It's easy enough to get an idea of how you think players have played by watching them live and on TV but it's not very scientific. I realise that at the end of a day football is an art but I never see any serious effective analysis of players and formations. There's always the same statistics on how far players run, shots on target, passes completed etc. I wonder how useful the "performance analysts" are. If I was a manager I would want the statistics to be useful to my way of thinking. Some tackles are easy and some are hard but in the statistics a tackle is a tackle and no more and no less. A defender can do a good job by just covering a player and therefore giving the opponent with the ball less options. A winger can cross the the ball well but a defender can make a superhuman block or the same winger can make a bad cross and a defender misses a clearance and an attacker scores. Steve Bruce seems the sort of person to watch the match and make his judgements solely on that. We all talk about how effective Huddlestone is but you need to analyse his play taking into account what options he has when he gets the ball and even how he makes himself available. I doubt a manager can know everything that every player does in 90 minutes but I think it's important to have all this information to make good judgements. I would like to think that managers play matches over and over again on ProZone making notes on players and areas of the pitch. It might not be so much fun but I think it would be more effective.
