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Zokora (big Stat thread)

DFF

YOLO, Daniel
May 17, 2005
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But he's still not good enough, which is, I think, the most important point.

He displayed against Liverpool that he quite clearly is good enough. The main knock against him is that he doesn't put in those type of performances more often.
 

littlemandefoe

Conte's Blue and White Army!
May 22, 2005
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I agree with a lot of people here. Zokora was very good against Liverpool and Villa. All I really hope for is that he can keep up the good form. Consistency is a problem in our team.

COYS
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
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He displayed against Liverpool that he quite clearly is good enough. The main knock against him is that he doesn't put in those type of performances more often.

The main "knock" is that most of our team don't. Could the reason be higher up the chain.
 

Yid-ol

Just-outside Edinburgh
Jan 16, 2006
31,097
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have slated Zokora at times, but also stook up for him last season

Zokora on his day is a good player, and in the last 2 he has shown what he can do, but at times this season he has also shown that he still needs to improve.

i am sure it has been said, but most of Zokora's pass's are normaly easy pass's not far, so that will account for the high %, just hope he can learn to do some more creative pass's like the chip to Jeans when JJ had the shot saved and Keane finished.
 

Bus-Conductor

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Oct 19, 2004
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have slated Zokora at times, but also stook up for him last season

Zokora on his day is a good player, and in the last 2 he has shown what he can do, but at times this season he has also shown that he still needs to improve.

i am sure it has been said, but most of Zokora's pass's are normaly easy pass's not far, so that will account for the high %, just hope he can learn to do some more creative pass's like the chip to Jeans when JJ had the shot saved and Keane finished.

I am sorry mate but that is not true. Look at the list. There are plenty of good midfielders who are not spraying 50 yarders about all the time. he has the best completion of all of them.

And Jol chooses to play him as the more deep sitting midfield so it is not his job necessarily to provide creativity. I think he has proved on several occasions that he has vision as well.

To be fair to Jol - and I don't always say that - he does seem to see the value of Zokora alot of the time.
 

Yid-ol

Just-outside Edinburgh
Jan 16, 2006
31,097
19,276
I am sorry mate but that is not true. Look at the list. There are plenty of good midfielders who are not spraying 50 yarders about all the time. he has the best completion of all of them.

And Jol chooses to play him as the more deep sitting midfield so it is not his job necessarily to provide creativity. I think he has proved on several occasions that he has vision as well.

To be fair to Jol - and I don't always say that - he does seem to see the value of Zokora alot of the time.

they dont have to be 50 yard pass's to be creative or great pass's, most of Zokoras that i see are backwards or to a man sideways in alot of space, players in that list could and probably are playing better balls and creating more, and as a result of trying these there % will drop, Stats only show what you want to see, especialy when it is just one stat, it would need to have alot of other info add'd to really be a good comparison

dont agree with this second bit too, i think we dont play a "holding" player, but normaly play 2 CM who are both capable of staying back and going forward and both swapping and changing through out the game, which is why we see Zokora running forwards at times (because if he is to sit back, he really shouldnt be doing these then)
 

Black

Well-Known Member
May 21, 2007
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If Zokora plays we need some one who he can give the ball to so that person can spray the balls
 

SpurSince57

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2006
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With Jenas on 85%, if I'm not much mistaken.

And I think you'll find Huddlestone gets off a pass every 1.07 minutes, at a 75% success rate, and puts in a successful tackle every 13.65 minutes. Malbranque a pass every 2 minutes (78%), and a tackle every 16 minutes. Jenas manages one every 1.77 minutes, and a tackle every 18 minutes.

So Zokora slots in at second on the passing rate, with one every 1.38 minutes, but a tackle every 21.9 minutes seems rather less impressive.

See! You didn't have to cast your net so wide for comparisons.

Oh, and Tainio gets in a tackle every 17.9 minutes, and a pass every 1.66 minutes, at 75%.
 

stemark44

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2005
6,598
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DZ imo, is more of a replacement for Davids than Carrick. He's not so much a holding player as a spikey/aggressive midfielder. You can argue about the quality of the job he does, but I'm pretty sure that's what he is.

I agree completely,if I was a Director of Football and a manager asked me to find him a younger version of Edgar Davids(without the lip),Didier Zokora is the guy I would have signed.
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
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With Jenas on 85%, if I'm not much mistaken.

