Lampard above Gerrard? McCarthy above Drogba? Hleb in the top ten? You’re having a laugh.

No, we aren’t. First, these rankings are based on the contributions made this season. They aren’t a basic measure of talent. I’ve lost count of the number of people who say that Lampard isn’t all that good, despite, er, all those goals. And yes, he does well with lots of passing, say his critics, but that’s because Chelsea base their team around him. I see, so one of the best teams in Europe is based on him, yet he is overrated, is he? Second, inevitably what a player does on the pitch depends on his team-mates. He may be a dominant player or be sharing the work.

Many critics of our list cite their own eyeballing as evidence against us. How many games did you actually see? And how much of it did you spend concentrating on a particular player? If you watched Drogba in every game, how could you have watched McCarthy as carefully? You also brought to the table all your prejudices – overestimating some actions, underestimating others. Statistics bring biases, but our method is much better than eyeballing. We use every game and every move and we relate them to points objectively.

And in any case, opinions differ. One Arsenal fan wrote to me in disgust – Hleb is hopeless. Another texted me “Hleb is a genius”. Some of these subjective views surprise me. Tottenham Hotspur fans are quick to defend Paul Robinson, who was ranked 402nd out of 403. I’d put it like this – has it occurred to you to wonder why a team with one of the best attacks in Europe came fifth in the Barclays Premiership?

Finally, all stats have limitations. The model doesn’t deal quite as well with players who are categorised as defenders but play part of the season in midfield. So it’s not perfect. But we think it’s an exciting step forward.

What fans thought of the results

Love this. On total rankings (adding all a team’s players together) Arsenal have the lowest score (low = better)! I knew we should have won the league this year! Also, I used the percentage total playing time to see whether Chelsea had real injury problems – yes, but not as bad as the Gunners. Only six Arsenal players played over 60 per cent of the time compared to eight for Chelsea. So, Arsenal – no arguments the hardest hit by injury and the best ranked players. I demand Man Utd give us the trophy!
Jay Jay, Oxford

Not sure this has worked. Nice idea though. Looks like another attempt at using a mathematic equation on something subjective has failed.

The most shining example is Tévez. Would his replacement by an “average” player only have lost the Hammers three points? That would be some average player!
Rob, Hobart, Tasmania

Interesting to see no Liverpool players at all in the top 17. Seen in a positive light, does this mean that they worked together more as a team, with less reliance on individual players? I’ll drink to that!
Elias, Helsinki, Finland

Finally, some credibility for Lampard. At least a computer can recognise that he is still one of the best players in the world.
Seth, Lincoln, US

Football is an art not a science.
Gareth, Liverpool

It’s always nice to have faith in your multivariate Poisson lognormal model, even though the results would appear to be complete jibberish!
Paul, Huntingdonshire

Seems like most of those dissing this don’t seem to get it. It’s a ranking of which players contributed most to their team’s results last season. That’s all. Still – even if this is accurate it is pointless because a player’s rank on this criteria is no indicator of whether they would be as effective in another team. Eg, if you took England performances into account I doubt Lampard would be ahead of Gerrard. So you couldn’t rely on it as a measure of a player’s empirical “quality”.
Adam, London

I’m a professional football statistician and I like to see indexes like this one as they are entertaining, but this one, like the old Opta Index and the Actim Index, cannot be taken as ever being 100 per cent correct. Football is and always will be a team game. There are many factors that are unaccounted for in all these indexes. I am extremely surprised to see that Mikel Arteta is not in the top ten. The Spaniard scored nine goals, got nine assists, won the most free kicks for his team (103), thus creating dangerous situations, which his perfect crosses (98 – again most in the Premiership) led to goals. Back to the drawing board fellas.
stm2605, London, UK

What’s interesting is that there’s only one centre forward in the top ten, yet it’s the likes of Drogba, Rooney etc that we remember most because their goals often change or win games. What this shows is that their overall contribution to the team might not be as big as we think. No goals equals a poor rating (hence Bolton’s Davies in bottom place).
Marty, Jersey, Channel Islands

Have the authors checked whether the scores for all the team members together are consistent with the team’s position in the league? For example, Bolton were seventh in the league but their top two players are ranked 64th and 134th. That doesn’t sound like it tallies to me. Something like that might give a cross check to the validity of the approach.
Keith, Dubai

This article may have had a point until Alexander Hleb appeared in the top ten. It is also a scientific/mathematical fact that Hleb should never, under any circumstances, appear in a top ten players of the season list.
ISL, Bradford