Stats aren't the be all and end all and can be manipulated to suit an argument, but anyone with some knowledge of football can see what Davis brings to the team. Likewise people can see his faults, think it is a perfectly reasonable argument to say that he shouldn't play
That would have been a good post if you had just balanced it fully at the end with, "...or should play" It's fair to say either really.
The problem with stats is that people generally use them to support what they were already thinking. Which is why it didn't surprise me that Liam who doesn't like Davis chose stats he thinks makes a good player and Davis was poorer at them, while ignoring stats i would have looked at. For example i think he plays as an engine whose job is not just to beat players or win the ball back but get everywhere and fill in where-ever he's needed, where gaps form in defence , offer a way out for creative players if they get stuck, run into space and draw players out of position etc. which means he needs to be a very all round player who makes few mistakes. so i would have looked at stats like total passes and distance covered to see how involved he gets, pass percentage and failed tackles to see how often he gives the ball away. Things like that, none of which he included. The BBC article even stated they were changing the way they did their formula to make the results come out as they expected. So they used things like expected goals rather than goals scored.
One of the things that Vic was fantastic at and I can't think of a stat that could show it, was filling a space. Sometimes his presence was enough. How do you measure that?
Width of player *(intimidatedess of player) x dimensions of pitch / scaredness of player with possession Vic came out with a 16. Always
I always thought similarly about Morgan. Plenty of interceptions but also plenty of attacks through our midfield just fizzled out because he was in the way of the killer pass. I'll go so far as to say that if that could be recorded as a statistic, I'd be OK if Saints' black box was set only to take that stat into account when picking DMs. Vin
-----------------Forster------------------ Soares--Yoshida--Hoedt--Bertrand -----------------Romeu------------------ ------Prowse------------Lemina------- Redmond------------------------Boufal ----------------Gabbiadini--------------- If Hoedt isn't ready yet then Stephens plays, Prowse replaces Davis and Boufal for Tadic. As others have said Davis is a good player but really lacks an attacking threat so I'd like to see if Prowse can supply Gabby better. Tadic hasn't been at his best for most of the year so I'd start Boufal instead and see how he fares. Regardless of who plays I'm just glad that the international window is over.
Some interesting results there. Not sure how serioysly to talke it, but, er...oh dear Tadic. As for Davis' stats, here's a fairly important one; 100% of Saints managers to date have made him a regular starter. I wonder why? Oh yeah, matchday. Cautiously optimistic.
I'm really worried about Hoedt. Seen him play a couple of times now and he looks really slow to me. I know this is at odds with the standard of football he has been playing at but after our scouting being awesome with CBs - Toby, Virgil etc, we've also more recently bought some, to be kind, "unproven" talent in Gardos, Bednarek. I'm sure Hoedt will prove me wrong but I've a sneaky feeling we are going to prefer our first choice pairing of what we have right now. PS. Stephens is genuinely my favourite player right now - no way would I drop him
Stephens has a very good skill on the ball for a CB, in that departement he's almost as good as Virgil. But as a defender, he's worse than Yoshida.
I couldn't live my life always finding the downside of things, like some appear to. Poor Bednarek and Hoedt. Classed in a negative view already, before either have finished tying up their laces
Yep, totally agree. I'm not really a Davis "fan" but do see what he brings to the side & virtually every time he's been dropped or not playing (especially in his slightly more forward role instead of his holding midfield role) we look unbalanced & usually end up underperforming even more so.
