Kuyt scores more often than Crouch - FACT!

[Nic83]

I would be interested to see how Crouches ratios are affected by taking out his first 18 games. I know it is controversial but I think the fact he took a while to settle skews those stats a bit. It is reasonable to assume that after that is the most representative of what he would do in the future.

that's a very good point; if you took out his settling in period than his recore for us would speak volumes. I myself though don't need stats to convince me of how beneficial Croucy is for us. i think he is a vital cog in the machine and have ben banging on for ages about the fact that i think Crouch and Torrers together would be phenomenal

[JohnDoe]

Too many people are calling for wholesale changes when a good centre back to cover for Agger when he was injured and a left back superior to Riise would have given us a few more points this season, and probably take us to the top of the table.

Our problems are in our build up play, not up front, stop being Newcastle fans who ask for a world class striker every transfer window.

[dww]

Mate, as I said I am no big stats fan, but why would you want to exclude those 18 first games?

If Kuyt took 18 games before he scored his first goal people would be calling for his head.

And remember Crouch was the one who had played in this league before and should needed less time than Kuyt to settle.

Crouch is in and out of the team, which makes it hard to get going, yes true. Kuyt on the other hand is told to work further back on the pitch, hampering his scoring chances but helping the team.

Kuyt has looked out of sorts lately, true. Crouch looked out of sorts earlier in this season imo. Form goes up and down. My post is not about who is the best choice up front at present time, just a look at their careers at LFC so far.

You see, I am no massive fan of any of the two, but I think there is some quite unfair favoritism going on here. Although your posts are usually balanced and reasonable, I think your suggestion of removing the 18 first games from the stats is another example of that.

I agree about there being bias by some on the forum, and I have defended Kuyt in the past and to some degree still do, but the fact is that a settling in period is in large part irrelevant to the future danger in front of goal. I think that it is fair to say that he has improved as a player with us and it is fair that we use comparisons that take this into account.

And you can't start a thread deliberately focusing on goal scoring and then use the argument about working hard. I know you were just using it to make a point but I think it is worth allowing separate discussions as there are worth while points to be made.

If we want to make a useful comparison having both the LFC career stats and using a moving previous 12 month window to compare players.

However overall I think individual stats are too often misleading and the criteria should really be points gained and goals scored by the team when the two players play. Although even that will be easily biased by the teams which the players play against.

FWIW I think that Crouch went down in form and seemed to loose the desire to improve towards the end of last season and I tend to believe that Rafa has handled him very well with him coming back into the team now looking very motivated. I however think that persevering with the Kuyt/Voronin partnership was a mistake which did no favours to either of them.

[jonesie]

I wouldn't have said that Kuyt had scored more than Crouch, so that is interesting. I did read last week that Kuyt has got exactly the same goalscoring record - same games played, same goals scored - as Berbatov since both arrived in England, and seeing as certain sections of the media seem to hold him up as some sort of moody Bulgarian ballet dancer footballing genius thats worth considering.

Personally I like Dirk.

[Craig_H]

Right now, yes, I agree.

Throughout his LFC carrer though, is he?
The numbers state otherwise.

His numbers include an 18 game streak without a goal - something which has about 0.01% chance of happening again.

[The Glove]

I think its interesting how people pick and choose when stats are relevant.

[dww]

I think its interesting how people pick and choose when stats are relevant.

I'm not sure that the problem isn't that stats are used without context or the equally important spread metrics. A statistic without context is usually meaningless and without a measure of it's reliability or reflectiveness of the picture over a spread of the independent variable under consideration (usually time or some proxy such as games played).

[donpisci]

I think its interesting how people pick and choose when stats are relevant.

I know- 'let's disregard all of the games Crouch didn't score in....'

18 game settling in period? Thats half the season- he only moved up north!

Kuyt had to change countries/ leagues and it didn't take him that long!

Let's be fair though, when they are both playing well they are very valuable assets to the team.

Early in the season though, Crouch did absolutely nothing to warrant being picked regularly when he got his chance. It was only when he came on against Arsenal that he started playing well.

[Craig_H]

I know- 'let's disregard all of the games Crouch didn't score in....'

18 game settling in period? Thats half the season- he only moved up north!

