#25 - Thomas Müller

rwo power wrote:

free_cat wrote:However I think him being number one in this ranking is down to luck, he is not THAT good.

The ranking doesn't look at any skills of a player - it is just a statistic that looks at how good a team does (measured in the goal difference that is achieved) while a particular player is on the pitch, so it is not any subjective rating.

@Valkyrja
GoalImpact doesn't look at the amount of goals a particular player scores, but it looks at how successful his team is while he is on the pitch.

I know, but you can also be higher or lower in that ranking down to luck. Ie: Messi is almost always played, so his impact ranking will basically be that of Barça's. On the other hand, Muller is rotated more, if when he is subbed or rotated Bayern concedes some unlucky goals, his Impact ranking rockets.

Low level statistic that creates delusion more than anything. Best players usually play hardest games, so comparing what team does against low level opposition without him is absolutely pointless.

@Harmonica
Interestingly, the GI people seem to sell their info to football clubs to help their scouting, so it seems to be more relevant than it appears at first sight.

Moreover, if your assumption would be valid, then the best players wouldn't reach any high GIs in the first place as compared to other players who only play against scrubs. Still the best players do have high GI values, so it can't be all wrong.

By the way, here they try to explain a bit about how the GI for a particular player and that they take some factors like opposition etc into account: http://www.goalimpact.com/2015/05/how-good-is-red-bulls-stefan-ilsanker.html

Correlation =! causality. I'm sorry, but that's pretty basic knowledge.

Still the data shows trends, even if it is just a correlation.

I'm not saying this ranking is broken. It's obvious that if a team wins more with a player, the player is doing the team some good. I'm just saying that as anything, it has flaws that are difficult to filter, like Muller being top.

On the other hand, when Müller isn't playing, it often seems to be detrimental to his team, no matter what exactly he does on the pitch, so it can very well be that he just has an over-proportional impact - and that's what the numbers say. It's totally not about how good he actually is - it is just that he seems to be really important for his teams for some reason.

Let's point out another flaw this system has: it is also mesuring the difference in quality between a player and his replacement when he is not playing. For instance, if Muller is not playing, considering both Ribery and Robben were out this season and Gotze ostracized, probably some scrub is playing in his place, diminishing the level of the team a lot.

Well, considering that Bayern have quite some top players that come in as replacement for Müller, if he is not playing, you can't really use that as argument IMO.

I checked 2014/15, and there Müller played / was subbed:
14 x no sub (12win/2draw), 2 x bench (1win/1loss), 1 x Benatia (1win), 2 x Pizarro (1win/1draw), 1 x Rode (1win), 2 x Schweinsteiger (2win), 2 x Robben (1win/1loss), 2 x Götze (1win/1loss), 1 x Lewandowski (1draw), 2 x Weiser (2win), 1 x Gaudino (1win), 2 x Alonso (1win/1loss), 1 x Thiago (1win), 1 x Rafinha (1loss)

So you can't really say that Bayern do worse when Müller is replaced by "scrubs" like Weiser or Gaudino - interestingly the losses coincided with Alonso, Robben and Götze as subs for Müller. (Okay, Rafinha is not exactly a world beater and him as sub for Müller coincided with a loss, too.)

@El Gunner

Did you read up what the GoalImpact is about?

is this like the +/- in nba?

Stats are generally rubbish in football (unless I use them to make a point). Easy example. According to that table Lewandowski is ranked 7th overall and 2nd (behind Müller) for Bayern. But where was Lewandowski when Bayern won the treble just 2 seasons ago? Still at Dortmund. Or where was he even in 13/14 when Bayern walked Bundesliga and won it in record time? Still at Dortmund. So what does it really mean that Lewandowski is suddenly, statistically, Bayern's 2nd highest "goal impact" player?

terrance511 wrote:is this like the +/- in nba?

Which is one of the most useless stats going tbh

futbol wrote:Stats are generally rubbish in football (unless I use them to make a point). Easy example. According to that table Lewandowski is ranked 7th overall and 2nd (behind Müller) for Bayern. But where was Lewandowski when Bayern won the treble just 2 seasons ago? Still at Dortmund. Or where was he even in 13/14 when Bayern walked Bundesliga and won it in record time? Still at Dortmund. So what does it really mean that Lewandowski is suddenly, statistically, Bayern's 2nd highest "goal impact" player?

No, it means that Robert Lewandowski is a player who has a great impact on the goal difference of the team he plays in. While he was at Dortmund, he was already important for Dortmund, too, which you can see at the development of his overall curve here: http://www.ligainsider.de/robert-lewandowski_366/

Here's where GI explain how you have to read their diagrams: http://www.goalimpact.com/2015/04/how-to-read-goalimpact-chart.html

BTW, you might want to read this, too: http://www.goalimpact.com/p/faq.html

Some players aren't looking for fancy stuff like skill moves. They can't be marked, bullied or kept quiet. Some player just want to watch there team won.

Thomas Müller just manages to stand in the way of the ball so that it bounces off him and lands in the goal. GOAT

inimitable Müller

As one fine poster stated previously ' when God created Space Muller was already there'.

Hapless_Hans wrote:inimitable Müller

you really need do work on your embedding skills mate

nothing wrong with it on my end

"Hey It's me... Another me! HAHA! I'm such a comedian!" )

Müller is now the youngest player ever to achieve 50 Champions League game wins.



Clearly though someone at the Daily Mail should have turned off the automatic thesaurus check before exporting the document.

Thomas Müller