The Fish

Reduced? They weren't an international anything before that show.

What about...

Like you said earlier, UEFA and PL have pulled the drawbridge up. But this is a siege, not a blitzkrieg. We'll get in, it'll take time, good decisions and money. I see no problems there.

I was talking about something similar with a Man Utd mate. The teams that you'd expect us to be competing with (on paper) for final position have been dropping winnable points. Man Utd, Villa, West Ham, Wolves, and less so with Leicester, Everton. Instead of beating Bournemouth or Fulham at home to get 3pts, they're going to have to identify teams where they wouldn't normally expect to pick up a win. Away to a midtable rival, home or away to an elite side. We've beaten a expected relegation outfit and drawn away at a midtable rival. Alls well. If we lose against Man City, I don't really care. More bothered about the Wolves game on the 28th. A draw or better there is a good result and keeps us ticking along quite nicely. If we're after c55pts and you disregard H/A against Liverpool and Man City, that leaves 34 games. Arsenal Chelsea and Spurs Away, 29 games. You essentially need 2pts a game from the remaining fixtures.

Disagree with that, I think we've got a good PL striker with an injury issue, we don't have a PL standard threat from the right wing at all. Say we signed Zapata, he's sharing game time with Wilson and where's the supply coming from? Or say we sign Dieng, now Wilson has a supply line AND we've got a goal threat from a different part of the pitch when/if Wilson gets injured. We had gaps at the back too. We didn't have a left back, so we signed Targett. We didn't have a top-half CB, so we signed Burn and Botman. We didn't have a right back, so we signed Trippier. Debatable if Dubravka is good enough for the top half, so we went and secured one for a bargain price. If we hadn't have signed those players, we'd be fielding a defence consisting of - Manquillo Schar Lascelles Dummett. That's a Championship back line. Fraser, Almiron, ASM may not be the level we want to be at, but at least they're Premier League standard.

Manchester City is a game to get through, rather than enjoy. If I was Eddie I'd already have one eye on the Cup and Wolves games to follow. If we were going into it off the back of two wins, 2 clean sheets and a shiny new attacker looking to build on a couple of cameos I might be more optimistic. As it stands, keep everything tight, try not to get anyone sent off but spoil the game as a spectacle. Reduce the game to 5 minutes at the start and end of the halves. Look to hit you on the counter with ASM having one of his games. There's no way I'd try and match you man for man, press hard, press often, then counter or drop back into position. Pope will be the busier of the two 'keepers, Wilson the quieter of the two strikers. 0-2

I mean we'll still have; Bruno, Joelinton, Joe Willock, M.Longstaff and S.Longstaff + maybe Anderson? I don't think that area needs as much focus as RW and CF. I'd be pretty relaxed about Jonj sitting out the first half of the season.

Who, Forest? Aye, that'll happen in your first home game back in the top flight after 20 odd years. They were still lucky to come away with 3pts, any points really. West Ham had a bad game and yet still could/should have been 2-3 goals to the good. The analysis on MOTD2 was odd though. Fara Williams was praising how far apart the two central midfielders were, saying that they've got this great understanding already and that the work rate allows them to be so far apart. I'm not buying that. That kind of space will be targetted by a better midfield, Bruno and the Joes absolutely dominated the centre of the park on the first day. If I was an opponent manager I'd definitely exploit that kind of space by drawing one of them to the ball and overloading the other with runners. Especially as they were both so keen to join the attack. Lingard looked awful again, by the way.

Well in Rents! This is great news mate. "Strange as it seems, I think my recent alcoholism is a symptom not a cause of my problems." Don't think it's strange what so ever. Makes total sense to me. My particular brand of Anxiety & Depression means I instinctively reach for short term highs regardless of the consequence. At Uni it was drugs, alcohol but at first it was food (Gemmil can attest to that). I had my stomach pumped a couple of times, lost a job, lost a couple of friends, and all because I hadn't understood that I was escaping into all that because I have anxiety and depression.

Makes sense if we don't have better in the squad and he might be back in time? If we go off and sign Paqueta, and Shelvey's out until February, then I'm sure we'll do the same to him as we did with Gayle?

Fucking, and I do mean this, hell.

People don't update their opinion very quickly. For years we were still the fanbase 'happier with a 4-3 loss than a 1-0 win'. You'll be Moneybags Man City until you haven't overspent on a player for years.

I appreciate the work of a Sapphist, but I can't claim to be one of them.

I remain quite the sesquipedalian.

Yeah, maybe introduce Botman earlier, crotchety

What fucking speech impediment turns an f sound to a th sounds? Other way round, sure, but that? Jesus Christ Toonpack, any more of that amateur hour horseshit and I'll talk about comics at you for days!

Donna Air

zero as well, as the straw hasn't had something removed from it, it's formed around empty space*. A hoolahoop doesn't have a hole, does it? If the 'wall' of the straw was perforated, then the straw has a hole? *yes, like my head. I see you MF and it's not funny.

