Strikers and other things

[ferrarilover]

Chardie, unfortunately, (and quite contrary to the suggestions of some) I haven't the time to separate full appearances from substitute ones. Accordingly, sub appearances are lumped in with full appearances and they all count the same for base material purposes.
I find that the sport with the very best use of statistics to inform the viewing audience of the comparisons which may be drawn between players is baseball. In baseball, they are able to calculate something called Earned Run Average (ERA). This tells us the average number of earned runs conceded by a pitcher over the course of an average 9 innings pitched. Don't worry if this doesn't make a lot of sense, the important element is that, the overwhelming majority of pitchers will not pitch 9 whole innings, so it is a case of applying some basic mathematics to the number of earned runs they have conceded and the number of innings they have pitched.
I'm sure that, over a much shorter demonstrative period (say, a season at most), I would be able to produce a similar effect by totting up the total minutes on the pitch and dividing by 90 to take a total number of whole matches played, but over the course of a long career (Jarvis or similar, for example), this simply isn't practical.
Based on your feedback, I might have a little play with Google later and see if I can find some archive statistical data which gives players total minutes on the pitch. f anyone knows of anywhere, let me know. Accuracy will set us free.

Matt.

[hector]

I think you are right to include all appearances and not to separate, even if only to remove that most annoying pet hate statistic of mine which is 'goals from games started'. The goals from starts stat is a misnomer and was regularly applied to Duane Darby and Elliot Benyon to try and make them appear prolific. What it neglected was the fact if the said statistician was attributing goals from games the player didn't start (eg after coming on as sub) to the games he started but didn't score in. It would be like an cricketer calculating his average run rate after he ignored the times he was out for a duck.