And I think you'll find Huddlestone gets off a pass every 1.07 minutes, at a 75% success rate, and puts in a successful tackle every 13.65 minutes. Malbranque a pass every 2 minutes (78%), and a tackle every 16 minutes. Jenas manages one every 1.77 minutes, and a tackle every 18 minutes.

So Zokora slots in at second on the passing rate, with one every 1.38 minutes, but a tackle every 21.9 minutes seems rather less impressive.

See! You didn't have to cast your net so wide for comparisons.

Oh, and Tainio gets in a tackle every 17.9 minutes, and a pass every 1.66 minutes, at 75%.


SS

For the purpose of this thread and like for like comparison, we can ignore Tainio as he hasn't played CM yet this season and malbranque for the same reason. For what it's worth I think that wide players will often clock up more tackles as these are the areas where activity is more frequent.

I think you would accept this. I also acknowledged Malbranques tackling in the thread "It's not just shit luck" which makes it strange that Jol chose Tainio ahead of him for the RM role doesn't it, as Tainio is also less creative than Malbranque. Go figure ?

As far as Huddlestone goes, I had already posted Zokora/Huddlestone stats in the other Zokora Thread which I think earnt me the derisive tag of "statboy" form some muppet.

But for te record I have never said that huddlestone is shit. far from it. And have always maintained that Jenas is probably our most important - certainly hardest working player (along with lee).

The purpose of these stats were to provide a comparison with just about every meaningful competitor. I included players I thought would piss Zokora statistically and was surprised myself that they didn't.

I was merely trying to point out that far from being "shit" or "a dud" or "a pile of wank" to quote but 3 rather poorly informed opinions, he was in fact pretty good. And maybe deserves re-evaluating. To be fair itis something I have said for over a year now without statistics. I personally think that many have decided because he's not "Carrick" he therefore must be shit and instead of seeing what he actually does contribute they have decided if he doesn't fit their preconception then he's shit.

It took some bafoons two seasons (there are stil some around in fact) who think that Lee is shit. You can't change some poor diluded fools but I just thought these stats might alter the perspective slightly of some.
 

SpurSince57

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2006
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I've never dismissed Zokora or any other of our players as shit (at least, not for several seasons); there were very high expectations of him when he came in, and he hasn't really lived up to them as of yet. He isn't as good as Carrick, or, maybe more pertinently, as Sloth pointed out, as Davids; in much the same way, BAE isn't as good as Lee, yet hasn't been an ocean-going disaster, and you seem to have no problem regarding him as a dud.

I imagine Jol started Tainio on the right in preference to Malbranque because of the perceived threat from Arbeloa and Riise, which, as it turned out, was far more perceived than real (Riise has been coming in for an awful lot of slagging on Scouser boards). Malbranque would come on later with fresh legs. If Lennon had been fit, it seems likely to me that Malbranque might have started.

I must say, it's nice to see someone else being called 'statboy'.
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
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But you did call him a "dud" a couple of weeks ago.

And the strange thing is Davids was also given plenty of shit on here as well.

And as far as Carrick goes, I posted in the other thread that I think in being sold to ManU fpr 18m our perspective of him went up retrospectively a little. He also got shit on here if you remember. What I liked about Carrick were, funily enough, the things that I like about Zokora. he tried to make himself available and he kept the ball moving efficiently and to be honest they both tackle a bit. Carrick actually didn't do the stupendous very often at all. he is very often substituted by ManU. Would Roy keane or Viera have ever been subbed ?



I do think that as a LB, BAE is far shorter of what is required than Zokora is as a midfielder. And another mystery is why Bale (who I think is also a little lax defensively) is instantly considered for LM when BAE wasn't, at a time when we didn't have one (my post match comments of BAE were always good on the ball but poor defensively). Only Jol knows the answer.

And again the tackling stats show malbranque as top of the whole league, so why would tainio offer more resistance to a perceived threat of any kind ?
 

SpurSince57

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2006
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If you define a dud as someone or something that hasn't lived up to expectations, then that's what he was for much of last season. And whilst it's true that some players take longer to acclimatise than others, it was getting a little overplayed in Zokora's case.

Is there a single player, King excepted, who hasn't got shit on here at one time or another?

Interesting about Carrick being subbed. There was a correspondence on one of the Guardian blogs the other week in which it came out that SAF tinkers with his line-ups almost as often as Rafa, but it never seems to attract the attention or criticism that Rafa's chopping and changing does. No, Keane would never have been subbed, but how many Keanes are there?

