Transfer Rumors & Discussion (2024/2025)

    From all the comments above, it seems like, after all these explanations and notes, Ranking Index is not understood clearly. It is not indicating who is the best (OH,OPP,MB and Libero). It is not indicating that Bergman is better than Gabi or Kunzler is better than İlkin or Hande. It s just indicating the player's contribution to their teams for winning the sets and the match and these contributions are sorted by overall Rank Index figures.


    As you all know, there are many variables in a team and the match. Also many success criterias/parameters for the players, such as attack, block, receiving serve, sets etc. Even, number of the match and sets played and/or being benched is also important. I assume, missing parameter is digs. So taking all these parameters, overall rank is based on the calculation of all these parameters for reflecting the contribution of a player in let's say team A. So comparing a player from team A with a player from Team B, is misleading and completely wrong. Maybe you can compare players within the same team by looking at their rank values. For example, you may say, the level of Hande's contribution to Eczacıbaşı is less than Alexa and Irina, cause Alexa and Irina are higher contributers as OH ( a kind of like to like comparison). You agree or not, this is what the table is saying.


    This topic was opened, while discussing Bergman's performance and contribution. Similarly, you may compare her performance in rank index table with Anthi, Neriman and Şeyma. No doubt that, Bergman's contribution to THY as OH looks satisfactory and keeps increasing. For example, she was below İlkin a few weeks ago but now she is on top of İlkin, cause İlkin's contribution to Galatasaray declined a bit, especially at attacks, however Bergman's contribution to THY keeps increasing but again, this does not mean, Bergman is better OH than İlkin, especially when you refer to individual and independent stats. Rank index is just showing that, Bergman is a high contibuter to THY as OH.


    I hope, now it is clear to everyone and I am closing this chapter. I wrote all these, in order to clarify any mis-understandings and incorrect comments about it.

    Quote from Steven12453

    You write inaccuracies and exaggerations. What you say is not true. Obviously you haven't watched all the matches in the Turkish league and I'm sure you haven't seen any matches in Italy. Well, Julia had three extremely bad matches at the start of the season one after another and that was it. Then I remember another very bad match against Fener. Then he performs well even from the first half having good performances or acceptables. This is far from what you have written which is based rely only on the BAD IMPRESSION that the first three games gave you and as I said before it is her first expirience in pro volleyball so it is normal to need some time. Her bad start does not make her bad. If she saddenly starts again to play bad for a lot of matches then ok but this thing did not happened until now. You are simply biased because of this or because Ze overestimates her, which is a fact since he has now taken Anthi out of the starting six and does not give her any chance after her injury despite the very good performance she had before she was injured. Or he didn't give Neriman a chance sooner.

    Finally, in Italy, the OH of Milan, with the exception of one (as far as I remember) really good game of Sylla last week against Novara and a performance of Kara against not a strong team, no extreme ever performed well. Never. Their performance is always acceptable and mediocre at best. They don't have performances like Julia's good ones

    Bajema also had very good performances at the end of last season with Vakıfbank, even better than Bergmann but You have been criticizing her for months. On the other hand, Bergmann had way more bad matches than the amount of good matches she had. So overall she is still having a bad season. Ze is favouring her by not letting vasilantonaki play despite of Bergmann's bad shape

    If it doesn't allow comparison of different players, what's the point of ranking players. This 'ranking' shouldn't 'rank' players then?🤦it is like ranking apples and pears. By the way, tvf website says it is the 'best player ranking' not the best contributor ranking🙄 that's the reason I said it is a bullshit ranking as a ranking for best players


    Anyways it's getting off topic. I'm done with this discussion

    Quote from MeteA

    From all the comments above, it seems like, after all these explanations and notes, Ranking Index is not understood clearly. It is not indicating who is the best (OH,OPP,MB and Libero). It is not indicating that Bergman is better than Gabi or Kunzler is better than İlkin or Hande. It s just indicating the player's contribution to their teams for winning the sets and the match and these contributions are sorted by overall Rank Index figures.

    Huge offtopic, but...


    These rankings on dataproject websites are traditionally messy, because they overestimate the relevance, for example, of serve numbers and blocking in overall index of the players. I've analyzed it (in context of male volleyball) already and this is a continuous trend. Bergmann is great in both figures, so it's for me a no surprise that she's pretty high on such list even though her offense is pretty mediocre.


