Demonstrate those SEVERAL threads please.
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If you limit this solely to players that averaged at least 1 successful cross per game and played at least 500 minutes of league football last season, then you've narrowed it down to 41 players.
In terms of accuracy, Valencia ranked 15th in the league last season. He is certainly not an exceptionally accurate crosser. Both our eyes and the data tell us this. The point is that he is also not exceptionally inaccurate either. Particularly when compared against other fullbacks, who generally are pretty bad in comparison to attackers. For obvious reasons. The really elite crossers are typically wide players who are too slow to play on the wing (like Defour, Larsson) or mobile playmakers (de Bruyne, Ozil, Payet, Willian, Puncheon, Lamela, Brady). They are all more accurate crossers than Valencia, according to the stats.
That's what I don't understand about @Dobbs' total ignorance of the data or @Amar__'s total misinterpretation of it. If you were to have removed Valencia from the statistics people would have said it broadly fit in with their views on the most accurate crossers. As soon as Valencia is thrown in there it changes the way they're viewed entirely. The bias is pretty clear, if we're being honest. People don't like to acknowledge the fact that emotions play a big role in people's assessment of events, despite the unequivocal evidence that they do, for everyone, all the time. In this case frustration just happens to play a bigger role in some people's assessment than others.
Accuracy is not the same as quality either. It's just an important factor. Some players (like Lamela) are just very selective in their moments to cross, so while he's more accurate he's less of an overall threat than someone who is slightly less accurate but is more prolific. Generally speaking players that cross it a lot have pretty limited playmaking skills, which by default makes the risky choice of a cross a more viable option when in an advanced wide position. Some players are obviously much more effective at making an accurate cross a dangerous cross, too.
So the interpretation shouldn't be most accurate = best. In the same way that the most accurate striker isn't the best. It is an important factor though. The fact people would prefer just to ignore it than try and process it as part of the bigger picture speaks for itself.
Ranking 15th is still is ridiculously high for a right back. So you can't make the argument that Valencia has been a shit crosser. I think he has been a more than decent one.
On your point about accuracy vs quality, I generally agree. An accurate cross can be different from a dangerous cross, but in large part the fact that Valencia has such good crossing accuracy in general should disprove the consensus that he is a bad crosser.
Serge Aurier who fairly reiceves praise as a really good attacking right back:
He attempted last season 109 crosses. 8 of them lead to a shot on target.(7%)
Valencia attempted 141 crosses last season. 15 of them lead to a shot on target.(10%)
Now I understand that someone can still whip in a dangerous cross that can lead to a shot off target, but still when you are playing in a lesser league with poorer defenders( indvidually) you ought to do a little bit better. So which is it? Aurier isn't good at crossing( which is bullshit) or Valencia isn't as crap as you make him out to be?
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Yea it is my opinion that he's become very poor when it comes to putting in a cross. But is that opinion warranted? Yes is certainly is. How many times have we seen him smash the shins of defenders? How many times have we seen him given space for a cross only to hesitate long enough for the defender to pressure him into cutting back and choosing a backpass?
TBH, I don't really care about his crossing these days. I've long given up expecting dangerous pacey crosses from Valencia, if they clear the defender at all. My main gripe with him is his constant backpassing and making us predictable on the right because of his one dimension-ness.
True. Our eyes are flawless after all. And we certainly aren't subject to all kinds of external factors which shape our perception of things.
It's a footballer crossing a ball. It couldn't be simpler. Not some illusion designed to trick the human eye.
Watching football must be painful if you can't decide for yourself if a player is good at x,y or z. Do you really have to refer to a stat before coming to a final conclusion?
It makes you wonder how fans and managers over the decades, who didn't have access to bar charts, managed to judge a player.
So anybody who thinks Valencia is a poor crosser is suffering from a negative bias?
I actually like Valencia, he's got a load of positive qualities outside of his crossing. It's an opinion I hold and is shared by every United fan I know. But I guess we're all bias.
