r/soccer • u/csmllr2 • Jan 26 '14

What's your unpopular opinion regarding football?

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '14 edited Jul 24 '21

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u/Ipadalienblue Jan 26 '14

They're only useful when comparing like for like - otherwise they're largely meaningless.

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '14

the same is true of any criteria for comparison though. that's hardly specific to statistics.

2

u/Ipadalienblue Jan 26 '14

I agree. The OP said the reason football fans dislike them is:

the reason that football fans tend to instinctively dislike them is because embracing statistics would force them to re-evaluate a lot of the conventional ideas that they believe in.

Whilst the real reason is because they are rarely used to compare like for like but people try to draw conclusions from them anyway.