Arcticterntalk.org

Football Statistics Can Sometimes Mislead. Brentford 5 Preston 0 is an example 

Each day the papers are full of statistics and some sometimes partially make sense. But if one were to view the statistics from the Brentford 5 Preston 0 game yesterday how many fans would seriously have guessed that score? 

Statistics can never be a substitute for watching a game. The quality of a single save such as Daniel Bentley made when it was 1-0 to Brentford cannot be captured in pure numbers. The statistics fail to measure the two very different halves to the game nor the four very different quarters of the game. 

At Brentford we have mulled over the stats issue now for a few years and mostly we can now agree that football reality is more accurate than football by numbers. 

Even a metric like the number of shots in a game can mislead as shots in the critical part of the game are not weighted more than those in the dying minutes. The same old debate of quality and quantity.