Criminal Sentence 33: Apples to Apples

A quotation from Roger Federer, who lost the French Open tennis final to Rafael Nadal in an embarrassing fashion:

"He was more dominant than the previous years."

Granted, Federer is Swiss, so English is not his native language, but I see native speakers make this same mistake. In this sentence, "he" is compared to "previous years." We know what he means, but when you're making a comparison, it would be better to compare apples to apples:

"He was more dominant than he was in previous years."

Here, I compared "he" to "he."