by sussexpob » Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:35 am
The term expert should be used loosely when discussing some people in the commentary box. What does Atherton's experience add to any discussion? He was a captain that overseen a decade of consistent failure, his average of 37 was sub-par standard for any decent team, he was part of a selection team that consistently showed utterly disastrous thought processes, and he was a caught cheat. Why should he be considered an expert on the game, he hardly displayed any great understanding of it. I think Warne has better ideas than virtually anyone when he reigns in his idiocy, but sadly he came from that Channel 9 Healy-esque stock that downgrades cricket discussion for boisterous nonsense. Certainly more qualified and displays more interesting points that the aforementioned England Captain.
I tend to find Atherton gets a good ride from people. He over complicates widely accepted points to try to make them sound original, and I find his fact knowledge on many of his articles is blatantly wrong or misunderstood, but he gets away with it due to the fact he knows most people also dont know about it. Take the recent article westo that you posted about his player development/scouting points. He seems to laud up the fact the ECB are investigating NFL style scouting, and the fact they have built a relationship with the Cleveland Browns as a positive.
If he knew anything about the Browns then he'd have known this is a team who in the last 20 years have drafted 5 Quarterbacks in the first round that were all big draft busts. The most famous, Johnny Manziel, was an alcoholic who will forever make lists till he dies of "biggest draft busts ever" (the Browns ignored the warning signs). They also signed Robert Griffin III who is also known as one of the biggest busts ever. They have consistently hemorrhaged top level draft picks and wasted them on rubbish. In NFL, the words "Cleveland Browns" is synonymous with failure. They are a laughing stock for their scouting and GM decision making. They have a 24 year streak (by far the longest streak, about double) in the NFL of not progressing in the playoffs. Athers made himself look very stupid mentioning them in the capacity of his argument.
In fact, the whole discussion about American sports was cringeworthy. Its well known in the NFL that scouts and selection models are basically no more effective than guesswork due to the style that they use attempting to use such small samples to rate so many physical and mental metrics. This draft, the rookie scouts blasted a cornerback for being slow and lacking top level agility and rated him to drop down the draft after his pro day, only for him to turn up to the combine and rank 1 in all speed and agility tests.
If you are ever interested in this sort of thing, there is an excellent podcast where an US radio guy gets the top stars in the NFL to read their rookie scouting reports. They are hilarious, they are always incredibly wrong.
The whole article sounded like a pseudo-scientific piece of pro ECB propaganda. It was a horrifying article. Very badly informed.
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And a hat and bra to you too, my good sirs!