bluethunder said:
CaliforniaBlue said:
I certainly respect the views of the two posters above, but to prove the point that someone is brilliant at something requires more than just a few examples. If anyone has good data on Aguero's dribbling success rate for the season, that would be much more helpful. After all, just because you know three people who smoked all their lives and lived till they're 90 doesn't mean smoking's good for you, only large data sets can show you that.
according to this website ( <a class="postlink" href="http://www.eplindex.com/25211/dribbling-wizardry-2012-13-stats-analysis.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.eplindex.com/25211/dribbling ... lysis.html</a> ) , between the start of last season until january 2013, sergio aguero made 4.5 dribbles per 90 minute game with a success rate of 54.8% (above average).
his success rate is higher than gareth bale, eden hazard, luis suarez and raheem sterling.
And lower than Samba Diakate (66.0%) and Mohamed Diame (57.1%). And that's just in the first table which only includes the most frequent dribblers. The next table (for anyone who actually read the entire article) shows the top 20 dribblers overall, with Cheik Tiote top on 84.2% and Jan Vertonghen in 20th place with a 60.0% success rate.
The article doesn't really go into detail about what constitutes a successful dribble (so I won't speculate) but whatever it is, Aguero does it an average of 2.5 times per game. He also loses the ball twice every game due to dribbling.
It's certainly an interesting article although like almost every similar article I've read, it's a little frustrating that they don't rigorously define the main thing they're measuring; dribbling (science background - sorry). However, if we assume that most of us would define a successful dribble in a similar enough way, it does indeed show that amongst the most frequent dribblers in the league, Aguero is one of the best. I was also surprised that his success rate was better than Suarez, Hazard, and Bale (although the stats are only for the first half of the season and I think Bale was much better in the second half, so his final figures might have improved). I guess that's because I saw almost every City game last season, so I saw all Aguero's successes and failures and around a 50% success rate seems about right (hence my assertion that he's not a
brilliant dribbler - if you think 50% is brilliant, then we really have no argument). On the other hand, I only saw highlights of the others, and of course the highlights only showed their successes, so I got a false impression of how good they were.
However, bluethunder's post failed to mention the "amongst the most frequent dribblers" bit and further down the article (perhaps s/he was so delighted with the first table that s/he didn't bother to look any further) the overall best dribblers table showed that seven players had a 75.0% or higher success rate, one of them being our very own Yaya Toure. I never really thought of him as a brilliant dribbler, which again makes me wonder how they defined a successful dribble.
To finish, here's a fun fact;
Aguero loses the ball dribbling 40% more often than Dzeko does (data taken from the website listed above - I can explain the numbers if you don't believe me. Btw, before this starts a 20 page Dzeko vs Aguero war, I'm not suggesting Dzeko's a better dribbler than Aguero, because he certainly isn't, I'm just showing how real facts can be twisted if you don't show the full context)
-- Fri Jul 26, 2013 7:57 pm --
Clowny said:
bluethunder said:
according to this website ( <a class="postlink" href="http://www.eplindex.com/25211/dribbling-wizardry-2012-13-stats-analysis.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.eplindex.com/25211/dribbling ... lysis.html</a> ) , between the start of last season until january 2013, sergio aguero made 4.5 dribbles per 90 minute game with a success rate of 54.8% (above average). his success rate is higher than gareth bale, eden hazard, luis suarez and raheem sterling.
Boom!
Did your toaster just explode?