    And I was analyzing it, because during the Christmas break I got sick, so I had much more time than I needed/should have had - so I'd decided, but again, it was in context of male volleyball (have no time to analyze female vball in that detailed way in the past few years), to make my own performance rating calculations. I came to the conclusion that the best way to do it, and I've started with OH players of Polish/Italian league - is to, first, estimate league averages in every element (serve, blocking, attack, reception) for starter-level players (and some back-ups with the highest number of reception/attack attempts), and then, to compare each player's stats vs league averages to estimate their performance rating as a sum of standard deviations with specific weights (I went for weights with '1' for blocking, '2' for service, '3' for reception and '4' or '5' for an attack - again, it was made for male volleyball-driven analysis) vs league averages.


    I'm saying it all because it turned out that such pretty simple, even rudimental, analysis turned out to be pretty decent. The formula for every player is:


    blocks/set / league average * 1

    (((aces/set / league average in aces/set *0,3) + (serves/set / league average in serves/set) *2) *2)

    (((positive reception / league average in pos. rec. + perfect reception / league average in perf. rec.) / 2) * 3)

    ((((spike efficiency / league average in spike efficiency)+ (kills rate / league average in kills rate) + (attacks per set / league average in attack per set) / 3) * 5))))


    The biggest problem of this formula is that it devalues 'role players' often subbed in/subbed out (because it's based on per set basis), but for starter-level players - in context of male volleyball - it gave results pretty much corresponding to the eye-test, because it takes into account most of the measures that we know as fans from statistical standpoint.


    It even allowed me to make very quickly a 20-year performance rating ranking for OHs from Italian leagues which, once again, was pretty much in line with what the one could have expected (Juantorena and Leon being the best in this span with several outlier seasons). To be honest, I was quite proud of this because this 'vs league averages-analysis' allowed me to compare different eras of volleyball (as, for example, lower level in attack rate was represented by lower league averages). You have to take it with a grain of salt, but it was fun to do such analysis.


    The point is - within different formula, it is doable in context of female volleyball as well, I believe, to make such rankings, although the question is what would be the weight the one agrees to assign, because obviously, quantitative analysis in such field are in fact mixed quanti- and qualitative analysis, really, as these weights are pretty subjective.


    The biggest problem that I find is that reception stats from female Italian league, for example, are messy, because I copy-pasted the stats from legavolleyfemminile.it (the same template as from male league) to Excel and I highly doubt that Cazaute is the best receiver, Herbots is the 3rd-best and Piva, Daalderop and Sylla are 8th-10th best, from what I remember them from the last season.


    Re: Turkish league, I took dataproject data and adjusted the aforementioned men-oriented formula with weights of 4 for reception and attack (assuming in female volleyball there's more of parity in this characteristics), and this is what I got:


    Name Rating
    BRAGA GUIMARAES 7,06
    FEDOROVTSEVA 4,91
    MARKOVA 4,70
    FRANTTI 4,08
    WILHITE 3,77
    AYDIN 3,24
    VORONKOVA 3,03
    LEE 2,99
    BERGMANN 2,86
    VASILANTONAKI 2,49
    GRAY 2,29
    DIMITROVA 2,13
    BEGIC 1,77
    BALADIN 1,73
    SENOGLU IVEGIN 1,50
    KUNZLER 1,12
    DIKEN 1,08
    GUERRA 1,02
    BUSA 0,95
    ARSLAN 0,09
    BEKTAS -0,71
    EGGLESTON -1,01
    CAFFREY -1,06
    MILENKO -1,08
    LODA -1,09
    LEYVA TAGLE -1,58
    MICAYA -1,60
    TANYEL -1,76
    SEKERCI -1,88
    BASCAN -2,12
    HACIMUSTAFAOGLU -2,21
    URAL -2,57
    LEBAN -2,79
    FIRINCIOGLU -3,29
    DURGUN -3,40
    YORDANOVA -3,51
    SALAS ROSELL -3,51
    NEZIR -3,62
    TECIMER -3,89
    AKMAN -4,57
    DEMIDOVA -5,57


    The highest values for men players were ~5 in Italy/Poland, but I guess Gabi's numbers are such an outlier due to the bigger disparity in level of female Turkish league (what results in lower league averages and her stats being the bigger statistical deviation vs stats of Leon or Juantorena). Obviously, 'positive' means statistics of player X being overall above league average and 'negative' being below league average.


