I wholeheartedly agree with you on the gut feeling vs. stats issue, but this complex algorithm in and of itself doesn't seem to reveal any information that isn'

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the gut feeling vs. stats issue, but this complex algorithm in and of itself doesn't seem to reveal any information that isn't obvious from basic stats: Xavi is clearly seen as the "dynamo" from the basic stats perspective (in fact he routinely breaks passes received/made records). If one would come with a complex algorithm that would reveal something new (to me, to the media), that would be really exciting for me. Since you seem to have an interest in such situations (complex techniques claiming discrepancy between consensus and actual performance), I'll go off on a tangent and shamelessly plug (again! don't people have any shame these days?) what I think is a very good example: http://wagesofwins.com/wins-produced/how-to-calculate-wins-produced/ http://wagesofwins.com/wins-produced/how-to-calculate-wins-p... http://wagesofwins.com/faq/ http://wagesofwins.com/faq/