Another Gameweek, another Harry Kane blank.
As covered in Sunday’s Knee Jerk, it wasn’t supposed to be like this, so in this week’s Technical Area we’ll be digging through the rubble of another disappointing weekend at Wembley and dissecting exactly what seems to be ailing Spurs – and in particular their talismanic forward.
I like. Good balance.
RMWCT
Foster Elliot
Davies Cedric Jones 4.5 4.0
Mkhi eriksen alli salah carroll
Lukaku Firmino Chicha
Brilliant arise KingKane
Great article thank you for this
You're welcome - glad you enoyed it!
My wildcard team. will probably look something like this:
Foster, Elliot
Cedric, Jones, Fernandez, Lowe/Ward, Mbemba,
Hazard, Pogba, Eriksen, Salah, Rlc
Lukaku, Firmino, Chicharito
What do you think?
Is there no way to upgrade kaku to kane?
You sure that's an upgrade?
Kane will score the stats prove it
I watched him on Sunday, you can say he had 8-10 shots but they were similar to the crap Mounie tried, 50 chances wouldn't have lead to a goal. I'd be amazed if he gets near Lukaku's total this season.
His stats proved it for the Burnley game but did he score?
Tadic stats say he should have been one of the top midfielders in FPL over the past couple of years. Was he?
Did the comment boxes become super wide for anyone else?
Damn. Wrong thread.
Lol
New post fail? 😉
Karma is a bitch. Thats what you get from being cheeky
Sorry for the repost. wrong thread.
Hi guys, do you think that Atsu is a sure starter for now?
yes i think so 🙂
2 FT's & 0.5 ITB......Current Defence;
Hegazi / PVA / Danilo / Stephens / Long
Out: PVA & Danilo
In: Alonso & Mbemba?
Yeah
yes
Not sure. If Stephens/Hegazi get dropped, you've got two 4m defenders on the bench.
What would u suggest to fix that back 5 with 2 FT's?
Tough one. Alonso is worth sacrifices elsewhere. Those transfers are fine as long as you're happy to use your next FT on potentially getting rid of Hegazi or Stephens. If you're happy with your frontline then go for it.
Naughton and davies/joned.. Then u got spare mpney to improve as well next time
what to do with ince and willian?
A) keep
B) sell ( suggestions plz )
I have both. Should keep at least a week more.
It really is incredibly frustrating that those who chose to believe in some hoodoo or August curse have actually come out on top.
Those top stats are ludicrous and show how close Kane has been to scoring well.
His numbers are so good, it beggars belief - whilst collecting the historical data, I was stunned at just how far ahead of the pack Kane has been.
He could quite easily have scored six by now, and it wouldn't look like an outlier.
It's some achievement to have had 18 shots in the box and not scored.
Nice article BTW
This time last year GWK 4-10 we had the same issue with Ibra - so many shots, so many times he hit the post. Was getting so bad that I even removed him from the goals imminent table as it looked like they would never come. Then in GWK 11 he went crazy with goals at Swansea and was brilliant from then on.
Kane plays Swansea GWK 5...just saying 😉
I'm not seeing how these shots numbers translate to future performance. He must be statistically unlikely to keep up this level of shooting per game and fall back to his average. Perhaps he will lose confidence and reduce his number of shots. Perhaps he is shooting too often and not scoring because he isn't waiting for the correct shooting opportunity?
Football matches are one off events and this seems to be succumbing to gambler's fallacy thinking because Kane has blanked three games in a row he must score in the next match. Kane's chances of scoring are more likely to be calculated by looking at the comparison between sides in each match rather than past data on shooting in unrelated matches.
For those of you stats lovers you need to look at the quality of shots too.
It is noticeable that Kane has had 2.3 headed goal attempts per match this season compared to 0..4 last season.
It is also significant imo that he has had 3.7 blocked shots per game compared to 0.7 per game last season.
0f his incredible 8 shots per game that is almost 5 which he wasn't having last season but which are almost zero threat to the gk.
What might be the reason for these poor quality shots?
It might be the possession spurs have had with this seasons average 70% overall and 78% in opposition third v 60% and 65% respectively. This to me would indicate spurs build up is longer and slower due to them being able to retain the ball for longer periods this season.
Can we expect this to continue? Very possibly if the reason for the extra possession is the extra space in Wembley.