    Like I said, you have to remember that players more often subbed in/subbed out will have their value 'deflated', but regarding the very top, it's obviously much more telling than these dataproject ranking and probably in line with an eye-test.


    ps


    Obviously, I'd be glad to move this post to another thread, I just thought this feedback may be interesting for some people, sorry for going off the road with such post as this is transfer topic.

    Realista this is amazing! Thank you, I honestly did not think of the league average would make sense but it actually does! But even with excluding it and using your weighting, one could reach better rankings for each position.


    For Mete, claiming that this is how player's contribute to a win does not make sense. Firstly, as serdar wrote, they call it something else. Secondly, is number of aces how a player contributes most to a set win? I mean you can make 4 serve aces and then receive terrible and kill 1/10, but still get a good grade in this ranking and you simply don't contribute at all. After all, my weighting would be very subjective too but I guess best option is to make a questionnaire to coaches and ask them to rank different actions for each role, for example for OH, they can rank serving, receiving, digs, attacking and blocking. With that, we might at least get a better weighting for each position and therefore a better ranking of players.

    Realista I love that you are such a volleyball nerd! ❤️ I wish you write more about female volleyball section of forum:drink:


    Thanks for the nice explanation. Your ranking looks way more realistic than dataproject's 'best player ranking'. 👏

    Quote from denzz

    There are rumors about Voronkova leaving Eczacıbaşı and some other Turkish teams are interested in her.

    With the news of Plummer coming and Gray staying I don’t think they can fit Voronkova in roster. I mean it seemed like obvious decision, even this season she isn’t getting much time on the field.


    She would be great option for THY, assuming they don’t wanna continue with Bergman

    Quote from Cofi

    With the news of Plummer coming and Gray staying I don’t think they can fit Voronkova in roster. I mean it seemed like obvious decision, even this season she isn’t getting much time on the field.


    She would be great option for THY, assuming they don’t wanna continue with Bergman

    They should let Gray go. Voronkova is a better player overall IMHO. At least her back row skills are far better.

    Quote from VBdiamond

    They should let Gray go. Voronkova is a better player overall IMHO. At least her back row skills are far better.

    Definitely agreed. She is underrated

    Thank you for this input. But can you explain more on why Gabi's number is so far compared to the others?

    Quote from VBdiamond

    They should let Gray go. Voronkova is a better player overall IMHO. At least her back row skills are far better.

    I don’t know if I agree with that. Voronkova is quite average all around and not really consistent. She can’t be starter in club that aims at trophy and she is expensive to be on bench. Gray on the other hand provides more spark for the team as bench player.


    Not to mention that even as a bench player Voronkova is very inconsistent. Her back row is average at best and her defense is a mess a lot of the times, only her passing is okay. Not to mention that she is not defense specialist in any way cause her passing is not THAT good and she can’t cover anyone on reception, she is just average all around and doesn’t really shine anywhere (for the level of a team that aims at trophy)


    It doesn’t matter who they keep, but I guess players like Voronkova are easier to find then dominant attackers like Gray to have on bench.. assuming Plummer will be starter ofc.

    Quote from serdar

    Definitely agreed. She is underrated


    Quote from VBdiamond

    Average is still better than nonexistent.


    Gray can't pass a ball for her life. I feel like Voronkova is a little bit underrated.

    Voronkova is chocking in every important match and obviously they want to avoid players with such problems. . From the other side Gray was great in her first final. She is more assertive and decisive and she has proved it. Also she can receive better than this despite the fact that she is not a good receiver. I think that is just the effect of Ferhat.

    As about Voronkova I think that she just did not fit in this team. A change will benefit her. She has play like a top player before in CL and in the NT. She can be still a choice for top teams. Anyway I hope that I can see her in Milano or in THY ( even in Vakif ).

    Quote from VBdiamond

    Average is still better than nonexistent.


    Gray can't pass a ball for her life. I feel like Voronkova is a little bit underrated.

