a pass that splits the opposition defence and creates a goal-scoring chance.
Anyway, so that shows you that Song is as good as Fabregas apart from the goals? Not that convinced by football statistics to be honest - what counts as a shot on target or a completed pass is so much in the eye of the beholder. I mean, I saw a thing explaining why one of United's reserve keepers was better than Van Der Saar based on the percentage of shots that he'd stopped. His argument was that Ferguson was picking the wrong keeper. My thoughts would be more along the lines of - the most succesful manager of the last twenty years has watched them both and decided that VDS is better and the stats fail to reflect the difficulty of each save rendering them meaningless. And that's assuming that goalkeeping is all about shot-stopping.
very true - statistics are not everything. in your example, perhaps the reserve goalkeeper played in easier games (Carling Cup, etc), and it is likely that he played less frequently than VDS (and, for example, saved two out of two shots against a lower league team or something) and also you have the issue of what sort of shot was stopped, the difficulty, etc.
I don't think the goal here is to say that Song
is as good as Cesc, he obviously isn't. however, what I think the Song v. Cesc comparison does (and is convincing b/c it included more than one stat - ie, number of games played, number of passes / success rate, and crucially, the type of pass - ie, 'key passes / game' - so it avoids the possibility of one player doing 100 backpasses to his centre back) is destroy the myth that he is simply a destructive midfielder who, to paraphrase numerous Arsenal fans, ''needs to know his place, stay back and let the more skilled players make do their thing'' (same thing as Yaya Toure - as if big African midfielder = should stay back and break up play).
he has been making key passes like the one this weekend for quite some time, and showing that he is a very complete central player. defensively, he is good too - look at the interception / tackles stats. he does need to improve his concentration as he is somewhat inconsistent, though. and of course there is still room for much improvement, but I think Arsenal's defensive problems are not down to him - not even down to other individual players, but rather systematic - the team does not hold it's shape well, pressing is too spontaneous and not co-ordinated. that's down to approach / coaching, really.
wrt to his performance this w/end - he just got back from Africa from a midweek game and was a doubt before kickoff, so I think that goes some way to explaining the relatively poor performance.
in summary, I
<3 Song.