I was listening to a BBC interview with Emmanuel Adebayor after the Aston Villa game and he said something like, "Today I got a couple of chances, I could have had more than two (goals). But, you know, that's football and you cannot have five chances and score five goals, otherwise I'd be the best player in the world".
Aside from the fact that this seems a refreshing piece of honesty from a purported egotist, it got me thinking about other players who are sometimes criticised for wasting chances. Earlier this season, Luis Suarez had this particular accusation levelled at him too. I'm not a big fan of Suarez but he is a pretty regular goalscorer for club and country (witness the 4 he scored for Uruguay recently) and likewise, Adebayor has a good record at the highest level.
I'm not talking about goals per game but goals per chances and my ultimate question is: does this even matter? If you get five chances in a game and score two is that better or worse (or the same) as getting two chance and scoring two? Sure, your goal to chance ratio is 100% but who cares?
So I need some input folks - would you rather have a 'waster' who scores 40% of his (many) chances or a 'lazy' player who scores 100% of his (few) chances?? Of course, the ideal is a player who gets five chances and scores all of them but then you'd have the best player in the world (according to Ade) and there's only one of those;)
But maybe 'wasting' chances is natural in football. This table shows the discrepancy between shots and goals (up to Dec 1 2011) for Premier League teams this season. The highest number of shots, unsurprisingly, comes from Man City but 195 shots has yielded 'only' 43 goals. And the number of chances would be even higher than the number of actual shots.
Not even the best player in the world could score from 100% of his chances, actually it looks closer to 20%, even for the good players (I know this table doesn't distinguish between forwards and the rest of the team but you get the drift). Now 20% seems slightly small until you think of the low number of goals scored in any one game. A player scoring a goal from five chances isn't so bad, two from five looks quite good, a hat-trick brilliant.
Personally, I'd sooner have a player who gets chances and wastes them than an opportunistic goal-hanger who does nothing but score a goal or two. Providing that 'waster' actually scores also.......
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