There's simply some stuff stats can't quantify.
It's ironic that if some people watched another player from another league's highlights from 2016/17 and it looked anything like this, they'd be desperate to sign him. Yet we've already forgotten how good Tony was.
Anyone who knows anything knows that Youtube highlights are possibly the worst way to judge how good a footballer is.
That's simply not the case. There's criticism of his crossing but the vast majority can see how good the rest of his game is.
Valencia maybe put in about 3 good crosses last year if that. Last year he would play floated long diagonal balls from about 20 yards further back than where he should be crossing from. The only reason they counted as completed crosses is due to Zlatan and Fellaini. Anyone trying to claim he is a decent crosser are the ones with a Bias.
Danger/quality of a cross can only be measured by eye and most have been watching football their entire lives so we know what is and what isn't a good cross and that Valencia is woeful at crossing.
What makes it worse is actually how poor he is in the final 3rd. When Kagawa was here you could see on the pitch how frustrated he would become running in to space for a pass for Valencia to dither, then in to another then rinse and repeat. Even now his decision making is awful I honestly believe if we were to have gotten another RB like a Semedo or Fabinho we would see a drastic improvement on what happens on the right.
People concerned about LB when the real issue is RB
Danger/quality of a cross can only be measured by eye and most have been watching football their entire lives so we know what is and what isn't a good cross and that Valencia is woeful at crossing.
What makes it worse is actually how poor he is in the final 3rd. When Kagawa was here you could see on the pitch how frustrated he would become running in to space for a pass for Valencia to dither, then in to another then rinse and repeat. Even now his decision making is awful I honestly believe if we were to have gotten another RB like a Semedo or Fabinho we would see a drastic improvement on what happens on the right.
People concerned about LB when the real issue is RB
Haha yes that fair, but 10 minutes of him driving forward and not "always cutting back" kind of negates the argument seeing as that's all from last season. Also it's my belief that many of the people who want us to bring in Aurier to replace Valencia have probably only seen YouTube videos of him, hence the irony.
The crossing criticism is absolutely fair, it's just annoying when people ignore the other qualities he offers.
Every time I see a player cross the ball I ask myself is that really a good cross or are my eyes deceiving me??
I haven't seen his other qualities being ignored. I'd say almost every fan I know and those who comment in here are appreciative of his other attributes. If there's a bunch of posts deriding him as an overall player point me to them.
I'll have to do the same. I didn't know crossing was so difficult to analyse until now.
Well, yeah, we are all biased. In all sorts of ways. There's a huge amount of evidence proving that. Though evidently you're not particularly keen on using evidence to shape your opinions. Each to their own.
I do wonder what you think about people that don't think Valencia is a bad crosser. It couldn't be simpler, as you say. Everyone should have exactly the same opinion in that case. If there's no external factors influencing your assessment then it's a bit weird that you think one thing and Obiorahking_ thinks something fundamentally different. Maybe his eyes just don't work as well as yours.
So are teams that employ analytics staff that use Crossing stats among many other things to help evaluate players stupid? Why do you think they've used analytics so much over the last decade if they were fine using the eye test alone over the years??
Anyone who has been watching football there entire lives would know that Valencia is a horrible crosser....hmmmm but here's the thing I've been watching football for a long ass time and i think Valencia is a decent crosser. Point refuted.
while the stats can't full measure danger of cross they can come close by looking at the crossing accuracy and looking at key crosses( crosses that lead to a shot on target) and Valencias has been more than decent with 21% and 10% respectfully.
Exactly, the only thing the anti stat masses have to go off of is that my eye test has failed me while there's hasn't which is a stupid opinion and reaches the realm of ad hominems
There is so much going on in a full 90 minute game. Unless you have photographic memory, no one is going to remember every good and bad cross from every player over the course of a season. That's why we have analytics in the first place.
