the pitch to prove the stats were correct.
Four years later another side copied the theory and won the baseball title.
Matteo does have stats so why couldnt he be right.
The only issue is the patience needed to see it through.
I take my hat off to the man matteo for the research and time and effort he puts in.
Give him a break and respect his respect of our club.

Moneyball was the film, and the Boston Red Sox were the team.

The point many people are making regards Matteo's selective use of stats in conjunction with claims that his selective use of stats proves something. It doesn't, it merely provides a statistical guide to what happened in the past. It is useful as a tool, among other tools, to see if a player performs as expected. That ebig said, simply stating x player has y goals in z minutes, does little to tell us if said player contributes to team play, helps the team defend, or helps others to score through their movement, etc.

He also claims only he had the foresight to see x y or z but was ignored. This often ignores the thousands of players he has said will be good, but never seem to be heard of outside of his posts. That should tell us something.

If he wants to post on here good for him, but one should not expect to make such bold claims without any kind of response. After all, this is a discussion board is it not?

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

I've also reffered to that every time.

Maybe not by you, but you do realize that these players actually do play somehwere, in another league, even though you don't know what happened to them after I spoke about them here?

You tell me who I've talked about and has gone anonymous. I talked about Jony, who was an anonymous Malaga, bottom of the table team substitute last season and I said that the coach there is an idiot for not using him.

And this year Jony is in the top of the assisters rankings in La Liga after Messi, Jordi Alba and Griezmann, playing for Alaves, where he gets his 90 minutes to actually do something.

Do you know how I knew he would do that? Because I actually watched Jony at 22 years old, in his forst La Liga season with Sporting Gijon actually scoring and assisting about 15 times in about 3000 minutes for a relegation threatened newly promoted team. And before that he had had constant achievements in the La Liga 2 as they got promoted. So yeah, when Malaga was not using him, I actually knew how he would do when in another team which respected him. Same with my Lucas Perez suggestion above.

And he's not the only player I've been right about, but I point him out because of the fact that he was an unnkown for everyone else before hitting 6 assists and 2 goals this season.

Assisst are just like goals. It's like someone being top of the goal scoring charts, just that the price of those players is kept down because they're not exactly the ones getting the spotlight

So you know I'm not making all this up, this is where I talked about him:

[Link]

And here he was in a very small left footed wingers list next to Cheryshev, Lestienne, Hernani from Porto and Ben Arfa.

[Link]

Cheryshev, you know, that guy who did this at the World Cup:

[Link]

You know, this was 1 year before, when NOBODY wanted him, and we could have gotten him for free (or very cheap)- just like Lucas Perez now. Shame nobody will seem to remember this conversation after a few years, when Lucas Perez would have scored 10+ a season in Spain's league or the PL.

Edited by mattteo (22 Jan 2019 9.39pm)

Fair enough. I read something that said it was the Red Sox, but I am no expert in baseball.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Stats can tell you a lot about a baseball player. They only tell you a fraction of what you need to know about a footballer.

When a batter steps up to the plate it's one on one and a binary outcome. Him versus the pitcher - Hit or no hit.

As a winger you can skin your full back all day and lay it on a plate for your teammates but if they don't put the ball in the net then no assist for you. You can spend all day making intelligent runs only to never receive the ball so statistically another poor day for you. You're doing your job well but it will never show on the stats.

Also, there is only one league in baseball so when you gather and compare stats on individuals they are based on performances against the same teams you will be playing.

Players who score hat-tricks in minor European leagues don't tend to do so well in the Premier league.

I think stats can alert to potential but there are just too many variables in football to base too much upon them. Players need to be watched, watched and watched again.

Potential being the optimum word.
Without those stats how would potential be spotted.
If he comes here theres no chance of getting on the end of a cross.
We dont make any!