One of the nice things about the modern world is that there’s all sorts of information available. I know that many people find this off-putting, and I can see that, but it does make it easier to understand things.
Take football. It’s a complicated game and we’ll never really get to the bottom of it. But we can get a lot of hints. So when someone on TiFF says “John Paintsil didn’t make any tackles against Hull”, it’s very easy to put your smart Alec hat on and prove that person wrong.
Which is what we have here. Look at the numbers above. I got them from the excellent Telegraph football page. They don’t make it easy to get the numbers, but they’re there if you’re prepared to faff around looking for them. Anyway, look at our friend John Paintsil. There’s a man who’s involved.
The most striking number is forward passes. This is something that I know proper football analysts pay attention to, the thinking being that anyone can pass backwards or sideways, but if you keep passing forwards (to a teammate!) then you’re making good things happen. John Paintsil played 41 forward passes against Hull. He only had 50 passes overall. I say only – that’s more than anyone else – but it’s staggering to me how often he got the ball and passed it forwards. Funnily enough, Simon Davies was similarly forward thinking, passing forwards on 27 of 32 passes. None of which means much, but it is suggestive of good things.
John’s performance going forwards was very effective then. But he also did his share of the heavy lifting at the back. Hangeland had more clearances, but Paintsil had the most recoveries (interceptions, do you think?) and also tackles (although Simon Davies had more).
Again, this is not the be all and end all, far from it, but I do think it’s interesting. Colin’s well on his way to taking things to the next level on this, incidentally – keep checking Championship at Best for updates.