Tldr Kane's actual useful shots per game compared to last season is more like 3 than the 8 indicated by stats imo
I know. 3-0 to the voodoo people.
Yeah I guess in a way you are right, but it was a gamble I was willing to take as I thought jesus plus firmino over gabbiadini would over more value
I haven't owned Kane, not because of any curse, but because I was not going to captain him in 3 of the first 4 gameweeks anyway, and 12.5 for a guy I'm not captaining is poor value.
Of course now its September he will be fine 😉
Do we think Alexis will go to city?
Sterling included isn't bad plus money, better than losing him for free in the summer
What changes would you make to this team?
Hart/Elliot
Stephens/Dawson/Daniels/Mee/Suttner
KDB/Willian/Redmond/Mooy/Carroll
Kane/Lukaku/Firmino
2 FT's and £1.3M itb.
KdB + Willian/Redmond > Salah/Mane/Eriksen + Mkhi/Pogba seems obvious.
Though Hart, Daniels and maybe Stephens probably need addressing too soon.
Ryan Fraser - Will he likely come in next game or is this new Bournemouth shape likely to see him not played?
"By any chosen metric, Harry Kane’s opening Gameweeks have been extraordinarily impressive".
LOL. No, they haven't.
Most of his shots were blocked. A lot of them straight at the keeper. A one on one in the Burnley game that he should've buried. He also lost the ball very often in the Burnley game.
Only the ones where he hit the post could've realistically gone in.
He's been average by his usual standards. There are so many players who have been more impressive than him in the first three weeks.
Fake news. He was Spurs best player against Newcastle and Chelsea (apart from Eriksen and maybe Dembele). His all round game looks great. He hasn't been getting the service from the full-backs or Alli he usually enjoys, but he's playing well.
He was largely pants against Burnley, admittedly, but our transitions were woeful and Son couldn't get in the game at all, so he ended up isolated.
What do you mean their best player (apart from Eriksen and Dembele)? They only have 11 players. If you can name 2 that were better, then he wasn't that great, was he? Lol
You said he's been average; I said he's been playing well. Which he has.
Eriksen's in the form of his life and Dembele is playing really well. How does them playing well disprove my statement about Kane?
because you said he was their best and then named two better
"Fake news. He was Spurs best player against Newcastle and Chelsea (apart from Eriksen and maybe Dembele). "
lol
He doesn't look his sharpest at all. What's hard to believe is that not even one of his miskicks or fluffed shots have gone in. It would be quite funny to see a compilation of all his chances over the last 3 weeks.
Agreed.
Ibra had a lot of shots at the beginning of last season too. Top of the goals imminent table. But he didn't deliver. Taking a lot of shots with no goals usually means the player is wasteful, not extraordinary.
Difference is Kane is creating his own chances this year. It's the rest of the team that's (largely) been letting him down.
Two counterpoints to this line of thinking:
1) If we remove every single blocked shot, then all off-target shots...Kane is still the #1 forward in our attacking metrics table (albeit tied, alongside Lukaku).
2) Blocked shots and saved shots are, in general, much stronger predictors of future goalscoring performance than a player not taking shots at all. Last year Alexis Sanchez and Sergio Aguero ranked second and third, respectively in blocked shots.
I do agree that qualitatively, Kane has been a little off the boil; there have been chances it looks as if he should have buried that have gone to waste. But I really don't think there is a single striker I'd rather have in FPL going forward than Kane, and his high shot numbers - blocked or not - are a huge reason why.
Stats alone can be misleading. Which is why I explained some of the events that have taken place so far which would have improved his stats, but in reality were not positives.
He has the best stats, but like every other player, you need to have an eye-test as well to justify those stats. Goals scored is also a stat.
I agree that metrics require context to achieve their full value; perhaps we simple differ on how we have interpreted his performances whilst watching them. I tend to gravitate towards high-volume shooters, as there is a good depth of data suggesting that high volumes of goal attempts are a very strong predictor of future goals scored. Similarly, I know that Kane has the highest running three-year goal conversion rate of any PL player. Therefore, whenever he is shooting - even if those shots are not going in - I consider that a positive outcome in terms of FPL prospects. The average Harry Kane shot has been more valuable than any other FPL event over the past three seasons; and I trust that those three years of data are a good baseline for expected value for his shots moving forward.
