I can't figure out if it's hilarious or sad that the pundits who make millions of pounds are offering "fat bloke in the pub" type insight. For example every one of them are saying Leicester are legitimate title contenders. As soon as some teams, especially smaller ones start treating Leicester like they have serious attacking threat they should be done for. Also they are conceding ****ton of goals, but they react like they never seen the table/games/stats and just getting shown the points on the table. Just utterly clueless.

I think it would be more interesting if they just invited DuckSauce and have discussions about projections/models/player scorepoints and just cut out the parts where he notoriously sniffs his own farts about how he got 10 to 1 on Chelsea not getting top4. I mean I'm 100% sure he'd have more insight that most of the pundits out there, but I guess people enjoy watching people in suits who were decent at kicking the ball some years before...

lol like DS would ever offer free coaching to millions of viewers

Awesome.

loooool

£100 bottle? any more would be out of line on what we usually spend.

Leicester are the current btitblitw.

I think they have a legitimate claim on being the GÖAT team ÖAT.

Looks like Iturbe to Watford may have fallen through, more likely to sign for Bournemouth now.

Well of course most of the viewers are casual and are fine with the service being proposed right now, the big names themselves like Henry or Ferdinand is attractive enough for them and they aren't interested in deeper analysis.
I personally would find someone like DS annoying as well. People that swear by the analytics and like to pretend that it's the only truth without any flaws are equally annoying to me. As Caley tweeted not long ago "it should contribute to the discussion but it shouldn't be the discussion". There has to be a fine balance and I don't even think you could call reading a xG result as insight as there is no comprehension to be made besides reading two numbers. What is interesting is the why and how did the teams manage to create chances (holes in opponent defense, pressing, passing, etc...) and that's what's lacking the most but I do think Neville and Carra have been doing a not so bad job sometimes highlighting some of the teams leaks especially defensively. Guys like Henry are clueless and limited though.

For those who watch snooker on BBC, i'm always amazed by the quality of punditry over there, it's excellent for the most part and asking myself the questions how comes that elite snooker players have such elite knowledge for the game while football players don't seem to know much I think it's just a function of the nature in the game. Like in snooker you have to constantly be thinking and have a transversal vision about the game while in football - and I am not saying brain doesn't count in football - you can get away with not having a deep and knowledgeable vision of the game as a footballer. I bet masterminds like Pirlo type would be great pundit.

Football is a massive casual fan sport and as such you advertise to that demographic.

NFL is a good example of how you cant spend all your time discussing the pros and cons of the Cover 2 defence and instead have to simplify it down to the masses to the gridiron version of scorepoints.

Those who want deeper analysis of casual fan sports can find them on other media (zonal marking, Swiss ramble etc...)

Advanced football understanding is also time and brain consuming. Not everybody has the time or the brain required for that

Understanding of probabilities etc does a lot to counter popular narratives that arise out of not understanding probabilities etc.

When bringing up topics/perspectives that are discussed or even taken as given itt with people I know are bright and well educated it is often greeted with blank wtf stares.

Something as simple as a team running above expectation etc.

Now factor in A: Most people are dumber than my sample group, B: Mass media has to keep it simple and likes to enforce narratives.

I feel like the main issues with fat blokes is they have no understanding of how variance works, so everything needs to be explained in narratives instead.

at least you got self awareness!

I assume Liverpool is supposed to be to the left of Arsenal on this graph?

A lot of poker players have no or bad understanding of variance so not really surprised the fat bloke doesn't, understanding of variance isn't a skill particularly useful for most guys in life or they do but at a very basic level "oh that was lucky" and they live fine lives.

speaking of punditry etc - reading the goal.com ratings sometimes is the worst, i feel like all they care about is who went forward best, very little weight given to defensive performances

Exactly what we were talking about with Ledders during the game yestarday night.
Also regarding my original post I was trying somewhat ironically to contrast the enjoyment I get from modern punditry and reading DS post with mixed amount of success.

I completely agree that stats need to be in context to be worthwhile/interesting, but the complete lack of it in these pre-/post-game shows is rather surprising and the building of narratives takes complete focus.

Agree with the Garry-Carra assessment as well as Phil pointing out Capoue movement and plays in the Watford game yday, but just saying Leicester are legit title contenders without even mentioning some stats (goals conceded for example) is a bit baffling. Not mentioning some of the underlying defensive numbers like shots conceded etc.

I think there are some stats that can maybe give a sense of variance to a broad audience... PDO is literally just adding shooting percentage and save percentage together. Slap a name on it that actually makes sense, show that in the long run, teams are gonna be around 100, then show Pool currently sitting somewhere in the 80s. If you use the right language (not mentioning "luck" for example), I think most people should get the gist of it.

I'm a big stats guy but Cinarocket is spot on about the analytic guys, so many of them have gone too far to the other end of the spectrum. It really irritates me to the point that I had to unfollow some quite insightful people on twitter because they were so goddamn smug that it made me sick. They were bragging about models predicting West Ham's decline, it doesn't take a degree in mathematics to figure that one out mate. Oh and finishing every tweet with a The ultimate smug.

Why are they all Spurs fans as well? Spurs fans are like the poor mans Liverpool fans, who everybody knows are the worst fans in the world.

IT'S OUR YEAR (again)

I think lots of them are from the US and Spurs did employ Clint Dempsey

If you're an ex-footballer with a good intellectual understanding of football, you're not going into punditry. You're going into coaching. That's not to say all coaches have great football knowledge, but it's the reason elite coaches get paid the money they're getting paid.

However, since most of you guys think that coaches are worth jack ****, and that pösting colourful pictures on the internet with some numbers sprinkled on is the pinnacle of football analysis, I assume most of you think that 2p2's goofball >>> Pep Guardiola.

GTFO

Spurs fans know their place in the current footballing hierarchy, ploppers don't mainly due to their last champions league win and slippy G.

We may become more intolerable when we move into the best stadium in the world in 2018, but Spurs fans will never be a poor mans Liverpool.

Didn't Gary Neville do exactly that? Him and a few others are using it as a springboard. Andy Gray was actually quite decent especially for his generation, god rest his soul.

Also Dean Saunders went into coaching, and he is Dean Saunders. There is no black or white, this is all right, this is all wrong. Dismissing the stats presentations as pretty pictures with numbers sprinkled in a condescending manner is bad, as is believing they are the be all and end all.

GG LVG?

I'm not dismissing the pictures. I'm dismissing the people who assign way too much value to them because they are getting fooled by the pretty pictures. Did you follow the World Cup last year here on 2p2? Remember goofball? He posted the most amazingly no-content "analysis" graphs, and a massive number of posters couldn't contain their jizz.

Here's a mockup of what they looked like, courtesy of BertieWooster:



Xg and other stats do add some value.

People who jizz all over them take it away.