Arsenal played the majority of their match against Chelsea with just 10 men yet some how the Daily Mail managed to come up with player ratings that just don’t make sense.
Take a look at the ratings below. Do you see what I see?
Kepa and Lacazette ranked the same? Granit Xhaka, who was simply superb at centreback rated worse than four starting Chelsea players with Willian picked out as the man of the match.
You can clearly see from these ratings that they just make them up with no thought whatsoever:
Now let’s look at the ratings from a neutral site, FotMob (Daily Mail ratings in brackets):
Chelsea
- Kepa 5 (6)
- Azpilcueta 7.8 (7)
- Rudiger 7 (6)
- Christensen 6.8 (6)
- Emerson 7.3 (6.5)
- Kante 5.4 (5)
- Jorginho 8.3 (6)
- Kovacic 7 (6)
- Hudson-Odoi 7.7 (7)
- Willian 6.3 (7.5)
- Abraham 7.3 (6)
- Sub – Mount 6 (6)
- Sub – Barkley 6.2 (6)
- Sub – Batshuayi 6.2 (6)
- Head coach – Lampard no score (6)
Arsenal
- Leno 6.6 (6.5)
- Bellerin 7.6 (6.5)
- Mustafi 7.3 (5)
- Luiz 5 (5)
- Saka 6.7 (6)
- Torreira 7 (6)
- Xhaka 6.6 (6)
- Pepe 6.3 (6)
- Ozil 6.3 (6)
- Martinelli 6.9 (7)
- Lacazette 6.2 (6)
- Sub – Holding no score (6)
- Sub – Guendouzi 6.2 (6)
- Sub – Willock no score (no score)
- Head coach – Arteta no score (6.5)
As you can see from the Daily Mail ratings, some do compare with the FotMob ratings, but that seems more by luck than design.
Player ratings, however unlike stats-based ratings should be a lot more nuanced and, therefore, reflective of the player’s impact on the game.