I suppose I trust that Kane's inability to convert these chances is a blip, and that as long as he is shooting in high volumes - which he has done historically, and continues to do this year - he will come good in an FPL sense, which is my principle concern.
Just to provide some more data to this matter, because I do think your point is interesting and worthy of discussion - I've just gathered together the players who had their shots blocked most frequently last year (as a proportion of their total shots). Here is the full list of players who took at least 80 shots (a decent minimum threshold to get rid of bit-part players) and had at least 25% of them blocked last season:
Forwards: Defoe, Ibrahimovic, Aguero, Costa, Rondon.
Midfielders: Sanchez, Coutinho, Eriksen, Barkley, De Bruyne, Sigurdsson, Redmond, Son.
Interestingly, Kane just missed this threshold - he had 19% of his shots blocked last season.
"I suppose I trust that Kane's inability to convert these chances is a blip, and that as long as he is shooting in high volumes - which he has done historically, and continues to do this year - he will come good in an FPL sense, which is my principle concern".
Of course he will come good, no one doubts that. He's scored 20+ goals in the last 3 seasons. He will be in everyone's teams at some point. But this game isn't about holding players for the whole season, it's about getting them at the right time and moving them on when they're not delivering.
Since you brought Ibrahimovic as an example, he showed similar stats last season and was top of the goals imminent table. But he didn't deliver until GW11. How would you explain that? And then he became a good reliable option from time to time. Which makes him an overall good pick for last season. But he was still a poor pick until GW11!
Similarly, all I'm saying is that Kane (at the moment), at least as a non-owner, does not look impressive or essential in my eyes, all metrics aside. To be clear, I am planning to bring him in for GW5, but again, my decision to an extent will depend on how he looks against Everton.
I don't think we necessarily disagree here - FPL is a game of projecting future performance, and we are simply weighing different criteria more or less heavily than one another in making those projections.
In the case of Kane, or Ibrahimovic, the question I would ask myself as an owner/non-owner would simply be: "What's more likely to happen?". Kane blanked the first three gameweeks; I think that was extremely unlikely to happen, but it did. We have his numbers for three seasons, and his numbers for this year. If we ignore this year's numbers, I think it's already likely that he scores heavily over the next 5-10 gameweeks because that's simply what Kane does whenever he plays. But this year's numbers have added more to my confidence level in his ability to score those points than watching his performances have detracted from that confidence. That's all.
Even if the decision-making process is sound, the range of possible outcomes always includes total failure. That doesn't invalidate the process itself, or mean that you were wrong - you just decided to hit on 14 and drew a 9. I think that holds true both for the eye-test, statistical projections, and any combination of the two. The answer to the question of how I would explain Ibrahimovic's drought (or that of Kane) is simply that football is a complex game that involves hundreds of factors we could never hope to quantify or to observe during the game (perhaps there is a robust and direct causation effect between hours of REM sleep the night before a game and expected assists, but I'm confident I'll never discover it). The more we observe of a team playing together, and the more astutely we can handle performance statistics, we can begin to improve our ability to project performance a little. But random events will always occur that defy our expectations and projections. We have to accept that they will happen and undermine all of our careful calculations. But if we can cover the highest percentage of likely outcomes, then we should do okay in the long-term.
So ultimately, we simply prefer different weightings of data in determining the optimal process, which is as it should be; or else we'd all trot out the same side every week!
Yes, I agree with all of this.
I guess I favor the eye-test more. So if I was a Kane owner, despite my eye-test, I would hold onto him, just like you. Because him scoring is what is LIKELY to happen soon. But I'm glad I'm a non-owner.
Just guessing you're an owner, by the way. 🙂
Great article. Anything that advocates patience I naturally warm to as a dullard. 🙂
Worth noting that last year Kane started banging them in from GWK 4.
He needs a peno or a fluke to get him going, then he might get a bit of confidence
next season - dont get Kane until September
But Jonty, you are a maverick now. You take -12 hits, you drop highly owned players and you back your hunches.
Please don't tell me you are drifting back into your old, dullard ways. 😕
*apprentice maverick 😉
😉 Fair enough, coming from you.