    I’m not arguing that Voronkova is worse player then Gray, I don’t think she is in any way.


    What I’m saying is that Gray can provide more as a bench player cause is dominant attacker for times when team struggles to score, while Voronkova wouldn’t bring nothing spectacular for them as a bench player. They already have Hande who is much better defender and can even cover someone on reception a bit.


    Voronkova is solid all around just not great to be starter in a top club and I already said how I feel about her as bench. Neither her pass or attack is not good to be at the level of Gabi and Robinson to be factor that they are while also back row is not on level of Hande, Busa, Meliha or whatever defense based player there is. She can cover herself on reception and pass is average even then, as I said I don’t think she can find her place in a team that has Hande already.


    Don’t get me wrong, I like her, THY should get her and build around 2 all around OHs who can both pass and score decently enough on their own.

    Quote from Cofi

    I’m not arguing that Voronkova is worse player then Gray, I don’t think she is in any way.


    What I’m saying is that Gray can provide more as a bench player cause is dominant attacker for times when team struggles to score, while Voronkova wouldn’t bring nothing spectacular for them as a bench player. They already have Hande who is much better defender and can even cover someone on reception a bit.


    Voronkova is solid all around just not great to be starter in a top club and I already said how I feel about her as bench. Neither her pass or attack is not good to be at the level of Gabi and Robinson to be factor that they are while also back row is not on level of Hande, Busa, Meliha or whatever defense based player there is. She can cover herself on reception and pass is average even then, as I said I don’t think she can find her place in a team that has Hande already.


    Don’t get me wrong, I like her, THY should get her and build around 2 all around OHs who can both pass and score decently enough on their own.

    I couldn't disagree more. Voronkova is one hell of a defender and great server. Moreover She is not an average receiver, she is actually a GOOD receiver, way better than Busa. She can also play as Opp very well, which means they don't have to invest in another expensive backup opp. Voronkova is a rare kind to find nowadays. Gray is such a gamble. She can be great in one match and flop badly in another one. Besides she might be one of the worst receiver of the league, if not the worse.

    Quote from serdar

    I couldn't disagree more. Voronkova is one hell of a defender and great server. Moreover She is not an average receiver, she is actually a GOOD receiver, way better than Busa. She can also play as Opp very well, which means they don't have to invest in another expensive backup opp. Voronkova is a rare kind to find nowadays. Gray is such a gamble. She can be great in one match and flop badly in another one. Besides she might be one of the worst receiver of the league, if not the worse.

    Except she is not, she only recieves good next to Hande who can hold her own ground and even cover for her. It’s non-sence to compare her to Hande or Busa type of players who can cover for OH1 on reception, which Voronkova can’t.


    One hell of a defender? I might even take Gray’s defense over hers, she can’t dig to save her life and that’s one of my biggest problems with her, not her passing or attack.

    Quote from serdar

    If it doesn't allow comparison of different players, what's the point of ranking players. This 'ranking' shouldn't 'rank' players then?🤦it is like ranking apples and pears. By the way, tvf website says it is the 'best player ranking' not the best contributor ranking🙄 that's the reason I said it is a bullshit ranking as a ranking for best players


    Anyways it's getting off topic. I'm done with this discussion

    I am not in a position to defend data project's stats, since I do not possess all coefficients and their formulas, but just saying and commenting on what they are aiming, by sharing that table with their explanations. However, yes I agree with you that, what they are aiming with that table, contradicts with the heading, which is creating confusion and should be reconsidered. Any yes it is a done discussion but fruitful, which motivated Realista to share his/her work with us.

    Thank you Realista for the hard and informative study and thank you for sharing with us. RESPECT.

    https://dal15al25.gazzetta.it/…/16/zhu-verso-conegliano/


    Now GLP is saying that Conegliano might not be able to break Pietrini's contract after all and that they are gonna try to get Zhu.


    I don't really get the last sentence though: "The puzzle remains: what will the azzurra do? Abroad or Milano?". I'm assuming that's about Pietrini, so shouldn't it be Scandicci/Toscana instead of Milano? Or Conegliano, since I'm not sure Scandicci are actually interested in keeping Pietrini. They seem to have some beef.


    Edit: Apparently he really meant Milano? This is kind of out of nowhere, but okay.