The Only Football Statistic That Matters Is Goals

Like Butch Cassidy said, ‘Boy, I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals’.

I write a blog post pointing out that passing statistics in football are nothing to get excited about, and a few people see fit to argue. Maybe that’s because they couldn’t be bothered to read the whole blog post properly, or they don’t have the required attention span, or perhaps they just can’t help arguing with things.

To reiterate: nobody wins a football match because of the number of passes they make. In the same way, nobody wins because of the number of corners, nor the numbers of tackles, shots on target, shots off target, saves, interceptions, free-kicks, long balls, bookings, sendings-off or times the manager folds and unfolds his arms. Some of these things have a correlation with results; you can see trends and averages, but you can see trends and averages…

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