Kuyt had to change countries/ leagues and it didn't take him that long!

Let's be fair though, when they are both playing well they are very valuable assets to the team.

Early in the season though, Crouch did absolutely nothing to warrant being picked regularly when he got his chance. It was only when he came on against Arsenal that he started playing well.

It's not being disregarded as such, but it's not going to happen again, so it's highly meaningless in the context of the here and now.

[dww]

I know- 'let's disregard all of the games Crouch didn't score in....'

18 game settling in period? Thats half the season- he only moved up north!

Kuyt had to change countries/ leagues and it didn't take him that long!

Let's be fair though, when they are both playing well they are very valuable assets to the team.

Early in the season though, Crouch did absolutely nothing to warrant being picked regularly when he got his chance. It was only when he came on against Arsenal that he started playing well.

The thing about the settling in period is that it is relevant as he moved from a **** box side to a top four side, against whom teams defend much more conscientiously. He also improved as a player and scored more regularly.

In this case it is a reason to use more than one way (or possibly a spread metric) to analyse whether the overall scoring record is reflective of their ability/goal threat now. I content that the 18 game run biases the overall result in a way that is not relevant to the way you would expect their scoring records to continue in the future, which is presumably the thing we want to look at in the end. I'm yet to see a reasonable refutation of this from anyone.

[Nic83]

I think its interesting how people pick and choose when stats are relevant.

Very true, we don't need stats to see who the better player is between Crouch and Marathon man.

[Nic83]

I know- 'let's disregard all of the games Crouch didn't score in....'
18 game settling in period? Thats half the season- he only moved up north!

Kuyt had to change countries/ leagues and it didn't take him that long!

Let's be fair though, when they are both playing well they are very valuable assets to the team.

Early in the season though, Crouch did absolutely nothing to warrant being picked regularly when he got his chance. It was only when he came on against Arsenal that he started playing well.

I think ur missing the point fella.

[Jayesh87]

Bring back Djibsy

He is a goalscoring machine

[Nic83]

I'd never have let him go.

[Jayesh87]

OK, so lets defuse a bit of a myth here, namely that Crouch scores more goals than Kuyt.

I am no huge stats fan, but it seems some are.


Here are their stats for their LFC career in total, all competitions:

Kuyt

Games Sub Goals
62 (13) 19
A goal every 3.26 games.

Crouch

Games Sub Goals
111 (31) 34

A goal every 3.26 games.

Evens!

Ah... but I am taaaalking about the Premiership mate...that is what maaaatters!

OK!

Kuyt

Games Sub Goals
44 (9) 14
A goal every 3.14 games.

Crouch

Games Sub Goals
70 (22) 17

A goal every 4.12 games.


Ahhhh.. but that donkey Kuyt taaakes Penos, laaaa! It's not faaaaair!

OK!

Kuyt
Taken two, scored both.

Crouch
Taken one, missed.

(excluding goals in shoot outs)

Kuyt games pr goal -minus the 2 penalties : 3.67 to Crouch's 4.12


Ahh... but maaaate! Crouch has so many more assists!!


We were talking about goals....so spin on this



But if you must know....
(According to ESPN one of the few to post assists, all other stats from BBC)

Kuyt PL assists
44 games 5 assists

One assist every 8,8 games.

Crouch PL assists
70 games 14 assists

One assist every 5 games.

Yup, Crouch assists goals more often than Kuyt.
Well played Peter.

But we were talking about goals...

If you want to bring assists into the equation, even if this is about goals, fair enough. I also think that one should look behind mere numbers and look at the total contribution a player makes. Yes, even if they are strikers, because it doesn't matter who scores as long as the team wins, striker or not. But a strikers job is to score goals? Yes, but not just that!

When we start talking about all around contribution to our team play and wins, this also means you have to consider more than who was the second last on the ball (assists). A key pass is important, but so is the tackle that won us the ball in our own half and the decoy run made by another player to create the opening.

The reason I used numbers here is that often there is no other way to get a lot of people accept that you might have a point.
However, as I said before, we should look behind the numbers, but then the English were always quite commercial and enjoy counting their shillings...

I think tou'll find that if you did it by mins on the pitch, Crouch would have a better record