The comedian Stewart Lee used to include, as part of his routine, a recollection of a conversation he once shared with a taxi driver.

The story, in his telling, went like this. The taxi driver was an unrepentant homophobe. To be gay, he believed, was immoral. Lee tried to point out that morality is not a fixed thing, that it shifts with time. As an example, he noted that many of our ideas of ethics can trace their roots to ancient Greece. And in ancient Greece, homosexual love was often venerated*, not abhorred.

The taxi driver listened, absorbed what Lee was telling him, and then said: “Well, you can prove anything with facts.” Lee recalled being struck dumb by what he regarded as “the most brilliant way to win an argument.”

With that in mind, here are two facts. Few players in the Premier League are dribbled past more often than Trent Alexander-Arnold. So far this season, only six players have been beaten by an opponent in a one-on-one situation more often than Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool’s right back, according to data from Statsbomb. It happens roughly twice every three games, which admittedly does not seem like a lot, but still.

Inconveniently, Trent Alexander-Arnold is also one of the best players in the Premier League at winning the ball back in defensive positions. He is, according to the same Statsbomb database, ranked as the 20th-best outfield player for defensive regains. He does it only marginally less often than Emiliano Martínez, the Aston Villa goalkeeper. And Martínez can use his hands.

Both of these sets of facts are true. But only one of them has been used to build what is, now, an established consensus.