Ilkay Gundogan - 2019/20 Performances

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Neville Kneville said:
He tends to be inconsistent with that kind of contibution imo, is one reason I'm not keen on him. He has been more dynamic in that in recent games & is then much less of a handicap & his positive attributes come through better. He was very active, getting the ball back, v Everton.

But I've realised one aspect of his play which really pisses me off, it's been itching at me for a long time, why do my expectations kind of sink, when he gets the ball halfway ?

Well I've sussed, it's his method of often receiving the ball, on the half turn, but his 'half turn' is facing more backwards than forward, so his best, safest option, is almost always a backward pass. To make the forward pass, he sometimes has to do a little half turn thing or take more of a risk, because unlike true World Class players, he does not have a picture of what's behind him. Sometimes, it's space, but he hasn't noticed.

So when he receives the ball, already facing more forward, he is a far far better, more creative player in any area of the pitch. And he is more alert to recovering the ball, going forward, rather than coming back.

When Pep is micro managing players such as Sterling, on that particular aspect, I don't understand why he allows it with Gundogan unless he thinks he's past learning.

Rodri, sets a shining example by comparison, constantly finding forward passes when a backward one would be easy, but rarely losing the ball.
Click to expand...

Really love the post Nev. This is why I love coming to this place. 10 years in and occasionally I'll come across something like this that really shows me that I don't know jack shit when it comes to spotting finer details. I've had that same feeling from the get go and it drove me crazy almost from the start. I really thought it through a couple years back and the only thing that I could come up with was tactics and coaching. I reckoned that if you took a look at his heatmap over his career at the free 8 role it would sit much deeper than Kev/Dave/Bernardo/Phil's simply because you want your most creative, best, clinical players closer to goal and making the final actions so it was a concession of sorts that he was the weakest by far of our two free 8's. With Raz and Sane around too you can 'hide' someone in attack very easily if you wanted to design it that way

I figured his role was to just generally position himself to catch and move the ball to the key players as quickly as he could rather than look to create or attack himself and that's why he always sits deeper and never really adds much in terms of goals or assists to the score sheet. That also explains the frequently brought up fact of him ghosting through games. It was just a working theory and I gave up getting annoyed with him after that! It's been a while since I had a pop at him and I feel a little guilty about it now because the forum Gundogan champions get big upset if you have a pop.

That's all probably complete bullshit of course but it fits in with the data at least...if I'm being kind to him.

If I'm telling you what I know based off of a long background in game theory and zero sum games I can tell you for certain that he's a massive downgrade and not good enough to be playing big minutes as an 8. It all boils down to contributions because at the end of the day the smaller things will be done by everyone in the squad equally over time.

Last three seasons.

Kev. 6713 minutes. 20g 40a. 111.88 minutes for G or A.
Dave. 7458 minutes. 21g 31a. 143.42 minutes for G or A.
Bernardo 7357 minutes. 26g 25a. 144.25 minutes for G or A.
Gundogan 6677 minutes. 13g 15a. 238.46 minutes for G or A.

I filtered out the DM matches and just added the matches as an 8.
Gundogan 4330 minutes. 11g 11a. 196.86 minutes for G or A.

Let's take a look at squad players last season relative to position...
Data for Mahrez , Sterling, and Sane last season 106.25, 102.40, 81.67.
Data for Kun, and Jesus. 80.19, 80.50.
Data for Foden over three years...154.1..123 last year.

Data for Kelechi 89.90, Jesus 61.75, and Kun 87.58 in 2016/2017.
Nolito was at 122 and Sterling 120 in 2016/2017.

When we say we don't have a best 11 it's because you can block out the names from the data and barely recognize who the player is unless they are incredibly exceptional like KDB and how Sane was last season. In game theory your two wings would have identical output, the two mids identical, and your striker adding as many assists as possible. That kills off variance. You want to win four trophies? Make your bench almost as good. Football is a zero-sum game meaning our results were what they were because we had equal contributions everywhere and our opposition did not. Put a 146 instead of Sane's 80 and we probably only win a cup. Keep plugging in a 197 at our free 8 and it'll catch up to us. Look how fine the margins were last year.

Alright guys, I have to cut this short. There's a couple more points that really need to be made to better explain all of this that relate directly to our squad but I'm running late to lab.

For all those who say that he often ghosts in games, it's absolutely true. With output like that he's capable of starting 4, 5, 6 matches in a row with 0 end contributions. That's not enough for me, even as a 'squad player'. To each their own and make it of it what you will.
 
