Steve Black column: Statistics are vital, but goals scored will always be No1!

Feb 6 2009 by Dougie Thomson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HI EVERYONE! Hope you are negotiating the challenges set by this Winter weather and not being affected too adversely by its severity.

Since we last spoke we have played high-flying Peterborough and as always with this team of excellent characters, we’ve worked our socks off, not let them get into their game, scored another super goal through Michael Collins and come away with a hard-earned victory!

Over the 90 minutes there was nothing between the sides, so winning was very gratefully accepted in our dressing room.

We were indoors for our preparation on Monday, after having Sunday as a recovery/reflective day to take on board the lessons learned from Saturday’s win.

The statistics from our Hartlepool game on Tuesday evening are a great example that while facts and figures can help ... well, immeasurably! ... over a period of time showing trends and the like, they don’t always predict results.

We totally dominated the match in every aspect but one – we didn’t score more goals than them!

To be fair, that will always be the No1 statistic, the one you can’t escape from because it goes in the record books.

In football, there are no points given for aesthetic content or creative choreography or even common-to-goodness endeavour, certainly not on any given day, although I hasten to add we believe that over time, everyone gets their rewards by scoring highly in these categories, team, club, supporter alike.