Stats are horrible, horrible things. Don't get us wrong, they can be used for good but more often than not they are twisted to within an inch of their life until all sense of rationale is gone out the window. We blame Sky Sports News.
Take for example a lovely graphic that Jim White introduced this week to compare Philippe Coutinho and Angel Di Maria. Cue social media bedlam. This screengrab has been doing the rounds today accompanied by the caption 'Coutinho's best season vs Di Maria's worst season'.
Coutinho vs Di Maria:
It is certainly an interesting comparison. Liverpool's creator in chief against the man that Man United fans expected to become their creator in chief. The primary reason this is being so widely shared is that the Old Trafford faithful are trying to show how Di Maria's season has not been as bad as is being made out when you take into account that Coutinho has been nominated for the PFA Player of the Year.
And that may be a fair thing to say. Di Maria has been okay this year, but his price tag has certainly gone against him. But as with the majority of stats, these don't show the full story.
Liverpool fans will point to the fact that Coutinho has more often than not been supplying no one up front and that he does a lot more of his work deeper than Di Maria. Again, probably a fair point, so what we're really trying to say is well done to Sky Sports News for making an argument out of nothing.
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