ADegenerate said:
Really love the post Nev. This is why I love coming to this place. 10 years in and occasionally I'll come across something like this that really shows me that I don't know jack shit when it comes to spotting finer details. I've had that same feeling from the get go and it drove me crazy almost from the start. I really thought it through a couple years back and the only thing that I could come up with was tactics and coaching. I reckoned that if you took a look at his heatmap over his career at the free 8 role it would sit much deeper than Kev/Dave/Bernardo/Phil's simply because you want your most creative, best, clinical players closer to goal and making the final actions so it was a concession of sorts that he was the weakest by far of our two free 8's. With Raz and Sane around too you can 'hide' someone in attack very easily if you wanted to design it that way

I figured his role was to just generally position himself to catch and move the ball to the key players as quickly as he could rather than look to create or attack himself and that's why he always sits deeper and never really adds much in terms of goals or assists to the score sheet. That also explains the frequently brought up fact of him ghosting through games. It was just a working theory and I gave up getting annoyed with him after that! It's been a while since I had a pop at him and I feel a little guilty about it now because the forum Gundogan champions get big upset if you have a pop.

That's all probably complete bullshit of course but it fits in with the data at least...if I'm being kind to him.

If I'm telling you what I know based off of a long background in game theory and zero sum games I can tell you for certain that he's a massive downgrade and not good enough to be playing big minutes as an 8. It all boils down to contributions because at the end of the day the smaller things will be done by everyone in the squad equally over time.

Last three seasons.

Kev. 6713 minutes. 20g 40a. 111.88 minutes for G or A.
Dave. 7458 minutes. 21g 31a. 143.42 minutes for G or A.
Bernardo 7357 minutes. 26g 25a. 144.25 minutes for G or A.
Gundogan 6677 minutes. 13g 15a. 238.46 minutes for G or A.

I filtered out the DM matches and just added the matches as an 8.
Gundogan 4330 minutes. 11g 11a. 196.86 minutes for G or A.

Let's take a look at squad players last season relative to position...
Data for Mahrez , Sterling, and Sane last season 106.25, 102.40, 81.67.
Data for Kun, and Jesus. 80.19, 80.50.
Data for Foden over three years...154.1..123 last year.

Data for Kelechi 89.90, Jesus 61.75, and Kun 87.58 in 2016/2017.
Nolito was at 122 and Sterling 120 in 2016/2017.

When we say we don't have a best 11 it's because you can block out the names from the data and barely recognize who the player is unless they are incredibly exceptional like KDB and how Sane was last season. In game theory your two wings would have identical output, the two mids identical, and your striker adding as many assists as possible. That kills off variance. You want to win four trophies? Make your bench almost as good. Football is a zero-sum game meaning our results were what they were because we had equal contributions everywhere and our opposition did not. Put a 146 instead of Sane's 80 and we probably only win a cup. Keep plugging in a 197 at our free 8 and it'll catch up to us. Look how fine the margins were last year.

Alright guys, I have to cut this short. There's a couple more points that really need to be made to better explain all of this that relate directly to our squad but I'm running late to lab.

For all those who say that he often ghosts in games, it's absolutely true. With output like that he's capable of starting 4, 5, 6 matches in a row with 0 end contributions. That's not enough for me, even as a 'squad player'. To each their own and make it of it what you will.
Click to expand...

Its amazing what lengths some will go to to is all I will say. particularly when coupled with a load of theoretic shite to try and back it up
 
ADegenerate said:
Really love the post Nev. This is why I love coming to this place. 10 years in and occasionally I'll come across something like this that really shows me that I don't know jack shit when it comes to spotting finer details. I've had that same feeling from the get go and it drove me crazy almost from the start. I really thought it through a couple years back and the only thing that I could come up with was tactics and coaching. I reckoned that if you took a look at his heatmap over his career at the free 8 role it would sit much deeper than Kev/Dave/Bernardo/Phil's simply because you want your most creative, best, clinical players closer to goal and making the final actions so it was a concession of sorts that he was the weakest by far of our two free 8's. With Raz and Sane around too you can 'hide' someone in attack very easily if you wanted to design it that way

I figured his role was to just generally position himself to catch and move the ball to the key players as quickly as he could rather than look to create or attack himself and that's why he always sits deeper and never really adds much in terms of goals or assists to the score sheet. That also explains the frequently brought up fact of him ghosting through games. It was just a working theory and I gave up getting annoyed with him after that! It's been a while since I had a pop at him and I feel a little guilty about it now because the forum Gundogan champions get big upset if you have a pop.

That's all probably complete bullshit of course but it fits in with the data at least...if I'm being kind to him.

If I'm telling you what I know based off of a long background in game theory and zero sum games I can tell you for certain that he's a massive downgrade and not good enough to be playing big minutes as an 8. It all boils down to contributions because at the end of the day the smaller things will be done by everyone in the squad equally over time.

Last three seasons.

Kev. 6713 minutes. 20g 40a. 111.88 minutes for G or A.
Dave. 7458 minutes. 21g 31a. 143.42 minutes for G or A.
Bernardo 7357 minutes. 26g 25a. 144.25 minutes for G or A.
Gundogan 6677 minutes. 13g 15a. 238.46 minutes for G or A.