Funny enough, prior to the last two games I rarely ever saw this happened.
So you're willing to use only the last two games to refute what he's been doing for most of the last 3 seasons but are willing to use his stats for however long a time period to show how successful a crosser he is?
He hasn't been doing it most of the the last 3 seasons hence my thinking that he has been a good crosser from both my eye test and stats...
It can't be used to tell you how good a footballer is but it can be used to refute a few simple things.
The way he's described you would think he's totally brainless and never contributes to goals through clever passing. This would suggest otherwise. He's not a flashy player but he has his moments.
There's also this idea that he's unable to get his head up and pick out a cross. Here he is picking out Zlatan with his much-maligned weaker foot. Then here with his right foot. Or here he is picking out Pogba with his much-maligned low crosses, after bursting through their entire midfield. Or if there's evidence needed from a big game, you've got Zlatan (again) against Chelsea.
In fact in this segment alone you have him picking out Zlatan 3 times for what should've been 3 goals, from 3 different types of crosses. Very few players in the world create more than a handful of goals a season from crosses. Valencia is one of them. That includes looping crosses, drilled crosses, simple passes across the box.
It's easy to forget his contribution to Rooney's goal vs. Bournemouth, Ibrahimovic's vs. West Brom, Mata's against Hull or Martial's against West Ham. Like @Dobbs is keen to point out, there are some things that stats don't capture. We know that many people do forget about them because they simply don't feature in people's assessment of him. It's a pretty straightforward example of the availability heuristic (or bias, if Dobbs prefers). Like this:
These are unequivocal statements, and they're disproven by the video alone. The video is not proof that Valencia is a top class fullback, a top class crosser, a supremely intelligent footballer or anything of the sort. They are a rejection of the opposite extremes, though.
Damn it @Dobbs, stop getting me inadvertently dragged into things 
Really? Read the 2 pages preceding this one. He wasn't great at the weekend but there's several posts saying we should replace him. Read El Zoidos post previous page. If you're saying he offers a lot but his crossing is sub par then I wasn't aiming my post at you, I'm talking to the people who come out the woodwork when he has a bad game and act completely melodramatic.
Odd assertion to make. I'll use statistical data when it's necessary and useful. Not to help me decide if a footballer can cross a ball.
Maybe there's a mass bias against Valencia that's twisting our opninon of his crossing. Not his game in general but oddly and specifically against his crossing.
Or maybe stats just aren't very useful in this instance. In the same way Welbeck had better shooting accuracy than Ronaldo last season.
I know which scenario seems more logical to me.
Damn it @Dobbs, stop getting me inadvertently dragged into things
Haha I've avoided you for quite some time so this doesn't happen.
Well no because that is flawed. A good cross is flat with pace and whip on it. Valencia plays some sort of chipped ball at an angle with no whip on it so it's easy catching practice for a keeper and easy for a defender to head out. You could cross a ball like that 100 times and have one of our players get on it but just because the accuracy is 100% doesn't mean it's a good cross. His stats were overblown due to Zlatan and Fellaini.
Also there is no accounting for taste and I'm surprised anyone thinks he is a good crosser.
Why is it that some people can't see what you deem to be unbelievably simple, in this case? Surely there wouldn't be any room for debate?
If roughly 1 in 4 crosses actually meet their target, then an accurate cross is a good cross...surely? Within those accurate crosses there's all sorts of different qualities that effect how good it is, but when most crosses are off target, a cross on target is significantly better than the average.
He's a beast that plays an entire flank on his own.
He has some flaws but so did Evra. Evra was a much worse crosser and only improved in his later years when he was half the player.
There's more to playing fullback than crossing. And Valencia is a 6.5 out of ten crosser for me.
Our manager rates him and wanted him Madrid. Jose isn't stupid.
He has some flaws but so did Evra. Evra was a much worse crosser and only improved in his later years when he was half the player.
