Perceptions

AN ARTICLE BY SUPERSUB

How we watch football has changed over the years.  There was a time when, if you wanted to watch a football match, you were inside a football stadium by 3pm on a Saturday and, if your team won, you’d be crossing your fingers that you’d programmed the VHS recorder correctly, so you could watch the highlights coz MOTD would be on whilst you were probably still out on the ale after the game.   Not so nowadays. TV deals & the internet were game changers as far as that goes.

It’s a weird one in some ways.  Football is a sport which is best watched live, surrounded by like minded people, who are all brought together by a common cause & all wanting the best possible result for their team.  The truth is that most people watch football matches these days by themselves at home, and that adds a whole new dimension to the experience, even though we still all want the same thing.  Watching a football match brings up emotions & these emotions are best shared with other supporters.  Hence the popularity of online forums, such as this one.

One of the biggest differences that I’ve seen due to this, is the reaction to summat that happens on the pitch.   Let’s say that a striker misses an open goal.  At the match, there’s a collective cry of ‘How the f*ck did he miss that’, followed by a few seconds of anguish, a quick moan to the people around you & then on with the game.  Online, it’s a whole different matter, in many ways.  The same initial collective cry is there, but forums are often immediately swamped with comments & these initiate conversations that can run for days (or often much, much longer), whatever the result of the game itself.

After watching the match live, a victory is celebrated & any misses are usually quickly forgotten & mostly seen as irrelevant.  We got the points, so who cares kinda thing.  Online, a miss can become a major talking point & become a huge ‘issue’ & seen as something that needs urgent attention, simply due to the fact that once these opinions are put online, they stay there & can become a reference for may future discussions & a micro analysis of what ‘went wrong’, irrespective of the result of the game.

We’re lucky on this site really, coz the lads have created an atmosphere where, in the main, disagreements can be had & people can debate with each other for a while & then they can move on afterwards like adults should, whether they ended up agreeing with each other or not.  Pretty similar to watching the match with yer mates in a way.  It’s a very positive thing & we should value that (which I’m sure that we do).

Disagreements are inevitable, because we’re all wired differently & we all have our own different way of perceiving things.  Everyone has their own individual unconscious & conscious bias, which shapes how they view a particular aspect of a game of football (or anything really).  This is based on their own personal life experiences & every person’s is unique.  It’d be boring if we all saw everything exactly the same and, because we don’t, that’s where we can have different opinions after all watching exactly the same thing as each other.

I’ve come up with 3 categories of disagreements.  I’m not sayin that these are the only 3 types that are out there, each with their own level of ‘provability’ when it comes to settling a dispute. It’s just my own individual view on things & everyone else’s is gonna be different in some way. 

The 3 that I’ve identified are…  1..Either/Or.  2..Not Proven. & 3..Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

I dunno if that’ll make any sense, but I’ll give an example for each one & see how that goes.  All of these views are fairly common online & have been expressed in various places throughout the season, and beyond.

1….Either/Or.     This covers the majority of online disagreements & are predominantly based on an individual’s subjective views of a particular topic.  The either/or part, is down to the subjective nature of the disagreement & neither participant can ‘prove’ that their view is correct & they also can’t ‘prove’ that the other person s wrong.  Just two people with opposing thoughts on the same subject matter.  Who’s right & who’s wrong..?  Either/or.

Let’s use Mo Salah as an example for this one.   ‘Mo is greedy/selfish & should pass more’.   Quite a common perception in parts & one that is truly divisive, & with no clear ‘proof’ that this is actually the case or, conversely, that people who disagree with this are correct either.  This is the type disagreements that could go backward & forwards for days/weeks/months & neither party would change their opinion.  Someone who thinks Mo is greedy, will look for incidents during the game, that confirms that opinion, as will people who don’t agree with this.

Confirmation bias in action.

One will watch out for him having a shot, when they think he should’ve passed (think) & the other will watch for times that he passes, when he was (thought to be) in a position that he could’ve had a shot from, especially if he’s previously scored from a similar position.   There’s no real resolution to the vast majority of this type of disagreement, outside of an ‘agree to disagree’ proposition. 

Again, summat that we can do on here, the vast majority of times.

