#Starting XI Player Ratings

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Player	r/fcbayern	Sofascore	FotMob	App Average	Deviation	Total Average
Manuel Neuer	8,0	7,1	7,4	7,3	+0,7	7,7
Dayot Upamecano	7,8	7,8	8,1	8,0	-0,2	7,9
Minjae Kim	7,5	7,6	7,6	7,6	-0,1	7,6
Noussair Mazraoui	7,3	7,5	7,6	7,6	-0,3	7,5
Konrad Laimer	7,4	7,4	7,6	7,5	-0,1	7,5
Joshua Kimmich	6,9	7,4	7,8	7,6	-0,7	7,3
Leon Goretzka	7,3	7,7	8,0	7,9	-0,6	7,6
Kingsley Coman	6,4	7,9	8,4	8,2	-1,8	7,3
Leroy Sané	6,8	6,9	7,7	7,3	-0,5	7,1
E.M. Choupo-Moting	5,8	6,8	7,1	7,0	-1,2	6,4
Harry Kane	8,2	7,7	8,0	7,9	+0,3	8,1

 

• What do the tables’ columns mean?
• App Average: this calculates the average score from the two apps (Sofascore and FotMob). If Sofascore gave a player a 7.0 and FotMob gave him an 8.0, the “App Average” would be 7.5
• Deviation: this shows how much our poll results deviate from the “App Average” scores. If we gave a player a 5.0 and the average of the apps is 6.5, the “Deviation” will be -1.5
• Total Average: this calculates the average score from the r/fcbayern, Sofascore, and FotMob ratings. If we gave a player a 5.0, Sofascore gave them a 5.5, and FotMob gave them a 6.0, the “Total Average” would be 5.5

 

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#Man of the Match

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r/fcbayern	Sofascore	FotMob
🏅Harry Kane	🏅Kingsley Coman	🏅Kingsley Coman

 

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#Which of the subs could have been a difference-maker?

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• Thomas Müller (71%)
• Mathys Tel (22,6%)
• Raphaël Guerreiro (3,2%)
• Aleksandar Pavlovic & Alphonso Davies (1,6% each)

 

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#The Unsung Hero(s) of the Match

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• Konrad Laimer (26,6%)
• Leon Goretzka (15,6%)
• Dayot Upamecano & Min-jae Kim (12,5% each)
• Manuel Neuer (10,9%)

(Players with <8% votes were omitted.)

 

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#Bayern’s Team Performance

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🔼 Forwards: 6,5

⏹️ Midfielders: 6,9

🔽 Defenders: 7,5

 

1️⃣ First Half Performance: 7,8

2️⃣ Second Half Performance: 5,2

✅ Overall Team Performance: 6,5

 

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#Additional Ratings

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🤜🏾 Köln’s Performance: 5,5

👨🏻‍🏫 Thomas Tuchel: 4,3

🧑🏽‍⚖️ Referee’s Performance: 7,1

 

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#⚠️ If you could pick one of these guys as Bayern’s manager right now, who would it be?

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40,6% of the responders would want to keep Thomas Tuchel.

39,1% would rather replace Tuchel with Xabi Alonso.

10,9% want Julian Nagelsmann to return.

9,4% would welcome Hansi Flick back.

 

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#⚠️ If you followed the Match Thread on r/fcbayern during the match, what do you think about the new “scoreboard” Reddit feature that’s being tested?

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41% have no preference.

31,1% like the new “scoreboard” feature.

13,1% aren’t sure.

8,2% prefer the old Match Thread setup.

 

A few of you took a minute to elaborate (thank you for that!):

• “I didn’t notice it.”

• “I miss some important features like lineups, yellow cards, etc.”

• “Looks decent, although I would prefer for it to give a little more information about the game.”

 

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#If the Match Thread were a TV pundit, this is what they’d say:

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"Welcome, folks, to the post-match analysis, and boy, do we have a lot to unpack here. First things first, there’s a cloud looming over this match thicker than fog on the Elbe – I’m talking about the curious case of the missing substitutions, folks. Bayern fans are scratching their heads raw over Tuchel’s decision to keep that bench colder than a December night in Munich. I mean, with a squad as thin as a rake and dealing with those post-international duty aches, making zero subs is like a chef refusing to season a stew – it leaves a bland taste in everyone’s mouth.

 

Now, let’s dive into the action on the pitch. Starting with the man guarding the net, Manuel Neuer. He had to step up big time after that precarious back pass from Minjae Kim. Talk about a hair-raising moment! Neuer’s experience is invaluable, but relying on your keeper to cover for outfield mistakes? That’s a strategy that’ll make your hair grey faster than you can say ‘Sweeper-Keeper.’

 

And speaking of pressure, the defense, including Dayot Upamecano and Noussair Mazraoui, were probably feeling it too, especially with the team clinging onto a slender one-goal lead and no substitutes to offer relief or patch up the leaks. It’s like trying to sail a ship with holes in it!

 

Now, let’s move up the pitch to the midfield duo of Leon Goretzka and Joshua Kimmich, not to mention the dynamic wingers Leroy Sané and Kingsley Coman. They were putting in the effort, no doubt about it, but effort without results in football? That’s like having a car without wheels – it may look good, but it’s not going anywhere fast.