There's more to playing fullback than crossing. And Valencia is a 6.5 out of ten crosser for me.
Our manager rates him and wanted him Madrid. Jose isn't stupid.
I think we should replace him but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate what he brings to the team. I wish we could bottle his mentality, his strength, pace, first touch and decision making up to the final third is excellent.
However he's our entire right hand side so it's crucial he's top notch in the final third if we want to be a top team again.
Or preferably we could just sign Mahrez and lessen his load.
That's not my point. I said making your mind up about something as basic as a cross is simple. Be it good or bad. It shouldn't need a bar chart.
That people's conclusions then differ is the very nature of football debate. Posters disagree about pretty much everything. It doesn't mean the subject matter is so complicated that it needs data to back it up.
Like i said statistically Welbecks shooting accuracy was better than Ronaldo's last season. Following your logic that means there's a worldwide conspiracy to paint Welbeck as a poor finisher when in reality he's not. Sounds ridiculous but that is genuinely where your logic takes you.
The alternative is that shooting accuracy like crossing accuracy is a flawed measurement.
Now what's more likely? Is it huge numbers of people randomly and without reason taking a negative bias towards Valencia and Welbeck or is it the stats you've used being an inadequate measurement(as explained by myself and others)?
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This seems like some kind of weird semantical argument. Do you think it's simple to identify a good cross? If yes, why do you think other people don't share your view? I can only assume it means that you think these people lack some pretty basic skills, or that their assessments are influenced by other things e.g. biases. There doesn't seem to be an alternative. If no, then why is using data seen to be adding another layer of complexity to something, when in reality it's codifying and simplifying the data we've already processed in our own head?
That's a misintrepretation of "my" logic, deliberate or otherwise. If you were to read things from another perspective than your own - and in doing so, strip away your inherent biases in this debate - you would see that I explicitly said...
It's essentially the exact opposite of your (mis)understanding of my point. What the stats tell you is that Welbeck is a more accurate striker, if you use a very limited definition of accuracy (i.e. simply hitting the target rather than aiming for precise areas of the goal). It doesn't mean he's better. At all.
So what I'd suggest is there is another alternative. There is the viewpoint that stats should be discarded, because they're either adding an unnecessary layer of complexity to the discussion or because they don't make sense, which is your perspective. There is the viewpoint that stats are the only thing worth paying attention to because we're unable to process this kind of complex information, which I think in this case is a strawman argument but let's for argument's sake say that's Oboriahking's perspective.
There's quite a big middle ground there, which acknowledges that our eyes, our memory and the stats are all imperfect, and they're all filtered through our inherently biased perspective, and so they can all be used in tandem to cover off some of the gaps from each.
The crossing accuracy statistics are not a definitive statement on who the best crosser is, in the same way that striking accuracy can't tell you who the best striker is, dribbling frequency can't tell you who the best dribbler is, or goalscoring stats can't tell you who the best goalscorer is. However they can form part of an overall assessment and in most cases they are indicative.
Let's look at dribbling as an example.
Zaha, Traore, Hazard, Bolasie, Boufal, Niang, Mahrez, Mané, Payet, Antonio, Sterling, Sánchez and Aguero are the only players in the league that attempted at least 4 dribbles per game. They're ranked in order - Zaha attempted 7 dribbles per game, Aguero 4 per game.
Does that make them the best? No. Does it fit in broadly with our instinctive assessments of the most frequent dribblers? I'd say yes. We know ourselves that attempting lots of dribbles doesn't mean much if most of them are unsuccessful. So then you move onto the success rate of each. In that case Hazard and Traoré are the only players to suceed in 3/4 of attempts, Sánchez succeeds in 2/3 and the worst of that list, Niang, only succeeds in about 1/3. Does that make them the best? Again, no. That's not what the stats are meant to indicate. Do they broadly fit in with our instinctive assessment of who the most efficient dribblers are? I'd say yes.