😆
Great bit of work this Prokoptas. I love big numbers and Kane's are ridiculous. I'll be captaining Kane against Everton, 100%. Besides, it'll be September and not at Wembley so there are no "curses" hanging over this fixture 😀
Im doing the same
Portuguese news: CITY OFERECE €70 MILHÕES E STERLING POR ALEXIS SÁNCHEZ
City offers 70M + Sterling for Alexis Sanchez...
Is it Trueeeee????
I believe so
Spurs sold their 4th choice CB Wimmer to WBrom for 19m.
Daniel Levy is god
To stoke or WBA?
Stoke
I don't think it makes any difference. Daniel Levy is genius
If making money is what you admire in a football club
True, but I think we overpaid for Sanchez, so swings and roundabouts.
Brilliant, Prokoptas - thank you. 🙂
If not WCing this GW.. when do we reckon is the next best opportunity to do so in general considering factors such as fixture changes/International break etc.
Which GW have people in mind..
Just trying to figure out for how long I need to apply some patches to my team for- Have a few really low budget players in mind that hopefully will keep me ticking over.
Between GW6 - GW8 There's int break and a fixture change in favour of Everton for 1 anyway
There's a big fixture shift GWK 6 - Leic and Everton really come good then.
GWK 8 international break looks good too - more lucrative price wise and lots of new data to get to grips with.
Pre december is good too - DEcember is heavily congested so you'll need a good full 15.
Maguire,Siggy,Rooney,Vardy on watchlist for this period
Yep
Keane one of siggy /rooney
Vardy and Maguire.
Where would you downgrade here?
http://i.imgur.com/HSmsGjk.png
I'm tempted to wait on Alexis Couts and Hazard info
If it wasnt already obvious see below (reddit):
KDB: "My role at City has changed"
u/BryndentheRaven
Dutch interview with French subs, but he said he now plays as a defending midfielder. We all could see that, but maybe this means it will be for a longer period.
"I haven't scored yet, but I'm playing as a defending midfielder. My role changed, but my games are good. I know what I bring to the team and what my role is. No one knows what I had to do. People think I play as an attacking midfielder, that's wrong. They see Kevin De Bruyne, attacking midfielder, so he has to score and give assists. But they don't look beyond that."
Why didn't you tell us that before GW1, ffs
thats literally the first comment on the reddit post 😀
Elliot
Kolasinac, Stephens, Yoshida, Lowe
Salah, Eriksen, Mkhi
Lukaku, Firmino, Aguero
4.0, Carroll, RLC, 4.0..... 0.5m ITB
I think I might just save a transfer this week, and have 2 xfers the following in order to get Kane in for Kun.
Thoughts? I think Kolasinac has to start vs Bou. And I think Aguero has a good chance of starting vs Pool?
I agree. Save.
Yep good logic I'd go with that! Kane for gw5 onwards looks very important
If Sanchez moved to City he would be excellent I reckon... Sanchez in that team could he golden!
Depends on his position. If he's up front with Jesus, great.
Hard to see where he plays now that you mention it...
Its no longer August guys, bring Kane in, he will score now
I'm all excited so had to re - post.
Rate this WC team. (Not hit button yet)
Ryan
Cedric,Davies, Jones
Pogba,Ericksen,Salah,Mooy
Lukaku,Morata,Firmino
(Elliot,Suttner,Carroll,Mbembe)
No Kane obviously
0.1 to spare.
Mad to go without Kane?
Will Wimmer start at Stoke? They seem pretty stacked in that position considering Martins Indi, Zouma, and Shawcross. Are Stoke thinking of going 3 at the back?
Third time's a charm...Kane captain Vs Everton anybody?
Nah.
Maybey - lack of other options. Firmino or Lukaku other candidates
Thoughts on this wildcard team?
Foster
Alonso Bertrand Jones Naughton
Eriksen Mane Atsu
Firmino Kane Lukaku
Elliott Carroll Chalobah Mbemba
Injuries permitting thinking of doing :-
Mounie/KDB/Salah > Firmino/Silva/Pogba
4pt hit, yay or na?
Not sure about silva
Who else at that price?
6 years, 7 months agoRate this WC team. (Not hit button yet)
Ryan
Cedric,Davies, Jones
Pogba,Ericksen,Salah,Mooy
Lukaku,Morata,Firmino
(Elliot,Suttner,Carroll,Mbembe)
No Kane obviously
0.1 to spare.