Many Arsenal fans have an inadequate understanding of how to evaluate players using these tests.
Their ideas exhibit common flaws. They are the kinds of flaws that older supporters recognize from many, many past failures. It is this history of dead ends which seduced us in the past with flawed evidence.
Here is a list of some of these evidential flaws. I discuss errors in relating evidence to theory and show when mere mistakes, which plague all of us, turn into bullshit.
SUBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT.
When assessing players there are unfortunately times when you must rely on a very subjective performance of a player e.g. YouTube, Internationals, accadamy, poor opponents, reserves etc. Is a player better, faster, younger, older, stronger, playing against good/bad players or worse, whether two players look similar? This element of subjectivity is notorious for introducing unintended and subtle errors in judgment. To eliminate this element as much as possible it is better to measure the effect of a player through statistical analysis. Opta statistics don’t have opinions.
It also better to compare players in pressurised matches and it is better to watch a player again on video than to believe one's eyes.
TIGHTER CONTROLS TURN POSITIVE RESULTS NEGATIVE.
If picking a player for pressurised games turns positive performances into negative ones, this is virtually the death knell for a player. Almost always, this shows that the positive results stemmed from a phenomenon other than the one the manager expected to detect. Future positive performances are viewed suspiciously unless a good explanation for the poor form is forthcoming.
CONTINUING NEGATIVE RESULTS.
Negative performances count more against a player than positive performances count for him. This is especially true if negative performances continue over time as the player is watched, even if they are few in number compared to the positive performances. The reason is simple. If the player is good, then those studying him should eventually reach the point where they can reliably explain how he does what he does and how he fits into the teams’ plan.
NO DIRECT EVIDENCE.
Perhaps the most severe flaw in the judgement of anyone is that all evidence of a player’s talent is very indirect e.g. He plays well in the cup, the reserves, his international team etc. Sometimes this cannot be helped. For example, judgements of previous players, e.g. “Best ever teams” suffer this flaw, since the past can only be observed in the present. Judgements of current performances should give fairly direct answers. Again, if a player is good, those studying him should eventually reach the point where they can reliably explain how he does what he does and how it fits in the teams plan.
NO DEEPENING EVIDENCE.
Judgement should grow and become more detailed as experience increases. This one applies to managers.
In the 1970’s we knew that the future was to play “Total football” like Ajax and Holland, but we had no one who could even explain how they did it, let alone show us how to do it.
The managers we had then had some success which couldn’t be improved on. Now we have a manager who can tell us what happens in great detail and can turn those details into reality.
In the renaissance, De Vinci designed and described how to make a helicopter….it still took 500 years to make one.
PREDICTED PHENOMENA REMAINS SLIPPERY.
This applies to: “The next…” ”The new…” and “The wonder kid” As the player gets older, more evidence and more sound evidence of his quality should appear. If the future predicted for a player remains plagued by evidential flaws as time goes by, then the theory itself becomes very suspect.
POOR INVESTIGATION OF ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS.
Often the results claimed for a novel theory. e.g. “He’s got an addictive habit” “He’s wife is having/has had a baby” are potentially explained by well-founded theories e.g. “He doesn’t like playing on the left wing”. These alternative explanations need to be investigated, and such problems monitored in future games, before making decisions.
REVOLUTION WITHOUT SUPPORT.
These are high profile signings. These become especially suspicious when, in addition to suffering the above flaws, their job can be done equally well by an “ordinary” player i.e. Reyes as Piries’ replacement, Jeffers as the “Fox in the box”, or “The Beast”. If they had worked out, great, but the evidence of their quality was too indirect, too subjective, and too flaky to succeed.
WHERE THE DUCKS ARE.
If it is a bird and it quacks and waddles, there’s no guarantee, but in the absence of any other data, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be that………….It’s a duck.
“WHY A DUCK”? - Marx
All the problems above occur within conventional theoretical and experimental investigation. Whether and how they are resolved help determine which players are accepted and which are rejected.
Arsene Wenger lives on the tension between two poles. Driving him to the exotic is his eagerness to discover new and revolutionary players and tactics. Warning him away from nonsense is a sceptical eye. informed by knowledge of the myriad errors that have misled others in the past. Over the past few years we have looked at Pennant, Bentley, Baptiste and Quincy Owusu Abeyie because of the exciting potential to discover something new. We got rid of these players because the evidence did not pan out.
The attraction of new and exotic players is very strong, and its lure is so bright that it sometimes causes people to lose their critical sense. Some people, unfortunately, never develop a critical sense. Those who have lost or never developed a critical sense create and join groups, which meet in places called pubs, blogs, forums and sports radio, where stupidity is born from weak theories and mistaken notions. These places are full of the kinds of rationalizations that people use to justify their views when nothing else is available. There are far too many of these to list, but some of the more colourful signposts are listed below.
"PARADIGM" TALK.
