I think soft is the right term supers, Like i said i can see why some it was a penalty, and i can also can see why some say it isn't.
there was a discussion on soft pens from the weekend on talksport on monday, ours wasn't mentioned. only Stokes and chelseas not saying ours was not soft, just puts it into perspective
forgive me if i'm wrong, but i haven't seen or read anybody - no pundits, players, managers, journalists, fans even - say it wasn't a penalty. except you.
I was listening to the Monday Night Club this week when they were discussing Chelsea's ridiculous penalty in the 6th minute of injury time and couldn't believe that Motty and Ian McGarry were saying it was an absolutely blatant penalty and they couldn't understand what all the fuss was about Steve Claridge was the voice of reason and called it spot on, it was a shocking decision and I cannot believe the ref fell for it, it was embarrassing
Surely it doesn't matter if JJ was going for the ball. Hooper got there first and JJ missed and Hooper went over. soft, yes, but it's not the keepers intent that matters, it's what actually happened. Hooper won the ball, got tripped by JJ. Its a penalty. Simple as that.
@General Melchett Well actually it wasn't aimed at you, because you are not one of those who regularly take refuge in this form of denigrating the good things that our team and manager achieve. Regarding luck evening out, the research into the role of luck has looked at games from all sorts of contexts, World Cups, different leagues, knock-out competitions, in various countries, and from different periods. No serious research that I know of supports the claim that "big" teams benefit consistently from luck in the form of poor refereeing decisions. Some informal research done recently into this (for the EPL) actually showed how way off the usual perception of preferential treatment is. It turned out that Man Utd, who everybody thinks get special treatment (or at least did so under Fergie), were actually rather hard done by in the season in question! This is another example of received wisdom not being borne out by properly-based research. Regarding making your own luck, that really boils down to doing everything as well as you possibly can, not just on the field -- defending well, attacking well -- but off it too, having the best fitness coaches and physios, the best facilities for training, etc. etc. Getting into good attacking areas is just one of many aims, neither more nor less important than others. The question of whether you give priority to not conceding as opposed to scoring is not about maximising or minimising the role of chance; it is to do with the relative value of a goal not conceded as opposed to a goal scored.
I was going to say something to this effect but you put it far better than I would have. Luck will be involved in every touch and pass and shot and run that happens in a game to an extent. While obviously a players skill is the real determining factor you could easily say it's luck that got the ball to land perfectly here or not so perfectly there.
Though I would dispute your saying "a player's skill is the real determining factor". All you can say is that it is one determining factor, and in the long term, teams with a significantly higher level of skill will do significiantly better. Not that that helped Manchester City at the Stadium of Light on Sunday!
Actually Colk i have looked at it again in slowmo, and yes i do see a touch from hooper which i didn't see before, so perhaps yes it was probably more a penalty than i thought originally, I still think it was soft, but probably more 70/30 towards giving the penalty.
it was a penalty. there really is no arguing about it yet guru is determined to! i bet he wasn't berating the laughable penalty call against us at west ham on new years day!!!
I think the players skill (and luck) can be described (perhaps simplistically) as probabilities. A player with greater skill will have a higher probability of doing something good with a single touch, pass, shot etc than someone with a lower skill level. But as is with probabilities, anything is possible, but not everything is probable, which is why we see `freak' results such as that with Sunderland and Man City, or other lower teams score and outplay the higher teams on occasion, but the safe money is on the higher team winning (more often than not). But no player is faultless (or has a probability of 1, or is, for example, certain to score) or completely useless (prob of 0). JJ's error may be a 1/100 event (given him a high probability of 0.99 of catching the ball at any cross or air-ball situation) but as seen on Saturday, it doesn't mean he will... It is luck that he dropped it? Perhaps... But it is about maximising the probability that something good will happen. If you have a skilled player in a dangerous position, the probability that something good (i.e. a goal) will happen increases... Just as, if you have a slice of `luck' having better players to exploit this luck will increase the probability that something good happens. Moreover, if enough of these events occur, the probability that something good (again, i.e. a goal) happens also increases. Of course, these are all probabilities, and don't necessarily mean something will happen (see Norwich v. Cardiff), but given a large enough sample will probably result in being true. As Robbie has pointed out, a mixture of skill and luck determines the outcome of the game, although how one quantifies luck is an interesting question (something I've `tried' to explore above). Before people start saying... So we need to attack, attack, attack to have a better chance of winning... Attacking also increases the probabilities of conceding through vulnerability or compromised formation etc... So a fine balance is required to achieve the optimal result... Something which again Robbie has stated before, re: not conceding... Although throwing the kitchen sink at the opposition may result in an increased prob., not all the time. In injury time (where the opposition `turtle-up' if ahead) it is generally thought to be better as the probability of the opposition doing something decreases as they try to preserve their lead and increases for the attacking team as more people are in dangerous positions. Whereas during the 60th minute that is not necessarily true as the other team may still be playing to score. See I said `may', as with Cardiff they might decide that turtling-up is the best way to optimise their result (which I think was proved to be true). How to achieve this optimal balance (or when to assume an inbalance) is what we debate, and managers and players get paid for... Lots of swings and roundabouts but I hope you all follow My two-pence worth anyway...
