Not much writing going on in here, is there? It's because I've just moved, and the house could euphemistically be described as a work in progress. Also it took me a while to get broadband back on.
I did want to say a few words about Wayne Rooney though. I think he's one of our most underrated players. Now you might think that an odd thing to say about a striker who gets so much praise, especially in recent months. And there's no denying he was shit in the Wales game.
But he's only got those plaudits because he's been in the goals for club and country. It was a different story last season. Do you remember his goal drought? The one that came to a dramatic end with that overhead kick? All the talking heads were saying he was a busted flush.
Which completely misses the point of Rooney, as I will demonstrate through the judicious application of simple probability theory. Yes I can. I can apply any method I want. Now shut up and listen while I explain.
How many passes does it take to score a goal? Sometimes one, as Notts County found out last week when the Preston goalie's clearance took a high bounce over his opposite number and went straight in (Preston 2 - 0 Notts County). That's rare, but goals from two passes are rather more common. You know the kind of thing, a harmless long ball falls fortuitously to a striker, maybe a German striker, after a defender, let's pretend he's called John Terry, completely and incomprehensibly misjudges the flight, and suddenly they're flying home from Johannesburg. Or somewhere.
In fact a goal can take any number of passes. Sometimes it takes more than twenty, as the midfield knock it back and forth until it pings in off an Arsenal shoulder while someone breaks Jack Wilshere's leg. Let's assume it takes an average of five. If two of those are lateral, waiting passes, then the total number of progressive passes in the average move would be three.
For a pass to be a useful contribution to a move, the player has to have the vision to see the ball that needs to be played, and the technical skill to play it. Let's assume (again) that a high end Premiership player manages both those things nine times out of ten for lateral passes, and seven times out of ten for progressive ones.
Then you've got the final shot (or header). Our third assumption in a frankly rather assumptive exercise is that a goal comes from a decent chance one time in five. This gives us a total probability of scoring for the average move.
P (goal) = 9/10 x 9/10 x 7/10 x 7/10 x 7/10 x 1/5 = 1/17.99
In other words, for every 18 forward moves started, one goal is scored.
Let's apply this to Man United, who could reasonably described as a team made up entirely of high end Premiership players. If United manage to start an forward move every three minutes (which may not seem that much, but there's a lot of dicking about in football), then that's thirty two such moves each game, if you allow for injury time. That should give them 1.67 goals per game, making just over 63 goals a season.
Notice how many factors this model ignores. No failed passes bounce back off the defender to an attacker. No poor passes accidentally find the striker a midfielder couldn't even see from his position. No perfectly fine goals are chalked off for offside. It is, shall we say, a thought experiment.
But thought experiments have a point, which is to clarify a previously obscure aspect of the real world - in this case the probabilistic impact of Wayne Rooney. For Rooney bucks the odds, or more precisely changes them.
If England or Man United are on telly, it can be very instructive to just watch him. He's easy enough to pick out. I don't know if he hoped the hair graft would help him blend in more, but it hasn't.
His success rate on effective passes is much higher, I reckon more like eight out of ten. This gives us a new total probability.
P(goal, Rooney assist) = 9/10 x 9/10 x 7/10 x 8/10 x 1/5 = 1/15.75
Or one goal in every 16 attacks where Rooney plays an important role. This is fairly much every move when he's on the pitch. Man United now have an expected average of 2.03 goals per game, or 77.22 per season.
This is so close to last year's total of 78 goals the academic fraud committee has probably taken an interest in my paper by now. It's almost as if I'd tweaked the figures to give me the result I wanted. 78 goals was enough to win United the league. 63 goals would have left them third, bearing in mind that they let in four more than Man City.
So that's what Rooney gives you. An extra fifteen goals a season, even when he's not scoring many himself. Also, his effective passes are that much more effective than everyone else's, so you might only need an average of say 2.5, his shots and headers go in more than most people's and his constant harrying of the other side when they're on the ball cuts down the number of moves they can start, but these factors simply embellish his already compelling case to be considered the primary difference maker in English football.
The last two internationals (Bulgaria and Wales) have both showed his importance as well. Against Bulgaria he was on fire, and so were England. Against Wales he was shit - and so were England. Case made, I think. No it wasn't that groundbreaking. I don't make the facts. I'm not just some contrarian you know.
While I'm here, can I bring your attention to the friendly of the year? Tonight, between Juventus and Notts County. Juventus game impossible to turn down, said the BBC, and you can see why.
There's history there, of course. In 1897 County were a top team, and Juve were just being founded by students in Turin. They copied County's black and white strip in the hope they might do as well one day. After a tolerably successful first century (give or take the odd game fixing scandal), they've built a new stadium, and they've invited their old idols to drop by. A mismatch as striking as England v Wales, you might think, but then that wasn't quite the walkover we were expecting was it?
