Now, you may be aware that on Friday MCFC released a metric fuckton of stats upon the world. This topic is to keep track of what people do with them, discuss them and to give GC a raging hard on.
Yes, it is indeed a load of wank. Things like John Terry being both a better passer and more creative than Daniel Agger, and Jamie Carragher having the 2nd best touch in the entire league (since revoked) are to be expected. This is an amateur statistical analysis on a fairly unprecedented scale. I say amateur because we're all learning how to work the system, about the nuances of Opta stats and what little caveats throw up problems (like headers initially counting for first touches)
Now as it is, this isn't amazingly good. In fact it's kind of like a poor version of an FM database. However, the Guardian seems to be showing a fair amount of commitment to solving problems and tweaking their model until they get it right. This is encouraging; if they keep it up, it could become an invaluable resource for the future, especially if Man City keep kindly releasing the data for free.