"Paradigm shift" is perhaps the most abused phrase in these discussions. Remember they used it when we won the “Fever pitch” game and again after the second double.
In fairness, it is mostly used by Spurs fans. A couple of years ago, after nine years of consecutive defeats, Spurs 1st team beat our reserves in the Carling youth cup. The next morning TalkSport’s switchboard was jammed with calls announcing a "Paradigm shift" in the power of London football. Whenever a proponent of a controversial claim counters criticisms of the evidence by reference to a "paradigm shift," it is time to put on your bullshit detector. This phrase has almost no useful meaning. If it is used by someone defending a controversial claim, it is virtually guaranteed that the argument is bollocks. E.g. Spurs have won a place in the Champions league, not a qualifying match
THE WORD "FOOTBALL" USED NARROWLY.
A Sunday footballer will often insist that his ideas have evidence, just not the kind accepted by professional clubs. Expressions like “We need to get stuck in” and “We need more English players”.
The problem with this is that football is no more and no less than sum total of what we have learned about evaluating players and teams. With regard to general empirical claims, asserting that there is no football evidence is the same as asserting that there is no good evidence. These people want to find some room in between, but they cannot explain why we should accept the kind of evidence in their case that has proven so bad in the past. Very often these people want to get rid of the manager.
MISCHARACTERIZATION OF THE STATE OF THE ART.
Some fans often distort their description of the game in order to make their favoured notions seem more equal in comparison. This comes from watching too many after match interviews on TV.
After a match has been lost, it is the duty of the manager to give a positive spin on his team’s performance. This is bullshit and should be accepted as such. He knows he’s doing it, that’s what he’s paid for.
CARTS BEFORE HORSES.
Poor judges of footballers are full of excuses for why they have such meager evidence for their beliefs, these range from "He’s younger than the other players" “I think he thinks that……” to "The manager doesn’t like him."
These excuses would not be needed if there were good evidence for the performances in question. The fact that these excuses are offered is almost an admission that the person believes despite a lack of good evidence. If it were otherwise, they would focus on the evidence and argue for their view because the evidence is so good, rather than excusing the lack of evidence because of these other factors.
"MILLIONS OF CHINESE CANNOT BE WRONG."
This excuse usually comes in the defense of notions resurrected from older times, e.g. “Don’t sign small players“and “You won’t win anything with kids”.
In some sense, it falls under the "big lie" tradition. In a few minutes, anyone with a modicum of knowledge should be able to think of several cases of managers, players, coaches, fans, reporters, kings, presidents, generals and millions of personal decisions that were wrong. The fact is that Arsenal have learned a lot about how to evaluate performances in the last 120 years and that this gives us a significant advantage over other clubs.
MARGINAL RESULTS.
When faced with marginal performances, some managers will attempt to refine a player until stronger and more consistent results are found. When a coach spends an inordinately large amount of time interpreting and reinterpreting old performances, or new data from the same setup, and relatively little time attempting to get better performances, the results are suspect and so then is the manager.
MISESTIMATION OF EFFECTS.
Poor judges frequently overestimate the effects new players will have on the team. While they may speak about grandiose effects, they frequently underestimate the realistic effects. Examples are midfield generals, sweepers and 50 goal a season strikers, which would cause a revolution in football if true. Yet they seldom grapple with the idea of these effects.
FOOTBALL AS AN INSTITUTION.
Pundits, fans and reporters, when they discuss football, currently view it as "that which football people do." Although this definition is possibly useful for what they are trying to describe, when it is used, as in “That’s what football’s all about” trouble starts. The conflation of meanings leads to the notion that all those things which any footballer or manager does is logical.
DEFENSIVENESS.
It is a common human tendency to take criticism of one's opinions personally and respond defensively. You must constantly be aware of this tendency and suppress it, because unchecked defensiveness is the death of logical inquiry. When someone consistently interprets criticism of his or her theories, hypotheses, or opinion as personal insults, they become suspect. They fall into the trap of considering it a personal conflict and naturally resist the kind of criticism that is absolutely necessary to test their hypotheses.
"IT WAS ONLY TO GET YOU TO THINK"
One common tactic of crackpots is to dismiss disproofs of their claims with the excuse that the claim was not intended seriously, but was meant only to get their opponents to think, to argue properly, or some similar meta-reason. Until the crackpot gives this excuse you might have thought you were having a serious conversation.
EVIDENTIAL FLAWS IN TRANSFER GOSSIP.
In the foreground of controversies regarding teams and players are the various TV reports, Talksport, newspapers, web sites, blogs, blokes down the pub, Bentners’s hairdresser, etc. A lot of people read and listen to all such reports as if they were all coming from the same place. The internet is clogged up with information that has originated from: Buying clubs, selling clubs, players, agents or peoples imaginations.
Information from Arsenal is always for a reason. Usually to unsettle a player, to reduce his price, or to throw other clubs off the scent. The best intelligence is always from the selling club, boasting or complaining about how much Arsenal have offered or paid.
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