I'd say about 70% of penalties given these days are described as "soft". So a soft penalty is basically one that the referee will likely give, but gives fans an excuse to deride it. This was a blatant penalty. You can see Jaaskeleinen go for the ball and take out Hooper's trailing leg before getting near the ball. Hooper went down easily, but in the grand scheme of going down easily in the Prem, this could be classed as a real effort to stay on his feet. Not even an iota of doubt this was a penalty under today's rules and referee guidelines. If there had been, we can be sure as hell BFS would have banged on about it. Scummer in trying to debate a hopeless case non-shocker.
I don't think that it is realistic to argue against the existence of luck,only what the effect of it is.Take for example a free kick like the Snodgrass one.Six inches further over and it comes back off the post,three inches and it smacks against the inside of the post and goes in.No football in the world can judge it to that extent.It's like a hole in one at golf.A good golfer gets the ball on the green the rest is Serendipity,God,Allah,whoever you like. If that then happens after eighty five minutes of game thirty eight you could stay up or go down.It's not usually as drastic as that.Yes it usually balances out,with the exception of teams like Chelsea getting unwarranted penalties.
@Astro Canary Good two-pence worth! Re. quantifying luck, one example would be the extensive research done on goals, which divides goals firstly into those where the player intended to score and those where there was no such intention (e.g. Begovich's goal for Stoke against Southampton), and then sub-divides the first category into those that involved a strong and identifiable element of being unplanned or uncontrolled. An obvious case of the latter would be where a deflection alters the trajectory of the shot and wrong-foots the keeper. Another case would be where the the ball rebounds off the keeper back to the "shooter" who nets at the second attempt. Yet another would be where a forward scores from a cross which he goes to head, but misreads and the ball goes in off his chest. This research, done on an extensive sample of goals scored in various leagues and competitions, concluded that roughly 44% of all goals qualified as "fortunate" in the sense defined. You can see that a similar methodology can be applied to other types of event, e.g. passes, ball recoveries, and so on. Re. skill, an interesting point is that lack of skill matters more than great skill; or putting it another way, a team is only as good as its weakest link(s), not its strongest. You do better to improve your weakest link by, say 10%, rather than buying a 10%-better player to replace one who is already among your best. In general also it is better to have a team with a uniform level of skill than a team with great disparities. Benteke and Guzan kept Villa up last season, but they struggled and finished below us because the overall skill level of Lambert's team was inferior. You are quite right in what you are saying about the role of the manager and coaches. Their task is simply to try to maximise the probability of winning or if not winning at least not losing. The task is obviously easier if you can build a squad with talents such as Messi, Neymar, Xavi, Iniesta, and so on. But for the likes of Chris Hughton, Malky Mackay, Sam Allardyce et. al. it ain't so simple!
In my opinion luck is used way too often as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility, when we make a mistake I actually find it a lot commendable when someone takes accountability for things happening and saying 'Yes we messed up big, we'll work on that and try our best to prevent that from happening again' rather then 'Things just didn't go our way today luck wasn't on our side'. In the West Ham game we came out a different team in second half because words were exchanged at half time, we were more determined more fired up and in return we had the will to win, our character in some way's won that game for us.
Some good points here. I've found this a really interesting thread, but I think we need to add a third dimension alongside skill and luck: 'spirit', or whatever you want to call it. This is very elusive and hard to define, but it makes such a difference. Why did we score so many last minute goals in Div 1 and the Championship? I'd say this is at least as important as skill and luck in determining the outcome of games.
Confidence is another crucial factor, closely related to spirit. What the research into the relative contributions of skill and luck shows is that, between them, they account for roughly 85%-88% of performance over time (as opposed to in a single match). The remaining 15%-12% is where money (as the chief determinant of skill level) and fortune are augmented or otherwise by inter-related factors such as managerial skill (partly money determined), team spirit, confidence, unity within the club and on the terraces, etc. etc. Regarding last minute goals, it would be wrong to attribute that "habit" just to spirit. It is clear, for example, that Man Utd under Ferguson had a deliberate policy of pacing themselves, both within a game, and over a season, so that they were able to come on strongly towards the end. As the game or season draw towards the close, Man Utd always up the tempo. Unless teams prepare for this in advance, and pace themselves/manage their substitutions accordingly, they will find themselves facing Utd's late-stage high energy levels with a tired team unable to mount the necessary last stand. Lambert has a similar approach to Fergie in this respect IMO. Of course, if you have such a policy and it keeps paying off, there is a knock-on effect on confidence and spirit, since the team and fans will never consider a game to be not winnable until the final whistle blows. So, as the pressure mounts on the opposition, so the crowd shout louder, etc. etc.
It may have been used by him, it was coined long before he was born, it is a supplement of team spirit and confidence, if you're brimming with those two attributes, luck follows you around! As Gary Player once told a fan who called a hole in one lucky, "It's funny but the more I practice, the luckier I get!"
