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Newcastle United defeated Aston Villa 2-1 at Villa Park on Saturday, and we asked the CHN community to vote on how each individual player fared during the victory. This week we had a clear Man of the Match winner and two candidates for Goat of the Match. Here are the results of the poll:
| Player | # of Responses | Mean | Median | Std Dev |
| Tim Krul | 67 | 5.67 | 6 | 1.36 |
| Mathieu Debuchy | 67 | 7.30 | 7 | 1.04 |
| Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa | 67 | 7.19 | 7 | 1.09 |
| Fabricio Coloccini | 67 | 7.39 | 7 | 0.98 |
| Davide Santon | 67 | 7.10 | 7 | 1.00 |
| Yohan Cabaye | 67 | 6.87 | 7 | 0.98 |
| Moussa Sissoko | 67 | 7.18 | 7 | 1.11 |
| Vurnon Anita | 67 | 7.04 | 7 | 1.05 |
| Hatem Ben Arfa | 67 | 9.24 | 9 | 0.80 |
| Papiss Cisse | 67 | 5.66 | 6 | 1.62 |
| Loic Remy | 67 | 7.76 | 8 | 0.97 |
| Yoan Gouffran | 64 | 7.58 | 8 | 0.81 |
| Cheik Tiote | 62 | 6.35 | 6 | 0.94 |
| Sammy Ameobi | 60 | 5.58 | 6 | 1.24 |
Observations
- Hatem Ben Arfa was far and away CHN's Man of the Match, which was no surprise. He scored the first goal, created the second, and generally ran the offense in such a way that people were talking about handing him the keys on a permanent basis. I'll wager that a mean of 9.24 is as high as we'll see this year.
- Papiss Cisse and Tim Krul were virtually tied for Goat of the Match honors. Cisse struggled to capitalize on his opportunities, which is starting to become a trend, and Krul was uncharacteristically out of position for Christian Benteke's headed goal from a corner. After comparing the charts for each player, I'm making a judgment call and making Krul the Goat, as Cisse seemed to collect more "1" votes, which were an outlier. The first chart is Timmy's:
The "10" votes you see are the result of a special individual who gave everybody that score. That's what we mean when we say that winning can blind us to an individual's deficiencies (and losing to their strengths).
- Sammy Ameobi also had a less-than-average score, which I'm attributing to people who penalize players for coming on as subs. Sammy came on in the 88th minute and touched the ball 4 times, as Villa, who were obviously trailing, had the lion's share of possession during that time. Voting for substitutes is optional, but this is apparently not obvious to a large portion of voters. I will take steps to make this more obvious in the future.
- All other players received very good scores, which is appropriate as this was generally seen as a match that featured solid team play from the away side. Yoan Gouffran (who scored) and Loic Remy (who set up a goal) both received slightly higher scores than the rest of the squad.
- I still owe you ratings from old matches (Fulham and Morecambe). This is next on my to-do list.
