Main

''But the stats show he's better than Ramsdale!!!''

I guess people watch stats instead of football matches

People stare themselves so blind on stats its unreal. While they also don't consider the context of those stats. People will just throw stats around like ''passing accuracy'' but won't take into account against which opponents it was and how those opponents played (like did they pressure the passer a lot or not?).

Player X gets room to pass the ball around. The opponents don't bother to pressure him much because they are worrying more about another player for example. Their managers gave them the task to stop that other player in this scenario.

Meanwhile player Y doesn't get that same wiggle room to pass the ball around. In his case the opposing players do get the assignment to pressure him more.

Player X had a passing accuracy of 90%! wow so good

Player Y had a passing accuracy of 85%! see player X HAS to be better

Meanwhile Player Y did amazingly well with tremendous pressure put on him. He kept turning and twisting his opponents and still finding his teammates perfectly 85% of all the passes he gave. Only made a couple slight errors while under pressure. While Player X had free room to pass around at his hearts desire while he made 1 big error while there was no pressure on him whatsoever.

Stat junkies will tell you Player X is the superior player. His stats show that! While people that actually watch the matches know that Player Y is the better player and can do much more when there's pressure put on him.