Premier League Football! Every weekend, millions of fans online and in households around the world debate, despair and celebrate as events unfold in the most exciting league in the world. An often contentious sticking point that always seems to divide opposing fans is the concept of fans lamenting that their team ‘deserved to win the match’ regardless of the reality of the outcome of the match.
Deserve?! How does one go about deserving to win a match? What are the metrics involved with deciding who the deserved winners were? Is it the team with more possession? Or the team with the most shots at goal? Maybe it’s the team that has the most accurate passes from its Left Back to the Centre Forward. Surely, at the end of the day it’s the team that’s scored more goals than the other that deserves to get the three points? But even that is a redundant measure because in this day and age, where the most in-depth statistics and information is available, everything can be micro analysed to support an individual’s view.
Over the past couple of matchdays, ex footballers turned pundits and journalists alike have been up in arms because the perceived deserved winners have not gotten their way. This Sunday saw ‘Derby Day’ in the Premier League as Liverpool took on Everton and Manchester United took on title rivals Manchester City. Both games were a thrilling watch from beginning to end, but the outcomes of both matches hinged on fans arguing what was the ‘deserved’ outcome.
According to the statistics, Liverpool dominated possession with 79% of it and had 23 goal attempts compared to the 3 for Everton. However, the match ended up finishing 1-1. On Twitter, Spanish journalist Guillem Balague claimed that if Liverpool had won the match ‘the real story of the game would have been told’. In reality, Liverpool had 3 shots on target which was only one more than Everton and hardly bothered Jordan Pickford throughout the match. Liverpool’s goal came through a moment of magic from Mohamed Salah and his teammates spent the rest of the match getting in to threatening positions without actually doing much. Everton, by everyone’s admission didn’t do anything either and were on the back foot for the whole game. A draw was a fair result.
The Manchester Derby was always going to be a clash of styles: Mourinho’s pragmatism versus Guardiola’s pass and press. The statistics and result went in the way most football fans expected with City controlling the ball and having more efforts at goal in a 2-1 victory. If we look at the action however, City’s goals came from two poorly dealt with set pieces rather than their supposed open play dominance. United had the clearest opportunities in the match but were repelled by Ederson’s fantastic double save. Although City had the ball in dangerous areas in open play, De Gea wasn’t properly tested until at least the 70th minute after a long range shot from Kevin De Bruyne. Does the fact City passed the ball around the edge of the area for the whole game and only tested De Gea after United left themselves exposed in search of the equaliser in the latter stages of the game mean that they deserved to win the match?
The common trend and narrative on Twitter seems to be that whichever team has the most possession overall are the deserved victors, but that devalues the clinical play, defensive diligence and incisiveness of teams that take their chances when they have the ball for a lesser amount of time. They deserve to win just as much as the ball hoarders.
This weekend was just a small snapshot of an occurrence that has gone on for years with teams that ‘deserved’ to win not winning and teams getting ‘deserved victories’ without creating clear cut chances. It is an interesting quirk to football that will never die down. Let’s hope that next weekend the team you support actually wins rather than just deserve to. That’s the most important thing.
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