Do player stats tell the whole story?

How to read the game beyond the numbers

There's a stat for almost everything a player does on the pitch. You can scroll through goals, assists, tackles, chances created, and so much more. 

But if you rely on numbers alone, the picture gets blurry fast.

Stats are helpful, but they rarely explain the full story. A player can post tidy pass accuracy while avoiding anything risky. A striker might finish a match with no shots because he spent 90 minutes dragging defenders around to create space for others.

Numbers give you clues, but they don’t give you the whole truth. Here’s how to read between the lines without getting lost.

What player stats do well

Football stats highlight activity. They show who touched the ball, who moved it forward, who stopped attacks, who tested the keeper, and who made decisions that changed the tempo. They track involvement and patterns that might not jump out during the match.

If a winger repeatedly breaks into the final third, the stats will show it. If a centre-back keeps stepping out to break pressure, the stats show that too. These numbers are useful because they give supporters a sense of how consistently something happened rather than how memorable it looked.

But numbers can only go so far. A pass completed under no pressure counts the same as one threaded through traffic. A “shot on target” can be a 25-yard dribbler straight at the keeper.  

Not every metric has the right context behind it, and that’s why stats alone can miss the mark.

What stats miss

Great football is fast, chaotic and constantly bending out of its shape. You can see two players complete the same number of passes and know immediately that they influenced the match in totally different ways. 

Stats won’t always show:

• Who made a run that opened the pass for someone else

• Who blocked a cross without it counting as a tackle

• Who shouted their full-back into the right position

• Who dragged defenders around so a teammate had space

These actions shift the match without triggering any obvious metric. They don’t live on a chalkboard or in a spreadsheet, they live in the flow of the game.

And then there’s the biggest factor of all: luck. A deflection here, a bounce there, a goalkeeper losing their footing, a mis-hit pass turning into an assist, there’s always something where luck plays a part. 

And that’s something that’s traditionally been difficult to measure…

Spot the lucky breaks and win as you watch with Match Bingo

Match Bingo pulls all of this together through its live cards and leaderboards. Each one focuses on a different part of the match picture, like passing, pace, refereeing and even luck, so you can follow the game from several viewpoints at once. 

It turns the numbers you’d normally check after full time into something you can track in real time, with chances to win as the action develops.

Stats on cards. Prizes to be won. Download Match Bingo and follow the Premier League the fun way.