I’m not paying much attention to what’s happening in the Interlull other than to keep an eye out for stories about our players being smooshed and bashed and beflobbled by bad tackles and/or muscle strains.
However, it’s hard to escape the news that Nicklas Bendtner scored a hat-trick last night because my Twitter timeline was full of people saying ‘Jesus, Bendtner scored a hat-trick!’. Denmark beat the USA 3-2 last night and TGSTEL got all the goals.
Of course this is of no relevance to us because he’s not an Arsenal player anymore so it just shows you the level of nothing that’s going on when I have to mention it. The big story of the day was us giving Cardiff a Semi, so you know you’re in trouble.
So, I got to thinking about which Arsenal, or indeed former, Arsenal player would be worst suited for a role in one of today’s top television shows. This was because it occurred to me that should the zombie apocalypse take place and the world went all The Walking Dead, it’d be just my luck to get lumbered with Alex Hleb, a bloke who won’t shoot.
That was pretty much as far as I got with that one.
Anyway, I watched an interesting film over the last couple of days called Room 237. It’s sort of about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, but it’s mostly about crazy people who see things in The Shining that make them think it’s about something else entirely.
For example, there’s a tin of baking powder with an American Indian on it so this one bloke thinks it’s all about the way they were treated as the white man spread across the continent. Another bloke thinks Kubrick made the film not to tell the story of Stephen King’s book, but to leave clues which showed he (Kubrick), under government orders, faked the moon landing footage on a film set.
There was someone who thought it was all about the holocaust and another who thought it was about Minotaurs. Now, Minotaurs are pretty cool, in fairness, they’re my favourite kind of taur, but why anyone would make a deliberate attempt to create a subtext in a horror movie about Minotaurs is beyond me. There’s other mad stuff in there too, and it’s quite entertaining (if a little long), simply because these people are bonkers.
I have no doubt that certain filmmakers like to have moments of symbolism in their films, and some use them as allegorical tales which reference other events/stories, but for the most part I think they just make films and tell a story. The same with writers.
I’m positive that when people say: “His choice of this word in this sentence shows that he was inspired by the works of So and So who had a huge influence on Some World Event”, it’s just that the writer just liked that word in that place at that particular time. Most of it is accidental. I know I’ve used phrases and sentences in the past, even on this blog, and somebody will say ‘Nice reference to X’, and I’m thinking ‘Er, what? I didn’t reference anything’, but when you look at it there it is.
Maybe I’m just not a deep thinker, but anyway, the idea that Kubrick made a film about faking the moon landings, Minotaurs, the rape of the American Indian, the holocaust, and all the other stuff is patently ridiculous. What’s happened is people have looked at the film for a deeper meaning and used the bits they think are relevant to back them up. Confirmation bias, basically. You see what you want to see.
So, ‘How is this relevant to Arsenal?’, you might ask. Well, I think it’s something we’re all guilty of as Arsenal fans, and indeed as football fans. We have strong opinions, we like to have those opinions reinforced by what we see. For example, those who feel Calum Chambers isn’t a good option at right back will point to the three tackles he missed against Newcastle on Saturday, but won’t take into account the nine good ones he made and all the other good defensive work he did.
Theo Walcott only making 6 passes in a game says a lot to me about what I think about him, and I fully accept that, but others will point to less tangible qualities like his movement, or how his pace scares defences and has a knock-on effect which is beneficial to the team.
It’s interesting, because for so long we judged only on what we saw with our own eyes in the 90 minutes, and maybe a repeat watch of some highlights (which as we know can be misleading at the best of times). Nowadays, everyone has access, if they want it, to fairly detailed stats after each game.
If you use the StatsZone app, for example, you can look at a team’s performance, as well as individual stats which cover every aspect of player’s game, his attacking performance, his defensive contribution, pass combinations, which direction the passes went in, how many duels they’ve won and so much more. You now have to, and I do think it’s necessary to make an informed judgement on a player’s performance, look at it from a traditional and statistical point of view.
If the data is there, it seems foolish not to use it. Often times it confirms what I thought from watching the game, but there have been many other occasions when I’ve thought a player was ineffective or played poorly, but when you look at their output it was nowhere near as bad as you thought.
There was one game recently when my eyes were surprised at how often Santi Cazorla failed to complete his passes, the stats showed me he failed to make 3 of about 60 passes. So maybe, because it was Cazorla and you expect more from him, that what you see is skewed by what you expect.
Of course there are people who will tell you, almost every time stats are used, that stats don’t tell the full story but I don’t think anybody has ever suggested they do. What they can do is provide more context to what you’ve seen during a game. I’m sure there’s more than an element of seeing what you want to see when you watch live, but with more information after the fact that perspective is challenged – and that’s a good thing in my opinion.
Anyway, enough prattling for me. For those of you desperately seeking to find the hidden meaning in this blog it’s about the Irish famine, the fact that ELO were behind the death of John Lennon, and the rise of the Neoliberalism in Western Europe.
Till tomorrow.
