This should go in the "2013 Quakes related press thread" but didnt see one created yet: http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2013/01/06/klinsmann-reveals-25-man-roster-usmnt-january-camp Congratulations to these three, rewarded for their great play in 2012. I hope they can break into the first team and get some play time! Go Quakes and Go USA!
Draft priorities: http://www.mlssoccer.com/superdraft...jose-superdraft-preview-depth-question-quakes
mangerson, Thanks for the article. I think that's a pretty good analysis of our depth and needs. I am sooooooo looking forward to this season! GO QUAKES!!! - Mark
There is an insulting article by Devin Pleuler on MLSsoccer.com today about "Luck" vs "Skill" - and they chose, of course, to use a picture of Wondo in the body of the article. http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...winger-can-luck-and-skill-be-separated-soccer On Facebook, they posted a link to this article and had a different picture of Wondo. The insinuation is, of course, Wondo's success is speculative, that you can't say whether it's skill or luck - and same goes for the Quakes as a whole. While the author does concede the whole issue is really a wash, the way this article was presented is an insult to Wondo and our team. I'm sick of the writing off of the Quakes and Wondo as lucky and jokes who don't deserve nor did they earn their wins. Sick, and pissed off. I guess those guys need something to work on in the off season...
You're right. It's another jerk trying to explain away our amazing season. Tell you what, over a 34 game season, we scored way more goals than any other team. We won more games. We racked up more points. We had more come from behind wins and ties. We scored more late goals than any other team. Guess what? When viewed over a whole season, that's not luck. That's strategy, skill, and preparation. Our guys were more fit than many of our opponents. We wore them down, we wore them out, and we crushed them at the end. It's a 90+ minute game, and some teams were not prepared to go the full 90+ this past season. Drink it. Dude is a turd fondler, and an apologist for the dark side. GO QUAKES!!! - Mark
To be fair here, how much choice in the photo presented do you all think the author had? Anyone who knows something about the press knows the article author and the headline creater are always two different people who probably never converse on a regular bases. I'd bet the same goes for the person who choses the images that are presented with the article. I assert the turd fondler who chose the image is probably not the author.
Wow, that is a horrendously tortured analysis. So some measure of the quality of the shots taken and yielded ("Expected PDO") indicates skill level, according to the hypothesis, and the result is that there's really very little variance in the league (all teams have about the same level of skill), and the most skilled teams in the league last year were, (wait for it....), the Colorado Rapids and FC Dallas? And yet he concludes that "Expected PDO should be a relatively good indicator of team skill (and it is)." And then this: "And this made me realize just how difficult it is to quantitatively separate skill from luck. In a sense, skill could merely be the ability to get lucky consistently – and we would never be able to tell the difference in this context. At what point does luck become skill? If you "over-preform" for many consecutive games, are you really over-performing? Has your skill level temporarily changed?" He could save himself the trouble and just figure that when the sample size is large enough (e.g. a 34 game regular season), "luck" tends to even out, and the teams with the best results are the most skilled / best teams. There, done.
I believe the author was quite "lucky" that someone unskillfully gave him the space to write that piece.
I think your being unfair. Wondo is by far the biggest influence on positive PDO on the team at the top of the PDO chart. Hes going to be a natural choice. I think they analysis is lazy though, as he really doesnt address the fact that in the Eridivisie, PDO stabalizes at a range, not a point of 1000. Additionally, the graphs they are using are quartiles with the top and bottom teams removed, meaning that there is a significant amount of further averaging going on further reducing outliers and narrowing the range. And he never seems to ask himself if good finishing and good goalkeeping can exist. He seems to be operating on the assumption that all finishing and goalkeeping is equal, just the quality of opportunity is different. Anyways, the questions he is asking are interesting, but its mostly a piece with half formed thoughts and not much real reflection.
Yeah, he was attempting to measure "luck" by the difference between "expected PDO" and "real PDO". He measured "expected PDO" by looking at the quality of the chance of the shots taken and absorbed. IOW if a team had a relative lack of quality chances and absorbed a high number of quality shots, you'd expect their PDO to be low. If it was actually significantly higher than expected, his hypothesis is that the delta is due to "luck". But you're right in that he didn't consider that the delta could actually just be about the quality of finishing or goalkeeping. In fact, in the end, he seemed to not know whether to attribute the delta to luck or skill. But he never discussed finishing or goalkeeping as a skill. He only accounted for "skill" as the frequency with which good chances are created. It's actually both those things - the ability to create or prevent good chances, and the ability to finish or save shots. And he should see from his "expected PDO" that it doesn't really track well with results. Colorado and FC Dallas were the top "expected PDO" teams.
