It's that time of the weekend. Premier league games are going to be hitting our TV screens in a few hours. It's about now when Twitter time-lines start filling up with previous match-ups between teams, win-loss records, goals scored against this opponent, goals scored by Mr Soso etc. While a lot of these statistics are quite interesting and give us a way to use up some time before the actual games begin, this number crunching has gone way too far nowadays that sometimes I find that some of it, actually most of it, is just useless.
Stats are good, but at the end of the day they're just stats. I'm not completely blind to suggest that all stats are useless, but the thing about this overdose is that now we have stats not based on actual events, but even on hypothetical situations, that are probably playing out in some parallel universe. The irritating part is that you can manipulate these numbers to make a good situation better, a bad situation worse or basically any way to prove a point that you want to prove. Now if you ask me why I'm coming up with this anti-stat rant it's because I started thinking about it when I saw this USELESS stat that I'm going to talk about.
Now I think we are all aware of the fact that Arsenal are in some deep shit. Well not so much as before the game against Udinese, but there's still some stuff to worry about. My worry is that many people want to make us believe that this shit smells worse than it actually does. I saw a tweet the other day that said something like, "If the Premier league were to start after THAT Carling Cup final when Arsenal snatched defeat from Birmingham, Arsenal would now be in 15th position with just 13 points" after (conveniently for these stat gurus) starting the actual new season with a draw and a loss". Now don't quote me on the exact numbers, because if I was serious about it, I would've either remembered it or at least bothered to check again before I told you. Doing that would also defeat the purpose of my argument that too much of this stats stuff is a health hazard.
Going back to the one I was talking about, now why do we need to know Arsenal's position in an imaginary league? No, seriously... We all know the season starts in August and ends the following May. In that case I can bring up my own stat and suggest that Arsenal have won the league every single year for the season that starts in mid May and ends mid August. Yes, you're right, that's when nobody is playing football in England. So what? Whatever it is, mathematically, or alphabetically rather, Arsenal will be top of the league forever, unless we get relegated or of course if someone like Alsager Town, Appledore, Andover New Street (these are real teams, I didn't make them up) or one of those with a better thought out name make it to the Premier League. Okay, I get it that I've given you nonsense instead of a useless stat but hey, that's what useless stats are too - NONSENSE.
Anyway moving on, a more interesting topic. Thuggery or in simple terms, Joey Barton. Rumour has it that he's already penned a deal at QPR. I have to say that I'm quite disappointed that he's decided to move there. Not that I care about him. It's just that Arsenal will now have to play against him two more times, meaning the chances of our players being sent off is enhanced. So we'll easily exceed the 6 Red Cards we picked up last season (there you go, a useless number). I'd suggest that Arsene Wenger buys an extra body in the team who will cover for suspensions, maybe SuperMario or Superman like someone said on Twitter. These guys of course can play in any position and therefore naturally possess the super, super quality that he's after.
Time will tell, I suppose. I'll leave you with that. I'm going to spend the rest of my day watching Barton's Twitter time-line to see when he confirms more misery for Arsenal, along with a saying from his book of a million quotations.
No comments:
Post a Comment