What the numbers don't account for is quite vast - the number of players beaten in a dribble, the kind of spaces the dribbling took place in, the number of chances created as a result of it, the quality of those chances, and for most people the aesthetic value counts for a lot. On the flipside, what our memory and vision doesn't account for is also quite vast. For good reason too. Anyone that thinks they can accurately remember even a significant portion of the dribbles logged in the stats is kidding themselves.
However the same is true of goalscoring. People are now at a stage where simply dismissing goals, without any explanation for why, would be deemed a bit silly. On the flipside, if people said Lampard is better than Scholes because he scores more goals, then people would rightly point out that that overlooks the context they took place in. Most people are in that middle ground.
Why being in that middle ground for something like crossing is seen as "unnecessary" is quite puzzling, I'd suggest.
I can't address every point made there because to be honest so much of it is illogical to me e.g. a belief can't simple if somebody disagrees.
My final point on this is football is pretty straightforward. If you're constantly second guessing the smallest of observations, having to cross reference your eyes with stats before you decide if somebody can cross or not it sounds complicated. Presumably you have to do this on a midfielders passing ability, a strikers shooting ability etc etc.
I mean you compared crossing to actual optical illusions earlier in the discussion. It all sounds exhausting.
I'm going to trust my eyes on this incredibly simple matter, like fans have done across the generations. Confidemt I'm not suffering from a negative bias on a player I actually like.
There are more external factors to shooting than there is to crossing. With crossing the only bit of grey area is that there are crosses that lead to shots which can be just as dangerous as a shot on targets can't be quantified with the stats we have available altohough I would argue that if a cross lead to a shot on target, the quality of the cross had a lot to do with it.
Shooting accuracy is a different story( from which I assume that you mean goals to shots right?) as it doesn't take into account where the shot was taken or the angle it came from which is a big factor in evaluating how good a shot was.
Nevertheless I do love how you left out the part that Ronaldo attempts far more shots than Danny Welbeck does which is also a big factor in evaluating how good a finisher is. Nice try.
@Dobbs still haven't responded
So is Dani carvajals stats over blown because he has an attack of tall guys of Ronaldo morata benzema and bale who by the way have much better movement than both fellaini and Zlatan?? Come on you can do better
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You're not getting this. I'm not using the Welbeck stat to say he's not a bad finisher. It's the opposite. I'm saying it's a useless stat because it doesn't take into account number of shots, where from etc. It doesn't quantify all the variable. You agree I see. Yet conveniently you don't believe crossing accuracy suffers from the same problems.
I don't think you've done it on purpose but seriously you've misinterpreted every single post of mine you've replied to.
You've just pointed out that shooting accuracy stats are flawed but are here arguing that because stats exist and are used they must be correct.
Plus you've no idea if Mourinho uses crossing accuracy stats.
I'll have to leave it there because to me this is simple and doesn't warrant a debate of this length.
Im not misinterpreting anything and I don't agree with you. You conveniently left out a key information about Welbeck a shooting accuracy to craft an either or fallacy. That doesn't mean I should disregard the statistic but rather look deeper by applying more statistic by looking at the shots taken. It's called thinking analytically. With crossing statistic there isn't but a problem. Valencia had one of the highest crossing attempts in the world yet still maintained a high accuracy for both regular and key crosses. Where is the flaw??
For the billionth time, I agree that crossing stats aren't perfect when evaluating but guess what also isn't perfect? The eye test. If the eye test was perfect, stats would have no purpose. Both means of evaluation are supposed to be taken hand in hand and it just so happens that stats back up my eye test that Valencia isn't a shitty crosser. Not by a fecking long shot.
All professional coaches use and clubs use data. It's a known fact hell even my old high school football club currently has a statician.
In other words: I'm wrong
He is the only full back capable of stretching play and crossing in wide areas(even though they are often shite). It is a bit strange we haven't addressed our full back situation this summer.
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