BF I follow Barnsley

[SouthDownsRoyal]

Be good to sell Swift get a few quid it interest seems to have cooled, not surprised

[Brain Traysers]

I don't think I'd be looking to Citeh for stats comparisons to us.

Weak response. I actually think its a perfect example - if the best-in-the-world equivalent of Swifts role also had a low % completion (relative to his teammates) despite putting on a MOTM performance, why should we expect Swift to do what KdB does, plus more? We should very reasonably expect him to do a worse job than KdB (lower % completion, fewer goals/assists/key passes), which shock-and-horror... he has done so far.

Not convinced your 'hot take' on Swift stacks up against his influence on key moments in this game alone, nor is it supported by data. We already know you had strong bias against Swift before last season, whereas I will openly admit I am very pro-Swift (ahead of last season I claimed that a fully fit John Swift is one of the best in the league in his role - I think I was right there). Could this be your conscious/unconscious bias leaking out?

Sure, I think he is capable of having better games, but he's doing fine in a team that are 6/6.

[Snowflake Royal]

I don't think I'd be looking to Citeh for stats comparisons to us.

Weak response. I actually think its a perfect example - if the best-in-the-world equivalent of Swifts role also had a low % completion (relative to his teammates) despite putting on a MOTM performance, why should we expect Swift to do what KdB does, plus more? We should very reasonably expect him to do a worse job than KdB (lower % completion, fewer goals/assists/key passes), which shock-and-horror... he has done so far.

Not convinced your 'hot take' on Swift stacks up against his influence on key moments in this game alone, nor is it supported by data. We already know you had strong bias against Swift before last season, whereas I will openly admit I am very pro-Swift (ahead of last season I claimed that a fully fit John Swift is one of the best in the league in his role - I think I was right there). Could this be your conscious/unconscious bias leaking out?

Sure, I think he is capable of having better games, but he's doing fine in a team that are 6/6.

Sorry mate, you don't look at the best in the world as a comparison to a championship player. Man City are streets ahead of most of their division too.

You need a far larger sample size of comparable players at a similar level across multiple games.

No, there's no bias here. I still rate Swift as a very useful player after last season's performance.

[Brain Traysers]

I don't think I'd be looking to Citeh for stats comparisons to us.

Weak response. I actually think its a perfect example - if the best-in-the-world equivalent of Swifts role also had a low % completion (relative to his teammates) despite putting on a MOTM performance, why should we expect Swift to do what KdB does, plus more? We should very reasonably expect him to do a worse job than KdB (lower % completion, fewer goals/assists/key passes), which shock-and-horror... he has done so far.

Not convinced your 'hot take' on Swift stacks up against his influence on key moments in this game alone, nor is it supported by data. We already know you had strong bias against Swift before last season, whereas I will openly admit I am very pro-Swift (ahead of last season I claimed that a fully fit John Swift is one of the best in the league in his role - I think I was right there). Could this be your conscious/unconscious bias leaking out?

Sure, I think he is capable of having better games, but he's doing fine in a team that are 6/6.

Sorry mate, you don't look at the best in the world as a comparison to a championship player. Man City are streets ahead of most of their division too.

You need a far larger sample size of comparable players at a similar level across multiple games.

No, there's no bias here. I still rate Swift as a very useful player after last season's performance.

If the point you want to make is that a certain position performs better/worse on a given metric relative to his teammates, it doesn't matter much since the quality of the teammates rises or falls around him. Sure, Swift isn't KdB, but KdB doesn't receive the ball from Laurent and pass it onto Joao... As long as the shape matches (which ours does) it's a perfectly good example of "the CAM role is one where you shouldn't expect a high pass completion, as their role is to play riskier passes which by default have a lower success rate".

I actually picked the best possible player to support your hypothesis that Swift/KdBs role should have a relatively high pass completion rate, yet unfortunately confirmed my own. It also debunked the bits about the GK (not true for last year+) and defenders (not true since tika-taka) typically having the lowest rates of pass completion. But yes, feel free to do the legwork in getting a bigger sample to prove it either way, just make sure its representative of the way we are trying to play under Pauno.

Equally, if you can't be bothered, I'm happy to agree to disagree

[Snowflake Royal]

I said defenders in more direct sides.

Generally whenever I've looked over the years what I described is what I saw. That's why I said it.

Look at our season so far stats. Cabral is second bottom. Baldock bottom. Swift is towards the bottom, but on 77%, how much higher must his PA have been against Derby if it was 60% against Barnsley.

Look at last season. Swift is 4th overall on 82.5%. Bottom 5? Cabral, Meite, Baldock, Obita and Puscas.

Anyway. Enough of boring everyone else to tears.


I thought you were good at the data stuff.

[Brain Traysers]

I said defenders in more direct sides.

Generally whenever I've looked over the years what I described is what I saw. That's why I said it.

Look at our season so far stats. Cabral is second bottom. Baldock bottom. Swift is towards the bottom, but on 77%, how much higher must his PA have been against Derby if it was 60% against Barnsley.

Look at last season. Swift is 4th overall on 82.5%. Bottom 5? Cabral, Meite, Baldock, Obita and Puscas.

Anyway. Enough of boring everyone else to tears.


I thought you were good at the data stuff.

Unfortunately we aren't talking about over the years - we are talking about one performance this season, with Swift in a new (more advanced) role, in the bigger picture of a new playing style. As you say, very small samples to draw conclusions from so we will see where completion rates end up (which again, are near meaningless without context... put Swift in a PV model and his role will leap out as different to the rest of the team)

To summarize- I'm explaining it has gone down, why that should have been expected, and why it's therefore a pretty weak stick to beat him with.

By the way last season championship CAMs (where WhoScored defined their position for that game as CAM contained 255 appearances / 21k mins / 8500 passes) pass completion rate was 78.9%. CM (1043/ 88k/ 43k) was 80.4%, and CDM (669/ 57k/ 30k) it was 81.8%. For short passes only its even more start. CAM (81.1%) < CM (84.4%) < CDM (86.1%). Same order in both cases for median player too.

If you don't get it, that's fine, but I have neither the time nor the crayons to explain it to you