With no real football around, only so much muppetry one can do around the same players (not that it is going to lead to some central mids) and the all-time draft coming to an end, I think we all agree that all need another avenue to use our creative (and googling) resources on. To that end, I thought it would be interesting to improve our knowledge of this great club via a different avenue - increasing our knowledge of the great goals scored in this club's illustrious history. Current participants in this project are billy, teso, syed, Father Ted and myself. Over the coming days (and weeks) and hopefully before the end of July, we will be going over periods/seasons and determine the best goals scored by us in that period/season before finally compiling the all-time list. However, everyone is invited and please do participate (if you want to be an actively participant, mention that on this thread) and if you have anything to say or add, either in terms of goals that we missed or that we are under-rating or over-rating a particular goal, do not hesitate to mention that. And, especially for the newbies on here, please don't be afraid of being shot down.
Qs that need to be answered - How to go about it? Pick a random season (5-year period pre-1980/pre-1950 as one period) and determine the best in that season. Collate and compile the best later would be one suggestion. Criteria to determine the best? Are great team goals superior to great individual strike? Is a goal scored in a cup final superior to a goal scored in league play?
Let assign points on criteria like opposition, build up, piece of magic/flair, finishing, match winner etc etc. Lets make a criteria list first. Like I said Level of Opposition Build up to the goal/Solo Effort, piece of inspiration/magic/flair Finishing Match Winner/Importance Occasion Are mine to start with.
15 points for buildup (individual flair comes in this as well) 20 points for the finish 15 points for the situation (both the match importance and the importance of the goal within the game) so each goal being scored off 50 then?
You should have more points for 'situation'. A beautiful goal that was scored when a game was already basically won cannot compare to a goal that made the difference to winning a trophy IMHO. One of my favourite goals was that scored by Mark Robins at Notts Forest in the FA Cup in 1990. Not an especially beautiful goal, but by God it was important in the history of United. Cantonas winner in Uniteds smash and grab win at Newcastle in 1996, and Machedas goal against Villa always stick with me as well, because of their importance. The latter may have stopped the scousers winning the title ahead of United!
Sure, I can see where you are coming from. I think the finish makes the goal and therefore deserves the most credit but we can change the weighting if that is the consensus view. Would also appreciate if you could actively join in the project
Goals are subjective. Rather than try to quantify each individual goal it would be better to split the goals into a handful of groups and then let everyone decide for themselves. That way we end up with the best goal in categories such as build up play, finish and occasion. It avoids the hassle and problems of assigning numbers. Qualitative > quantitative.
For passion that they inspired, and not just quality of goal, these are some less obvious ones that come to my mind: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HFdIcSuG2E"]YouTube - eric cantona goal vs liverpool‏[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQBv-4mSUj4"]YouTube - Mark Hughes volley v Oldham 1994‏[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brxOzO5mpcM"]YouTube - Man Utd 2-1 Sheffield Wednesday 1992-93‏[/ame]
True Teso but quantitative will allow us to assess different qualitative aspects and allows us a base level to make our decisions.
That's what are trying to achieve here. Let's give every goal a rating between 1 to 10 on each aspect but not an overall score for now. We can determine that later on. Is that acceptable to both of you?
Don't really care about rankings, but if we can get access to videos/clips of old games/goals, that'd be great.
Are you suggesting that we "grade" the goals and then when we've got them, we can just say, yeah, goal x only got a 67 and goal y got a 68 but I think x is better so x is ranked higher?
No. What I am saying is that we rank each goal on different criteria but don't give it an aggregate score yet. So, later on, goal x got a 9 on finishing and 9 on buildup while goal y only got 7s in both but got a 10 for the occasion (cup winner) while goal x only got a 3 (last goal in a 4-0 league win) so we rate goal x to be superior. How we come to this decision will remain un-formalized for now. Let's start with a relatively easy one - first 3 seasons of the premier league 1992-95 We scored 73, 126 eek and 110 eek goals respectively in these three seasons so that's a lot of goals to go through. @ teso, are you good to go as well?
www.google.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992–93_Manchester_United_F.C._season http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993–94_Manchester_United_F.C._season http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994–95_Manchester_United_F.C._season http://www.britishpathe.com/workspace.php?id=4868 and http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com are interesting for older seasons [ame]http://www.amazon.com/Manchester-United-1001-Greatest-Goals/dp/B000KLNQT6[/ame] is also a potential source. Give me a shout here and I will PM links to the usual places (rapidshare/torrent).
Here are a couple of quality youtube channels with a bunch of old goals http://www.youtube.com/user/Sunstroker http://www.youtube.com/user/ziggystardust405
ziggystardust has some quality old goals for sure. Another source is [ame]http://www.amazon.com/Fergies-2000-Goals-Alex-Ferguson/dp/B000WOYSA2/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1309288793&sr=1-1[/ame] Same as before.
Alright boys. Sounds like an idea. Count me in. The timing is much better as well than the greatest team draft which i wanted to be part of. This will have to do. So what is the structure in terms of who evaluates, who proposes the goals, who compiles, etc....? Another questions, when you propose '92 - '95 Cr7, would that be calendar year, or seasonal year? For example, I can see some league goals from the 91/92 season being hotly debated... I'd support the following categories for the ranking... Historical significance to United Passion generated among fans Quality of build-up Quality of finish
Yay! Good questions to sketch out the framework as well. Evaluation - consensus of all active contributors - currently that would be James, Syed, johno, Teso, billy and me (FatherTed is tentative, Umar?) Proposition - open to everyone Compilation - me/all help appreciated Current period - seasons 92/93, 93/94 and 94/95 (prem first three) Agree about 91/92 which is why I thought it would make more sense to tackle it letter once we get a better handle on the process. Aren't historical significance and passion highly linked?
Sounds good on the structure. Not sure about consensus..lol. Might have to be a super majority of 75% or something, especially knowing this board..heh. While i agree passion and historical are linked, that linkage can be varied enough to validate a seperate category. This was my main thinking. While we have games that carry strong fan passion, they are not always strongly linked to the historical significance of that season, or possible cup winner, etc... For example, Rio scoring a winning goal against Liverpool generated a lot of passion among fans for that game, but it's not really that significant historically, given our the season ended for us. Make sense?
Kind of. Is it possible to clearly demarcate what falls in what category? I get that the fact it was against Liverpool puts in under passion but does the fact that Rio's goal was a late match-winner also add value under the historical significance category? The consensus is very loosely defined