"Mark Twain popularized the saying in "Chapters from My Autobiography", published in the North American Review in 1906. "Figures often beguile me," he wrote, "particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'""
What does a season record measure for a team? It is an accurate measurement of how a team does in the run of a season, it shows goals for and goals against, discipline infractions, and home and away records. But how do you use it? How do you interpret it? What good do they do?
As I wrote before I take notes and record many things in respect of whatever squad I am coaching in a given season. Effective drills, attendance, impact of weather, injuries, and..... number of shots taken by the squad each game. Why? It is an objective measure of performance that my players can easily understand.
But what is the statistic that we are most obsessed with? The season, the wins, losses and ties. In the Premiership that is all that we need concern ourselves with. Is Liverpool in the top four, is Everton struggling already, how many games has Chelsea gone without a Torres goal? But what about us small fry, what does the season mean to us? My opinion is a definitive "It depends".
I will write of my experiences over the last number of years, and in particular working with squads that had a tough season, and the following season.
I had a U12 squad one year that was woeful. It was in the top division, it had our Clubs top players at this age group, they had no history in this division. We were terrible. I say we because I was inexperienced, I was unfamiliar with the league and the players. The players themselves all had promise and athleticism, but were technically and tactically very weak because of a lack of training provided to them at the Club's mini divisions ( this happily has changed). According to my records we played 30 games, won 6, lost 20, drew 4. We had 45 goals for ( two of those wins accounted for 25 goals), and 75 goals against. we never won a game outside of the city, nor any games in the first two weeks of August, anywhere.
Over the winter training period, I concentrated on defence, technical skills, and tried to figure out our road issues and what happened in August. The latter two problems were caused by arriving late to the fields and no proper warmups and lack of players because of vacations. I corrected these by
implementing a minimum 45 minute pregame arrival time and by requesting vacation schedules before the start of the season to plan for absences.
The other items were reflected in that the next season we played a similar number of games, and reduced our goals against by half. We also scored a few more goals and went from last in the league of 10 to 4th.
We also won games on the road and in August. So measurable success? Yes. Why? Not just placement,but with a measurable improvement in three areas; defence, away record and the August results.
I could go on, but I won't. Use statistics wisely. Use them to determine areas of team and player weakness and then make those improvements. Is it defence, is it offence, is it fitness, look at the numbers, look at the results, look at your notes and see what they tell you and use them to improve your squad little by little, or maybe even in big jumps. But don't let them lie to you.
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