As far as statistics go, Frank Lampard is a better player than Steven Gerrard.
In England, a debate has been going on about Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. These two are the golden Premiership midfielders, the idols of millions. So who is the best?
Liverpool are not a patch on Chelsea domestically, but Gerrard has broken record set up by Ian Rush for Liverpool goals in European competitions.
And playing for England recently, Gerrard shone while Lampard rather limped.
So is Gerrard better than Lampard?
Not so fast, my friends.
You can work out who is the best player, but the calculations are rather complicated.
Let me share with you some work we've done on analysing the best striker because, if you can follow that, you'll see how we reached on Lampard and Gerrard.
We quickly encountered a problem in devising the best method of calculation.
Using data for every on-field action by every striker in the Premiership, we were able to compare the contribution made to a side by a particular forward, compared with that made by the average striker.
The statisticians simulated the entire season(so far) over and over again, replacing each striker in each team by an average player one at a time, to see how much difference the replacement made to that team.
From this, one can calculate the numbers of points each striker has added to their team.
Now, let me take Didier Drogba in order to illustrate to you the difficulty we had.
Chelsea have a sensational defence. Scoring slightly a fewer goals doesn't impack thair number of points all that much.
So even though Drogba scores freely, he doesn't add as many points to his sides as players in less exalted sides.
There is a way round this: To get a crude measure of who the best striker is, you simulate the season for an average side with the different strikers in and out of the team.
Why crude? Because Drogba scored his goals for high-scoring Chelsea.
Would he have been so impressive playing for, say, Charlton?
The two methods produce different results. When you use the average team simulation, Drogba tops the strikers' list, and Wayne Rooney, Louis Saha and Thierry Henry all figure.
Team data
But when you use the data from the teams themselves, former Portsmouth star Nwankwo Kanu comes top despite the fact that his contribution has been dropping off.
The performance of Blackburn Rovers' Shabani Nonda has been extraordinary. He only comes second because he spent a great deal less time on the pitch than his rivals.
Blackburn's Benni McCarthy is also right up there, while Bolton's favourite El Hadji Diouf comes bottom of the entire 82-strong list.
Bobby Zamora's contribution is also noteable given his relatively scarce appearances for West Ham.
Comparing this season with last, Henry had one of the worst campaigns in the Premiership and Jon Stead of Sheffield United one of the best.
Now back to Lampard and Gerrard.
Fortunately, the dilemma evaporates. Why? Because for all the guff about Gerrard, his domestic contribution is little better than made by the average player.
I know that is difficult to believe, but it is at least partly the result of the position Rafael Benitez plays him in.
Gerrard's stats bounce around. A couple of seasons back, he was receiving best player accolades but out model didn't rate him at all.
Last season, we raved about him, putting him right up there. This campaign we felt he's little better than okay.
Lampard, on the other hand, is a super soar-away player. Year after year, he comes top or nearly top of out table.
And this season is no exception.
He absolutely thumps Gerrard.
On one measure(the average team method), he is eight times better than the Liverpool star while non the other, he is more than 10 times better.
Scoring 20 goals from midfield is an extraordinary achievement but Lampard also adds his assists and his accurate passing.
Successful pass completion is a very important part of a team's portfolio. If you don't believe me, as Arsenal's side of invincibles.
So we can resolve the issue without to dispute about method. Lampard is, far and away, the more valuable player.
From TNP 7 april 2007
