Statistics seem to be everywhere these days,not just in sport,where they appear to be fan currency on how good or bad a certain player is at doing...oh i don't know,something or other...But in real life too.On any given day some publication or other will tell me that 46.3% of people would say boo to a goose or that 34.2% of folk think going blind with advanced gonorrhea is preferable to being in the same room as Donald Trump for an hour...
Some sports lend themselves naturally to stats.Cricket springs to mind.Quite often an announcement is made during play that Mr so and so has just hit his 3,000th run in test cricket or something and he gets a round of applause,a pat on the back and no doubt a complimentary pint of Old Pullover in the bar at close of play...Imagine such going ons at Molineux against,oh, let's say Cardiff City,as the ever lovable Greg Halford hurls yet another long throw into the opponents box the tannoy crackles into life with "Ladies and gentlemen that was Greg Halford's 500th career long throw of over 50 yards" Would Greg get a smattering of applause from the home fans? Answers on a postcard please...
Football stats come from the advent of fantasy football and FIFA games but have been co-opted into the real thing like it means something...we're now told how many forward passes a player makes,how many tackles,how far he runs like he's Usain Bolt or Mo farrah for God's sake...assists is another.Up until fairly recently the only time "assist" was used in football was when a player was helping police with their enquiries...but now any fan in the world can see if a player is any good or not just by looking up their stats.Or can they?
We have a player at Wolves called Ruben Neves.You may have heard of him...twenty one years old,signed for £15m by Wolves from Porto last summer.The youngest player ever to captain a champions league club(now THAT's a fucking stat!) on the radar of the big hitters in the English game and signed by a club piddling about in the lower half of the second tier of our game.many punters were unbelieving that he'd signed for us willingly.Some sort of nefarious witchcraft going on they said.Or that Neves was using Wolves as a launchpad for a better move(as all players do at 99% of clubs of course) The knives were out...
As the season has worn on other players at the club have garnered the headlines and Ruben was put on the back burner...fine by us and probably him too but over the last few weeks as those that had the knives out originally have the dawning clarity of our position some have been running the rule over Ruben Neves's stats and in black & white they don't make good reading...played 34 goals 4, assists 1 (which came last saturday) Clearly they're saying this lad is a waste of money,done jack shit all season etc etc ad nauseam...but they don't see this player live...we do,
...and what we see is a player of supreme talent,composure,vision & style.A player with so much time on the ball he could re-define physics...a player who can not only spot a team mate make a run 60yards away but find him with a raking pass through a forest of opponents with just enough back spin & side spin that the recipient does'nt need to break stride to collect... a player that also looks like a young Clark Gable too as if God himself said "Here Ruben you can have it all"...a player all Wolves fans have been honoured to see play in our shirt...
He may move on next season.I'd like to think he'd stay at least for our return to the Premiership but the £50m offers will be coming in from the great and the good and those figures will be hard to resist
Whatever happens i will wish him well...
So when the spotty Herberts at Opta sports stats point out that his are not up to much he may easily say "Frankly my dear i don't give a damn..." and neither do i.
