Where’s My Joy? Has Football Been Lost to Stats and Safety?

Sometime on Wednesday evening, not long after Liverpool had found a way to turn their latest corner (who’s to tell if this one is another cul-de-sac, or whatever it translates to in Dutch), I logged into a popular Liverpool fan forum to read people’s thoughts on the game.

I’m opinionated and I usually think I can back it up but I like reading forums. They’ve existed for more than twenty years, and you get a genuine breadth of feeling from people of all ages and backgrounds. It’s far more honest than the shrieking nonsense that pervades social media.

Anyway, I clicked on and found something depressingly familiar.

In amongst the usual “played well, but Qarabag were rubbish” (edited slightly so I’m allowed back on this site) and “yeah, decent result” comments were the newest and most tiresome breed of football fan: the xG bore.

“Well, we only had five shots and all five went in, that’s not sustainable football.”

“It’s a good win, but our xG wasn’t good.”

Good lord.

I can’t tell you the expected word count or xW for this piece sorry but I’ll try to restrain myself.

Spend enough time on forums or scrolling through people who surely cannot be real, and you’ll see references to “xG analysis”, “pitch tilt”, or “OPPDA” something I always assumed was Bulgarian.

It’s all so sterile.

There is a place for statistics in football. You could argue they helped my club win a Premier League title. But the constant obsession with numbers drives me insane. Does anyone really care how many goals their team might have scored? Or do they care what actually happened?

The nadir for me came last season, when a Manchester United blogger opened his post-match thoughts on a 3–0 defeat to Liverpool with: “Did you see the xG?” as if a 0.54 xG difference could somehow erase the pain of losing to your rivals.

And it’s not just them.

There’s a peculiar brand of po-faced analysis, often disguised as being “unemotional” or “honest”, that sucks the joy out of football.

Take Federico Chiesa. No one quite understands why, but he’s found a place in normal fans’ hearts. He runs himself into the ground, seems to genuinely love the game, and plays like it means something to him whether he’s actually elite or not.

He scored on Wednesday. Normal people were pleased.

Not the staterati.

“Well, he’s still a terrible fit in Slot’s system.”

“He’s neither a 10 nor a winger.”

“He’s lost his explosive pace.”

On and on.

That’s when I started wondering where’s the fun gone?

When people say “the game’s gone”, I’m not convinced they mean VAR, despite the constant moaning.

We complained about referees long before technology arrived. England practically invented it Urs Meier, Lampard’s ghost goal in 2010… we would’ve whinged even if we’d won.

I don’t think it’s money either. People romanticise a pre-money “golden era” that never really existed. Football was always a business it just wore a cheaper suit. For every Saudi investment fund today, there was an Abramovich, a Sheikh Mansour, a Jack Walker, or Manchester United PLC.

But maybe the answer is simpler.

Some analysis does have value. Great tactical breakdowns are rare and worth their weight in gold. I’ve learned a huge amount from brilliant analysts over the years. But somewhere along the way, everyone decided they were one and football lost its greatest asset to the spectator.

Belief.

Joy.

Football is at its best when it breaks free from numbers and does things that make no sense.

Leicester winning the Premier League.

Greece winning the Euros.

Macclesfield knocking Crystal Palace out of the FA Cup.

A team containing Djimi Traoré winning the Champions League.

Darwin Núñez scoring twice in injury time against Brentford to swing a title race.

Did I know Darwin’s output didn’t match his xG?

Yes.

Did I care?

No.

It was the chaos. The unpredictability. The feeling that he could either blow a defence apart or blow himself up and not even the stats could tell you which.

That was the fun.

Football is better when you invest with your heart, not your head. When you believe in a player only you rate. When you trust the big number nine even when logic says you shouldn’t.

And it’s no coincidence that as stats took over, football became safer. Pasteurised. Set-piece obsessed. Possession without purpose. Fewer long-range shots. Suspicion of flair unless it leads to a “key contribution”.

That’s what’s made the game stale.

Yes, this era has produced tactical brilliance and despite the stick he gets, some of Pep Guardiola’s sides have played breathtaking football but too often, the game has become mechanical. Robotic. By-the-numbers.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

So I’m begging you: put down the stats. Close the models. Step away from the dashboards and the think-pieces.

And just enjoy the ride.