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With Pepe Reina's move to Bayern Munich all but complete, the stats mavens were out on Sky Sports comparing Mr. Uncharacteristic Error to the rest of the Premier League's goalkeepers. Naturally, Petr Cech's name came up. And, naturally as happens so often when stats mavens want to get cute, the numbers cited were a little bit ... dubious. Which meant Cech himself chimed in:
For those who tweeted and retweeted ... It is wrong .... I have already passed the 150 clean sheets mark... ;-) pic.twitter.com/bjnq8c3C6E
— Petr Cech (@PetrCech) August 8, 2014
The stats folk tried to backpedal, offering the following explanation:
134 - This graphic shows number of PL clean sheets since Reina made his PL debut in 2005. Clarification. @PetrCech pic.twitter.com/UrfgjRnJ5T
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) August 8, 2014
But Cech was rightly having none of it:
@OptaJoe so you count all my appearances regardless Pepe's arrival to EPL but not all the clean sheets ... Very unusual ... :-D
— Petr Cech (@PetrCech) August 8, 2014
Opta, of course, weren't the ones who made the mistake -- the appearance figures were added in by Sky Sports afterwards, and there's not a whole lot about Sky Sports that says 'serious data science'. This is the sort of thing that happens when you let the innumerate play with things they don't understand. Good on Petr for sorting them out.