I filtered out the DM matches and just added the matches as an 8.
Gundogan 4330 minutes. 11g 11a. 196.86 minutes for G or A.

Let's take a look at squad players last season relative to position...
Data for Mahrez , Sterling, and Sane last season 106.25, 102.40, 81.67.
Data for Kun, and Jesus. 80.19, 80.50.
Data for Foden over three years...154.1..123 last year.

Data for Kelechi 89.90, Jesus 61.75, and Kun 87.58 in 2016/2017.
Nolito was at 122 and Sterling 120 in 2016/2017.

When we say we don't have a best 11 it's because you can block out the names from the data and barely recognize who the player is unless they are incredibly exceptional like KDB and how Sane was last season. In game theory your two wings would have identical output, the two mids identical, and your striker adding as many assists as possible. That kills off variance. You want to win four trophies? Make your bench almost as good. Football is a zero-sum game meaning our results were what they were because we had equal contributions everywhere and our opposition did not. Put a 146 instead of Sane's 80 and we probably only win a cup. Keep plugging in a 197 at our free 8 and it'll catch up to us. Look how fine the margins were last year.

Alright guys, I have to cut this short. There's a couple more points that really need to be made to better explain all of this that relate directly to our squad but I'm running late to lab.

For all those who say that he often ghosts in games, it's absolutely true. With output like that he's capable of starting 4, 5, 6 matches in a row with 0 end contributions. That's not enough for me, even as a 'squad player'. To each their own and make it of it what you will.
Click to expand...

I think he will do 'ok' during the course of the season but if we had one more genuine top class player, who offers the kind of things you refer to, as an alternative, there would not be a great outcry amongst the Gundoganitstas, for him to play.

Pep seemed to suggest last season that he had him in mind as a regular goalscorer & creator, but so far it doesn't seem to have materialised.
 
Neville Kneville said:
He tends to be inconsistent with that kind of contibution imo, is one reason I'm not keen on him. He has been more dynamic in that in recent games & is then much less of a handicap & his positive attributes come through better. He was very active, getting the ball back, v Everton.

But I've realised one aspect of his play which really pisses me off, it's been itching at me for a long time, why do my expectations kind of sink, when he gets the ball halfway ?

Well I've sussed, it's his method of often receiving the ball, on the half turn, but his 'half turn' is facing more backwards than forward, so his best, safest option, is almost always a backward pass. To make the forward pass, he sometimes has to do a little half turn thing or take more of a risk, because unlike true World Class players, he does not have a picture of what's behind him. Sometimes, it's space, but he hasn't noticed.

So when he receives the ball, already facing more forward, he is a far far better, more creative player in any area of the pitch. And he is more alert to recovering the ball, going forward, rather than coming back.

When Pep is micro managing players such as Sterling, on that particular aspect, I don't understand why he allows it with Gundogan unless he thinks he's past learning.

Rodri, sets a shining example by comparison, constantly finding forward passes when a backward one would be easy, but rarely losing the ball.
Click to expand...

You’ve somewhat summed up the way I see Gundogan. Lovely player on his day but can be equally frustrating; mind numbingly frustrating. I also think that his game has been somewhat influenced by the injuries he’s had in the past which now affects how he operates with the ball.

Don’t think we ever got to see Dortmund Gundy at City. Nonetheless, I’ll support him till he stops playing for the club.
 
mosssideblue said:
Its amazing what lengths some will go to to is all I will say. particularly when coupled with a load of theoretic shite to try and back it up
Click to expand...

You really think that I have any type of secret agenda or vendetta against any of our players whatsoever? What purpose would that serve me? You think that I’ve kept a running log for three years straight now just so that I could slag off Ilkay Gundogan with some ‘gotcha’ data that irrefutably proves that my suspicious were correct? I’ve been keeping my secrets and finally unleashed them on the world to show my football knowledge superiority in an hour long write up that even the most seasoned Gundogan champions (such as my good buddy @Dax777) couldn’t deny!

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?

Occam’s razor wins again! I watch all the games once and typically twice so I formed an opinion over the years from my eyes and brain. I kept the data because it’s a hobby that I enjoy doing as an added element to football. I came to conclusions based off of a decade long foray into studying Zero-sum games and application of game theory. I wrote a long post up for myself so that I could escape from the stress of studying, finals, and my hospital rotation that starts in about 14 days. Finally, I shared it because I stand by what it means.

Just fucking with ya bud I’m on my lunch break and clearing my head. :-)

I know that nobody gives a shit and it will likely be completely ignored. Take it or leave it, as I always say when I drop these types of posts a few times a year. The real fun would be if somebody called bullshit and said ‘here’s why’

It’s not bullshit at all people just don’t like to hear it. Now I might just write up another long post out of spite just to spite those that hate data / theory!
 
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