Several people, me among them, wondered why Jol didn't try BAE at LM ahead of Lee once Lee was freed up from covering for Chimbonda. But by then Malbranque was playing, so you have to assume that as we'd signed him to play that role, he was bound to be first choice. And perhaps Jol had seen enough of BAE to decide that he wasn't good enough. Bale, by contrast, has shown he's more than able to cut the mustard. Jol has said he sees him as a LB for the long term, but for the moment I hope he sticks with the Lee-Bale combination as much as possible.

Although Malbranque gets in a lot of tackles, I'd say Tainio is the more defensive-minded of the two, so it was a logical enough selection, especially with Chimbonda getting forward so much. He did a solid enough job, apart from a couple of attempted Hollywood passes which suggested he'd been taken over by the spirit of Ghaly, so why complain? Also, Malbranque had to be available to take over on either wing. In the absence of Lennon, that arrangement gave us the most flexibility. It's equally reasonable to say that Malbranque could have started and Tainio been on the bench, and I wouldn't have had a problem if Jol had decided to play it that way.
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
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But it wsn't Zokora's fault that people's expctations were whatever they were. And personally i think he played well often enough to not be called a dud of any kind.

I don't think he did take that long to acclimatise, I think we as a team took time to adjust to new players in and players out. Our midfield seemed to be in a continual state of flux for virtually the whole season. jenas out injured alot, young Huddlestone's form hot and cold, Lennon injured and again hot and cold, Malbranque on either wing, Ghaly at RW, Murphy at LW, Davids etc.

I think this was the midfield's biggest problem. Not completely of Jol's making as at different times you could make and break a case for playing any two from 3/4 of our CM's but Jol didn't help by chopping changing and playing people out of position. They were uncomfortable, the team disjointed and Zokora - who was new himself to the team and league - had to also cope with an ever revolving set of players around him, not all of which pulled their potential. Wouldn't you agree ?
 

SpurSince57

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2006
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It certainly didn't help, in the same way it didn't help that we were lucky if we could field the same back four for more than two or three games in a row. The luck we had with injuries in 2005-2006 ran out big-time last season; that was the reason for most of the changes, and Jol has to have some leeway for experimentation in that case. He showed no tendency for change for change's sake two seasons ago, because we had a settled line-up; it might not have been ideal in some respects, but it was consistent. Is it any coincidence that our blip coincided with Davids and Tainio getting crocked almost simultaneously, and Mido going off to the ANC?

Last season we had another slump in the New Year that coincided with us having to play Huddlestone and Zokora as CMs because they were effectively the last men standing. It did neither of them any favours at all. So to that extent, yes, there are mitigating factors. We picked up when Jenas came back not because he's our answer to Fabregas, but because we immediately had a better balance; for the same reason, Zokora was more effective.

I just found him frustrating, if not nearly as frustrating as Ghaly. It's the same principle, though; if a player can do stuff two or three times, why not all the time? I don't expect him to play a blinder like he did against Bolton every game, no player does that, but he seemed just to pull that one out of the hat and never really came close before or after. Sure, he had some good-to-OK games, but there were as many in which he was decidedly ho-hum.
 

gibbs131

Banned
May 20, 2005
8,870
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Several people, me among them, wondered why Jol didn't try BAE at LM

Are you serious??? You argued with me for ever when I suggested we played him in the midfield role. Are you arguing with me when you secretly agree with me?

You scoffed at the mere suggestion that the coaches didn't spot his real strengths/shear up his weaknesses and we should have played him on the left wing.

Looks like I convinced you again eh?
 

SpurSince57

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2006
45,213
8,229
Are you serious??? You argued with me for ever when I suggested we played him in the midfield role. Are you arguing with me when you secretly agree with me?

You scoffed at the mere suggestion that the coaches didn't spot his real strengths/shear up his weaknesses and we should have played him on the left wing.

Looks like I convinced you again eh?

Comolli bought him as a LB who could also play in midfield. This was why I wondered—nearly a year ago—why we hadn't tried him there. Several other people wondered the same at the time. Bubble's name springs to mind; yours doesn't. As I said above, I assume the reason we didn't was that Jol decided Malbranque would do a better job. Nothing to do with coaches, just the coach.

You've convinced me of nothing except that you're totally barking.
 
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