Sky Sports messed up their stat graphics — blatantly

Sky Sports has been going crazy with Manchester United-related content over the past couple of days. That’s because Sporting Lisbon boss Ruben Amorim is highly likely to become the new manager very soon.

As exciting as this is, whoever’s in charge of the stat graphics ought to have a word with their team.

I have some observational critiques about two of the areas looked at:

Highest defensive lines

Manchester City’s start distance for their defensive line is apparently 46 metres, yet Benfica’s is 46.2 metres. Based on the rules of descending order, Benfica should be top.

However, another graphic shown on a separate occasion shows City’s figure as 46.70. Therefore, it appears that the positions are correct, but it’s a mystery why the two extra characters have been truncated.

The numbers in the second image have also been done to two decimal places despite the last digit always being 0 — it’s redundant.

And if I’m going to be extra pernickety, the ‘L’ in ‘Leagues’ is in uppercase and lowercase in the respective images.

Passes before making a defensive action

Tottenham have the lowest PPDA with 8.6, yet it says ‘=1.’ at the start of their row and Monaco’s.

Monaco’s and PSG’s rows should begin with ‘=2.’ as they both have an identical figure of 8.8.

Watch the video

Final words

We all make mistakes, and I appreciate they’re under a lot of pressure to get these graphics ready to go out on TV, but you’d still think there’d be multiple pairs of eyeballs looking at them before they’re approved.

This is Sky Sports, for goodness’ sake. Where’s the quality control?