The tough thing is that maybe Colorado and FC Dallas were unlucky. So the question of "Skill or Luck" is a valid question. Expected PDO is actually a great start on trying to get a sense, it eliminates one variable, quality of chance, a skill. The next question is quality of finishing. Thats a tough one, because I think its the one most sensitive to the luck factor. This leads to the next article, which should really be looking at individual players between seasons, and see how much expected finishing/save rates and actual finishing/save rates fluctuate between given seasons. This should give you a baseline in which you can can assess the confidence level in a teams PDO and try to seperate the amount of luck. Its a difficult question, and I dont blame him for struggling with it, I just think hes quitting early and not thinking deeply enough about it.
I will go back to my original point regarding this article. I claim that 34 games is enough of a sample size that luck should no longer be a significant factor. 5 games, sure, 34 games, not so much. That's the reason that I don't think we can say that Colorado and FC Dallas were just "unlucky" last season. They played enough games for "luck" to even out. They just weren't very good. If you flip a coin 20 times, and you are trying to get tails, and you get 16 out of 20, there's a good chance that you are just lucky. If you flip it 200 times, and you got 160 tails, there may be something going on there besides just luck. Assuming the coin is perfectly unbiased, the "flipper" probably has some skill or technique to be able to increase the chance of getting tails. Same goes for "is it good finishing or is it luck"? Does anyone still think that Wondo's goal scoring proficiency is due to luck? Even Alexi Lalas doesn't believe that anymore. Not just finishing, but the whole package - reading the game, getting in the right positions, work rate, finishing, etc. There is enough of a sample size that there is no way in heck that it is not skill.
Well it takes 40 games for each quartile in the eridivisie to stabilize, and for 4 teams combined thats a 160 game sample. So its not entirely clear if 34 games is enough. It may be. It may not be. Thats why you need to do the individual analysis to find out what the variation is. Its one thing to say "I think its enough based on my intuition", another to quantify it statistically.
Well it is certainly a question to be asked, and it wasn't asked in the article. He was simply lost and confused as to whether it was "skill or luck", and as you said, failed to even bring up the notion of "skilled finishing" or "skilled goalkeeping", which is, you know, kind of important. Besides, as he pointed out, the PDO scores tend to regress toward the mean of 1000 as the season wears on, and if that's true, and you see a team with an unusually high PDO early in the season, that is a "very good proxy for luck". So if he is postulating that PDO is regressing towards the mean by the end of the season, he is essentially saying that "luck evens out by the end of the season". If that's the case, why re-introduce luck as a potential factor in the end of the season "expected PDO" numbers? Those arguments don't hold together. His whole premise is based on this notion that there's skill involved in getting good chances or preventing good chances, and from then on it's all luck.
For Wondo, the sample size is far greater than 34 games. He has led the league in goal scoring three years in a row. In fact, his goal-scoring proficiency over a three year span is greater than any other player in MLS history.
Ah, but is Wondo's finishing percentage constant? In 2010 he scored 18 goals on 36 shots on goal and 68 shots. In 2011 he scored 16 goals on 52 shots on goal and 109 shots. In 2012 he scored 27 goals on 55 shots on goal and 127 shots. Goals per shots thats: .2647 .1467 .2125 Goals per shot on goal thats: .5000 .3076 .4909 His 3 year average is: 20.33 goals 46.67 shots on goal 101.33 shots .4356 G/SOG .2006 G/Sh There seems to be significant fluxuation from year to year. But thats the simple stats, and it doesnt take into account how his team was setting him up. If we had his expected goals, based on the quality of chances, we could infer how much variation there is in terms of his actual finishing ability. If the variation we see is almost exclusively due to the types of chances he is getting, then perhaps finishing is more of a constant. But if the uqliaty of chances (if not quantity of chances) is relatively constant between years, then we could say that finishing skill is subject to a good deal of luck (though by league standards even Wondo in his worst year is probably very good). So the question isnt "Is Wondo a good finisher", he is undoubtedly far better then league average. The question is: "how much is Wondo's finishing rate subject to luck?" I wont defend that portion of his logic, but I dont think its due to any agenda, I think its just a matter of him trying to struggle with the implications of what he is chewing on, and not really doing a good job of it.
Dont be an insecure fan who gets their knickers in a twist at the mere suggestion that Wondo might ever be the beneficiary of good luck . And consider this if it makes you feel a little less insecure: the implication of quantifying luck may be that 2011 was actually an incredibly unlucky year for Wondo, and that it represents the absolute worst case scenario for him.
Wondo was the beneficiary of good luck when he finally got the chance to play regularly in MLS and thereby to prove he's the league's most talented striker.