The thing is, all you luddites talk already about xG, PpDA, progressive carries, pass %, you just don't have it codified or necessarily accurate. You can sit in the pub and bemoan that your Nan could have finished that, or we sat off 'em too much, or Rodgers might have them knocking the ball about but it doesn't go anywhere. None of the stats stop you saying all of that, it's just that the galaxy brain folk can back that up with evidence, beyond our own unreliable eyes. It also means that we can see that a striker is less of a concern than a threat from the right flank because we can look at where the numbers show our weakest area of threat is. It also means that ASM can be defended with objective numbers, instead of my romanticised entreaty.

xG is better at gauging if someone is consistently scoring or missing good chances. If Wilson missed that chance he scored from, you can't criticise him for it really, it was a really difficult chance. Schar's goal, it doesn't matter who's out there, someone taking a shot from there has a small chance of scoring. a high xG tells us that the player gets into a situation to take a shot that you'd expect to lead to a goal. Combine that with their goal return and you get a mark of how good/bad a player is at putting away those chances. e.g. if Jonny Scoresalot get 20 league goals in a campaign, you may think, "Jonny's the one for me", but when you look and see his accumulated xG is 40 you realise that given the chances he's getting, he's only putting away half of what you'd expect. Likely because he's in a team that makes a load of good chances. If Shearer said "WIlson missed an easy chance today", you'd likely believe him, because Shearer knows his stuff. What you might not account for is this; Shearer may think of that as an easy chance, but that's because he was fucking mint and would regularly do better than expected given the chances that fell to him. You come on here and see some stat-nerd has said that it was a hard chance and Shearer's being harsh. What's more reliable, thousands of objective data points that say what the expected outcome of that situation was, or a subjective account from a biased witness? Also, to take your example, I wouldn't say x player, I'd be specific. Dave " Adama Traore has a PL career non-penalty xG of 0.11 per 90 minutes, he has scored 0.1 goals per 90. Allan Saint-Maximin is npxG 0.16 and has scored 0.16 per 90. Therefore ASM gets more chances per game, and puts more of them away than Traore did. Couple that with ASM getting 41% of his shots on target to AT's 29.7%, 74% pass completion to 67%, 0.43 to 0.32 Goal creating actions per 90. It shows that, not only does ASM have the skills that get you out of your seat, he's also got decent end product that will likely increase when he's playing alongside better players, in a better system." PL "Oh, so stats can help you back up your opinion that Traore is ASM's little muggy bitch boy?" Dave "Yes PL, that's spot on, he's ASM's muggy little bitch boy"

It's not about the likelihood of that chance occurring. It's simply given all the factors I mentioned above, how often does that situation result in a goal. Schar's shot is a good example. The chance of a player scoring from there is 1/100. that's averaged out over thousands of shots from thousands of players. A player has more chance of scoring that chance with his dominant foot, right? More chance if he's under no pressure, right? More chance if the 'keeper decided to go walkabout to the opposite corner flag, and so on. the xG records, not the predicted goals, but the expected goals. So someone takes that shot, it's 1 in 100 that it goes in. Because, say, 100 players took that type of shot across the historical data of 10,000 instances just like that, and 1 went in. You'd expect that when Schar strides forward against Brighton and finds himself in the exact same situation, you'd expect him to miss 99 times 100. People traversed the globe without GPS, flight, or even a combustion engine. Doesn't mean those things are superfluous. It's not the be all and end all, but it's a very useful tool. That's why I said scouting in person adds intangibles that stats alone can't. How does the player react to going behind, or missing a chance. How does he interact with the officials, his teammates, the opposition. You can never replace the value of an experienced eye, but these metrics aren't solely useful for assessing a teenage Bulgarian plying his trade in the Dutch second division. They're also really useful for working out the way to get the most out of the players you've got. Of course you need humans to apply subjectivity, and interpret the data. Do it wrong (over-exaggerating the value of POMO) and you get Allardyce. Do it right and you get the high quality, high energy, fluid football of Man City and Liverpool.

ASM executed more shot creating actions than Almiron, but Almiron produced more key passes, the chances made by Almiron were higher quality, but ASM had a higher chance of scoring himself. It's close but, statistically speaking, ASM was a slightly bigger overall threat than Almiron. If Almiron had used his right foot, he would have surpassed ASM.

xG is objectively assessing the likelihood of a goal given thousands of data points across years of research. How often does a player score, with that body part, from that position, at that angle, after receiving the ball in that way from that place, when the defenders are there and the 'keeper is there. It doesn't account for who that player is, or who his teammates, or a subjective assessment of the difficulty of the chance. Wilson's goal was a 0.09 xG. So, if a player was in that position you'd only expect him to score 9/100. Not necessarily Wilson, or Haaland, or Botman or Dubravka, any player in that situation had a 9% chance of scoring. They're not, it's not do I think that's a good chance, it's how many times did that situation result in a goal. There's so many intangibles added by a scout watching a player that you cannot find in statistics, that's why more onus was put on personality, character, bravery, etc. But the margins are now so small, that statistics add objective value to a scouts subjective view. You will never see the likes of Ali Dia again. Or a Nacho Gonzalez. Looks mint on youtube, might look mint in the 2-3 games the scouts turns up for. But if his underlying numbers are bad, they're a better judge of the player's actual ability. Your eyes lie to you all the time.

Some luddite is doubting xG again.