Opta index reveals flaws in 6s chaos theory game plan

I remember after one of my first games for Lewes congratulating the veteran captain David Read on how well he played. His response “no I didn’t, I gave the ball away 3 times”. Over a subsequent pint he told me that he always counted the number of misplaced passes he made in a game and no doubt recorded the detail in his match note book perhaps the forerunner to the Opta index. For the first half Lewes were in complete control of the game, spending the majority of the half camped in Brighton’s half and a possession rate of 75%. This was also matched by a turnover rate in the high 80% as Lewes pressed Brighton into numerous mistakes. Unfortunately half time analysis showed clearly that our passing completion rate was near zero although we had had 10 times the number of chances. Only Malcom in goal produced anywhere near top stats. The complex half time analysis completely flummoxed the home side (unsurprisingly as any basic maths had long ago been forgotten by the majority of the side) who thought the tactics were to play to a deterministic chaos theory with the opposition players being the “strange attractors”. Steve Fuller pounced on a loose pinball to open the scoring but needless to say further chaos ensued with the ball been treated as an unexploded hand-genade without a pin by the 6s. Even the umpires failed to notice that the home side had 12 players on the pitch for some time. Players came and went in positions that came and went nowhere near the ball that came and went until shortly before full time the defence came and went providing Brighton with a simple goal leaving Lewes musing over a game that they should have comfortably won. Simple hockey replaced by Chaos systems theory leaving the match day analysts and the Opta Index geeks with the long-term qualitative behaviour of dynamic team systems to ponder. Can we just keep it simple next week?