I appreciate your comment but respectfully disagree.
My comment was mainly in response to a contradictory statement which is now becoming a sort of trend that is confusing.
Player X has poor decision making beyond understanding.
Player X is also frustrating to watch.
I also love player X.
How do these statements match with each other? Even from logical perspective it doesnt make any sense.
My question is why is it difficult to put 2 and 2 together and admit people rate him for reasons other than football? My reasons can be debated but i dont believe I'm wrong. By your own admission he is "more chaotic". Can I see some examples of these chaotic number 10's in the world? Other people say he is frustrating. Why are you guys happy with a frustrating number 10? This is what I want to get to the bottom of.
I have also addressed his numbers before. The problem is you guys take these numbers and fail to apply the necessary context.
If I attempt 10 through balls and fail with 8 but 2 reach the intended target should I be praised or critisized? This is literally what Bruno does. You would still register high numbers and expected GA/XA but I say that you should be doing better with possession that you had.
You can be a high volume player but high volume doesnt equal quality.
Also a lot of the other creative stats are boosted by set pieces which Bruno takes a lot of and also high minutes which you didn't account for.
My comment was mainly in response to a contradictory statement which is now becoming a sort of trend that is confusing.
Player X has poor decision making beyond understanding.
Player X is also frustrating to watch.
I also love player X.
How do these statements match with each other? Even from logical perspective it doesnt make any sense.
I can see what you mean there about consistency. But in my view, the problem lies in the observations, not the conclusion. Bruno does not have poor decision making. That he is "frustrating" to watch is just an observer emotion, which really doesn't say very much about the matter at hand. It's a problem of football viewer psychology, not performance.
By your own admission he is "more chaotic". Can I see some examples of these chaotic number 10's in the world? Other people say he is frustrating. Why are you guys happy with a frustrating number 10? This is what I want to get to the bottom of.
What I wrote was that he was more chaotic in his style than Ødegaard. I chose that word because I was trying to describe what I suspect is at the root of your objections, but you could justifiably use other words to describe the same thing just as accurately - "unpredictable", for example. Or "creative". The point is in any case that there is more than one way to arrive at the end product, and it matters more what the end product is than whether you enjoy that particular route to it.
The problem is you guys take these numbers and fail to apply the necessary context.
If I attempt 10 through balls and fail with 8 but 2 reach the intended target should I be praised or critisized? This is literally what Bruno does. You would still register high numbers and expected GA/XA but I say that you should be doing better with possession that you had.
You can be a high volume player but high volume doesnt equal quality.
Also a lot of the other creative stats are boosted by set pieces which Bruno takes a lot of and also high minutes which you didn't account for.
Sorry, but that is not "literally" what Bruno does. If you have anything to back up that he's got a 20% success rate for through balls, please post it. And I don't think you have viable case here. Again, for most of the end product you want from a 10, Bruno is demonstrably among the best in the PL. You don't get high values for that and for xG and XA just by trying a lot, and it is simply not the case that the statistical image of Bruno's end product falls apart if you view it on a /90 basis. He has basically the same xAG as Ødegaard/90. Key passes/90, not as good as KDB, but better than MØ. He offers high volume
and high quality. Which is actually better than low volume and perfect quality. I very much doubt you could account for that overall picture mainly or substantially through set pieces - you can try if you think it's worthwhile. But even if you did, you could point out that contributing through set pieces is actually also a real contribution.
His non-penalty XG/90 is slightly better than de Bruyne's this season, for example.
So, actually, is his pass completion % (74.0 vs 71.7%). Compared to Ødegaard, he attempts roughly two more passes/90 (50.6 to 48.4), and completes roughly one fewer (37.5 to 38.4). This is the difference between a fraud and a brilliant, real #10?
If you look at Dead ball passes/90 compared to KDB and MØ, he doesn't stand out - he's got a few more than MØ (4.00 to 3.53), but he has much fewer than KDB (5.85). It's roughly the same if you look at live passes - a bit more than MØ, considerably fewer than KDB. SCA/90 and GCA/90, KDB is in a class of his own, but Bruno has pretty similar output to MØ. He's a bit behind them on successful take-ons and touches in oppo box, but he actually has fewer miscontrols, and he's dispossessed less often than MØ.
As far as I'm concerned, an attentive and even-handed application of the eye-test produces pretty much the same conclusion as the stats. You simply have a much, much more negative view of what Bruno delivers than the facts warrant.
