For those not familiar with the term, “hockey assist” is popular with Americans when describing the pass-before-the-assist in basketball and soccer. Not to worry, we realize it’s a stupid “stat”. Just fun to use as a talking point, as a way of saying a player was involved. If you say “but it’s dumb!”, when has that ever stopped a fan’s commentary before?
For old timers like me and clan you could scrap 90% of the 'stats' we have now, not just this one. Essentially, this is us...
Pulisic gets £145,000-a-week wages and yes expectations on him to deliver are high, but Frank is viewing the long-term as the lad just turned 21.
Did we ever get a Matt Miazga thread? Still with us, but out on loan. Late drama in the Madejski Stadium where Matt Miazga, fit again following a few weeks troubled by injury, scored in the 97th minute to earn the Berkshire side a 1-0 win against Preston North End. He was subsequently booked for jumping into the stands to celebrate with supporters.
regarding the hockey assist, first off, it's hockey, they have use of it, let them have their own stats. who cares. second, the idea is to recognize a player that breaks lines and defenses to create scoring chances. the perfect example is this regard is the pass from Kova through to pulisic that broke open the chance for tammy that (holy crap watch the replay of yedlin busting back like he knew what would happen) was blocked. in soccer/football this is usually a through pass, and has it's own set of stats, and keeping track of someone that can complete a lot of through balls is HIGHLY useful in this game. take a team like city, if you think they aren't keeping track of the pass before the pass you are crazy. it's a HUGE part of peps game plan. if you can recognize that's its useful to keep track of completed through balls, then you'd understand the concept of the secondary assist, it's just a different perspective of it. in this game, it's widely regarded as through balls being useful for offensive movements, yet, it's not a stat tracked in other sports, so it's not as useful outside of this sport, likewise, for hockey, they deem it important to track secondary assists. in another context it would put an extra value on a long diagonal that sets a winger free to then cut back for a striker to tap in, one pass broke the defense. we just don't talk about it in the same terms.
Oh, I do see where you are coming from mate. I just like to wind a certain plonker up...he's like a starving mouse chasing a piece of cheese when I post things about Yanks/Pulisic...couldn't make it up.. Anyway, to your point, in a serious way. That's a (long) way of looking at it okay, but for the most part managers that are not as cerebral as say a Guardiola or Klopp, somewhat still new to the game in England and still somewhat revolutionizing the game from the keeper on up, those things are without a doubt tracked and tracked every minute of every game. Traditionally, most of the old school lot would simply refer to him as "having made a difference" Now, don't scoff and make light of that, it's actually high praise and will guarantee you more playing time. On one hand, you have a long draft on the "hockey assist "...and on the other you simply say he made something happen.
The thread title is funny, I don't care who you are. I don't post a lot in other teams boards when I follow a yank, because most of our lads have some straight up obnoxious supporters that make the rest of us look bad. I have thoroughly enjoyed the banter about the hockey assist. I don't think stats other than W&L matter much to Frank. I have watched a lot of Pulisic and the few times he played where Lamps put him last time out, he has mostly looked like he did Saturday. Frank said he was a big part of why CFC won. He followed that up with there will be more to come. One of the things about youth is they can be inconsistent. Pulisic, Mount, Odoi, mixed in with in form contract year Willian could be pretty fun to watch. Tammy has been on a tear, but I liked Bats at BVB, and Giroud probably has few goals left in him, so CFC could be pretty good if Rudiger and N'golo can get a healthy run of games. I think Lamps is doing okay so far and seems to adapt pretty well as opposed to some who seem to be married to a particular system. oh and did I say I love the thread title change, I find it funny as f---.
too true, perhaps it is to say there are some that try to give official stat credit to those who "made a difference". but yea, it's overthinking it in a certain way, i agree. we don't need to have those numbers officially reported as long as managers are "seeing" it and know X player has something "special about him" as it were. and to your point, i don't think anyone around here with how much we talk about the game would have a problem with saying something like "kovacic doesn't get a lot of goals or assists but he certainly helped control the second half of that game and provided some critical final third passing" etc. but then again, you would have some numbers to fight with when someone says "kovacic sucks he doesn't score or assist". but i mean, we're the crazy ones, we go on to message boards to literally pick apart the details of a sport. i did it again, i got all wordy.
There is a reason some of us yanks don’t go in there. And stay largely quiet in here. I enjoyed the last bit of discussion immensely!
We could go together? In fact, we could arrange a time and all the local posters here could ALL go over there as a team building exercise perhaps? A jolly boy's outing.