 

But let’s talk about that bench, folks. The frustration is palpable. Fans are questioning Thomas Tuchel’s decision-making, especially his non-use of available subs like Thomas Müller, Serge Gnabry, and the promising Mathys Tel. It’s like having a Swiss Army knife but only using the toothpick. And benching Müller for Choupo? Well, that’s like choosing a tricycle over a Ferrari!

Tuchel’s post-match sincerity about not knowing how to use Müller is quite telling. It paints a picture of a coach who’s struggling to harness the unique qualities of his players, which is like a conductor unable to harmonize an orchestra. And let’s not forget the fact that no substitutes were made after an international break, adding player fatigue and injury risks into the mix. Fans are calling Tuchel’s squad management nothing short of ‘garbage.’

 

So, what’s the fans’ verdict, you ask? Well, it’s as mixed as a Bavarian beer garden’s playlist. Some say Tuchel’s a tactical genius, while others see him as a managerial maverick who’s lost his map. But one thing is clear, folks – when it comes to subs, it’s high time to give that bench some love and let them stretch their legs!"

 

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#Closing comments

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There were 65 responses and only one troll vote this time.

 

The If the Match Thread were a TV pundit segment is an experiment of mine. I feed an AI with the comments from the Match Thread and ask it to find a general consensus in the opinions that were posted. The AI then transforms this into something a TV pundit might say. The result is completely AI-generated and not a reflection of my own personal opinion!

I’m not sure if it’s here to stay, it really depends on how much I feel like tinkering with it in the future. The way it is now, I can imagine that it might become a bit repetitive (especially in its metaphors), at which point the novelty would wear off quickly.

We’ll see!

 

/u/ClassWarNowII posted an insightful comment about how sites like Sofascore and FotMob work that I thought was worth reading:

 

Reminder about match poll results (because even though it’s described in the thread, this keeps coming up): ALL of these sites like WhoScored work the same way. At no point does a human have any input into their scores. They’re generated algorithmically based on a small handful of quantifiable variables in a sport full of unquantifiable factors. That’s why their scores often don’t seem to match up with reality.

It’s like a robot watching a match through a set of numbers with no understanding of the sport, its tactics, or its aesthetics. They “see” a successful forward pass, not an impeccable through-ball that enabled the receiver to score with one touch. They “see” a successful dribble, even if it was actually a clumsy and auspicious ricochet off of the player’s shin.

In other words, trust your eyes and stop worrying about these machine-generated approximations of how good the players were. These sites aren’t yet close to competing with a knowledgeable fan’s eye test, even if they seem more objective (they are 100% objective in a way that’s basically meaningless; they have a huge capacity for error). Humans more than overcome the deficit of cognitive bias with their contextual understanding of what’s going on and ability to see the game as more than a limited, highly finite set of discrete events.

It’s like xG. The models are getting better all the time as they’re trained on more data and incorporate additional variables, but they’re still essentially shit. They’re extremely primitive and emphatically incapable of deciding who “should” have won a game. The fact that people use the stats for this purpose is a tragedy. I blame their irresponsible, widespread use by commentators and directors, making the numbers seem far more authoritative and definitive than they actually are. At present, they’re really only good for comparing the efficiency of strikers over long periods of time (after which the inherent errors tend to average away).

Let me give another example that illustrates how xG is just a slightly smarter version of the same robot watching numbers. If a player scores by bending a shot around a defender with the outside of his boot in order to block the keeper’s view and kisses the bottom right post as it flies in, most xG models still compute that as “shot from the centre of the box to the bottom right with one defender in the way” (no accounting for the amount of curve, the outside lace technique, the precision, the unsighted keeper etc., which all add or subtract to the difficulty of the chance). This, along with lack of data for ambitious shots, is why the BL’s official probability on Kane’s halfway line banger was an absurd 0.2 (20%). To the computer, that shot looked like a regular 1v1 with a basic (maybe even quasi-linear) distance multiplier and points removed for hitting the centre of the goal, which it naively considers a poorer shot.

When I was an academic, I did some work in statistics with professional-level xG models, so I know what they look like, what their uses are, and how weak they can be. These algorithmically-generated stats are currently the most misused and abused aspect of football discourse. People quote them as gospel, presumably under the assumption that they’re simply non-fuzzy logic and arithmetic operations (i.e. stuff for which computers are supposed to be infallible), but they’re not even close to that (xG is basic AI/ML with ~10 variables and player scores are just formulae based on official match stats). Trust your eyes as the ultimate judge, and stop using some pRNG player scores to criticise other users for being overly harsh or wrong or whatever. Both of you, as humans with an understanding of this complex sport, know far more than the automatic results, so you should debate each other with appropriate vigour, rather than using these random numbers as cudgels. Right now, xG is still not much better than raw shots/shots on target stats for determining the “”““correct””“” outcome of a match. (Sorry for the long post but this is a subject I’m passionate about.)

If you appreciate the work they put into this comment and you’d like to give them some karma, you can find the OP here!

 

Got any ideas/suggestions on how to improve future polls? Let me know in the comments!