Lies, damned lies, statistics, and Chris Tierney

His free kicks/corners were not very good in this game -- and it's ironic, because even his detractors usually concede that's the one thing he's good at. He needs to do better on free kicks, and I'd like someone else to take the corners.

I'll give you that. That's the one instance I can recall where he had a decent share of the blame.

Most of the goals we've given up I can think of specific failures by (usually) McCarthy or Reis, and it's hard for me to see how Tierney can be blamed in any way because of deficiencies in his positioning, marking, or communication. I'm happy to look at a counterexample, if anyone can find one. He hasn't conceded a ton of crosses, either -- a couple, certainly, but not as many as you might expect, given his lack of speed.

The interesting thing to me is that game after game, he's getting far more touches than anyone, which says to me other teams see him as the weak leak and are going after him. But he's not leaking goals.

But a free kick/corner is a successful pass if it fins its target. I went back through the stats, and every time the free kick went to a Rev, it counted as a successful pass. Only the really atrocious free kicks were counted as unsuccessful passes (and there were many).

I disagree, a good team should only have 5-10 clearances a game, TOTAL. Tierney regularly has 15+ clearances a game. And you're right, teams DO attack down that side. Why? Because Tierney is a worse defender than Alston, and they know that if they kick a long ball to Tierney, he'll head it right back to them. This is exactly what happened on the last Houston goal.

People are getting confused between clearances and launched balls. Clearances as defined by OPTA

are a defensive action where a player kicks the ball away from his own goal with no intended recipient of the ball.

Launched balls are

a long high ball into space or into an area for players to chase or challenge for the ball.

So a clearance would be a defensive play without having possession. Heading away or kicking away a cross or through ball would be a clearance. A launched ball counts as a pass as the player has possession and is either trying to play a long pass or simply playing the ball away to relieve pressure.

Tierney plays a huge number of launched balls compared to any player I've seen, but has the fewest clearances of any defender on NE. Soares, as you would expect, leads the team with 7.3 clearances a game.

Well he also gets caught up field and then can't recover when we lose the ball because he's too slow, and is not the hardest defender to beat 1 v. 1 as well. He has way too many deficiencies to justify being a starter just because his crosses and free kicks are sometimes good.