2…Not Proven.    I love this phrase.  Use in Law Courts in Scotland, to say things like, “We know u did this ya wee little sh!t, but we just don’t have definitive proof.”

An example of this could be…… Darwin Nunez is 6’2” & his height will be useful in the box, as that’s summat we really struggle with.  We desperately need more height in the penalty area, as our forwards are generally too small.

Well, to counter this argument, you could point at the fact that we scored the most headed goals in the PL last season, so our forwards can’t be ‘too small’ after all, can they…?

This seems a reasonable counter argument & uses stats which are factual, rather than a subjective opinion, but it still remains in the ‘Not Proven’ category.  We’d need to look at how many of the headed goals were from our defensive players, coming up for set pieces & assess other facts, before we could decide whether this was ‘proven’ or not.. This stat, by itself, isn’t enough information to base a firm, definitive opinion on, so….Not Proven.   Further evidence needed.

3…Beyond Reasonable Doubt.     This is where detailed stats come into their own & some commonly held opinions can looked at a bit more closely, to see if they stack up or not. 

One area that has been discussed endlessly it seems, is around thoughts like…….

‘Our forwards were wasteful in front of goal last season’ 

‘We take too many shots to score one goal’.

Were they..?  Do we..?

Wasteful in front of goal…..  This is probably the most common reaction for a football supporter.

We want our team to score every time we attack & get near to the opposition’s goal, even tho we know that’s not gonna happen.  But we can’t help it & it’s entirely probable that ‘How did he miss that..?’ (or variations of) is one of the most common things that’s said whilst watching a football match.  But does the reality match up to the ‘in the moment’ perception..?  Quite often, it doesn’t.

The table below, is the average xG per league game of the top 6 in the PL for the 21/22 season, alongside the average goals scored per game.  It shows that the top 4 all slightly over performed in front of goal, based on the whole season’s xG stats.  Individual games will obviously throw up anomalies but, based on the stats over 38 games, if we were wasteful in front of goal, then so was everyone else.  The majority of them far more so.

The importance of the xG stats can’t be overstated here.  The actual number of attempts on goal is often of little importance, as it’s the quality of chances that matter, far more than the quantity. 

Create better chances & the forwards will score more goals.  It’s as straightforward as that.

One team can have 20 attempts on goal & the other can have 4.  If all of the 20 attempts are outside the box & the 4 are all 6-10 yards from goal, then it’s far more likely that the team with only the 4 attempts will win.

For me, this is proving ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that our forwards were not wasteful in front of goal last season.   Having said that, it’s not definitive proof, unless we break it down to each individual & look at all the stats separately but, good luck to you if you have the time/inclination to do that.

We take too many shots to score one goal….   Again, an opinion which has been voiced in various places throughout the season & beyond.  Does this opinion stand up to close scrutiny…?

The table below, shows the average number of shots per goal for the top 6 in the PL & Bayern Munich too in the Bundesliga (who I included for a specific reason, but can’t remember why…!!).

Again, if we’re taking too many shots to score a goal, then so is everyone else.

We’re actually one of the best in Europe (equal 4th) when it comes to attempts/goals comparisons so, for me, this is another ‘beyond reasonable doubt.

So, those are my 3 categories of disagreements.   

Do they make any sense & are there any others..?

Apologies….this went on a bit longer than expected.  There’s tons more on this too & I’ve got a piece with detailed stats from the CL final, but that’s probably enough for now & that one can wait. 

Except maybe to say that Thibaut Courtois probably had the best game of his entire career that night & sometimes even the best strikers in the world can’t do too much against that.

This wasn’t an attempt to change anyone’s mind btw, coz we all know that once opinions are firmly bedded, than it takes more than a few stats to change that.  I know this from my own pov, as my own personal ‘confirmation bias’ is/was around us being outplayed.  It was only fairly recently, that I was able to acknowledge that a team outplayed us, even when we took a bit of a hammering.  I was always looking out for reasons/excuses.  Dodgy refereeing, unlucky deflections etc etc.  Anything that would point to us being unlucky in not winning a game of football. 

Nobody said that bein a football supporter was straightforward.

We’re complicated creatures.

P.S.  All stats here have been from various sources that I’ve previously found to be extremely reliable.  If any of them seem to be incorrect, please say so & I can go & double check that.