Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, March 01, 2013
Update your bookmarks, it’s the soccer thread.
Football hipster word of the month: Catenaccio
THTF news: Two months of fixture hell begin in which Spursin’ it up becomes all too possible
Shooty news: He’s decided to follow Real Zaragoza, because that’s totally not a hipster choice
Hamburglar / French Freiburg news: I still find both puns funny. Monthly updates to follow
News news: I am now done with the bit.
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Make of that what you will.
I still don't understand how Rafael, supported by Rio Ferdinand and Ryan Giggs, managed to keep Ronaldo quiet. Michael Cox argues that the key was Danny Welbeck's defense on Xabi Alonso, which limited his effect on the game and forced Madrid to run their attack through Khedira instead. (He points out that the big change when it went to 10 v 11 was Welbeck dropping off to defend the left flank, leaving Alonso free to rip apart the defense at will.) That is reasonable, but still those matchups at the back looked way too good for Madrid, even with Alonso struggling, for them to produce so little for 60 minutes.
Maybe. I also think Fergie is one of the few managers out there that he views as an equal.
Jonathan Wilson postulates that Keane is more of a Clough man than a Ferguson man, anyway.
The other part is that I think Mourinho is a little more, if not humble, perhaps more mature. Madrid has drained him. He's not the same guy he was a couple of seasons ago. Yeah he would needle Pep etc., but the constant fishbowl has worn on him I think. I don't think SAF will ever retire, but thats the job Mourinho would want. He may have to settle for Chelsea. I can't see him going to City at the present.
As for the tactical battle, I was surprised at how well Giggs held up. The one area before the match I felt that SAF took a bizarre gamble though was Nani. I didn't get that at all. I would have thought he'd be third choice at best. I was not surprised that Rooney was not included. He's been covered at some length by the various tactics blogs, but he hasn't been the same player for a very long time. Rooney keeps getting asked to return to the young Rooney and he's either unable or unwilling to do so. He hurt Man U in the Champions League final a couple seasons ago by failing to pressure Busquets and he hurt England at the Euros. There is a reason Pirlo ran amok that match. Rooney wasn't doing his job.
Man U's midfield has been discussed at some length off and on here, but I've come to the opinion that Ferguson just doesn't value a certain type of player. I have never understood why they don't go get a player like Vidal. Or not run off a player like Pogba. There was a time when SAF liked that type of player. I don't get why he sticks with the milquetoast midfields he does now. I think he's just gotten to the point he doesn't like playing with that type of player. It only hurts them in big matches, but it keeps becoming an issue.
As for Welbeck, I love Welbeck. He's exactly the type of player I like. The guardian speculates that Rooney's camp is blowing smoke about PSG to get a wage increase, but think Man U would snap the hands off of anybody making a decent offer. Welbeck's a better player at this point (at least a better player at what is required of a support striker with the tactics Manu often employs).
You can tell I'm famous because of all the comments that article is getting.
Hey, you made the news feed!
Someone should convince Zamperini to make Maradona his next hire.
It seems like there's more than a little Roy Hodgson in there as well, but maybe not quite so rigid and repetitive as what we've been told Roy's drills are like?
This quote of Mourinho's in the article kind of sums him up, no?
Speaking of dubiousness, Argentina is now the Unofficial World's Champions, taking the title from Sweden, who held it briefly after taking it from North Korea. The WC Qualifier between Argentina and Venezuela will be for the title!
Someone needs more internet porn in his life.
Me too. I think it was more anger/motivation than anything else. You see it all the time in other sports (as a UNC, Roy Williams does this in around 9 out of 10 post-game press conferences).
The following isn't all that insightful, but I have been dying to tell this story to someone who knows soccer so here goes...
I recently met a lovely Jordanian couple from Dubai at a friend's wedding. The woman's younger sister and cousin ran into Maradona in a local club. They were exceptionally pretty and the old Argentine spent a good two hours trying to get them home whilst downing a shot every 10 minutes or so. They politely declined his offers, but did spend enough time with him to take more than a few photos. The pictures were all kinds of awesome, reminding me of the closing credits to Hangover. That guy is all kinds of hot mess.
I saw it but I didn't post it. Believe it or not, I only post a small fraction of the Spurs related stuff I find. I aim to annoy a little, not a lot.
The methodology for that reads like someone who has never watched a soccer match. Clearly, the club world cup is the highest level of competition and should be weighted the heaviest!
Although it would be fun to pull out whenever someone argues that whichever team wins a tournament is obviously the best team to enter it.
Uch. I should have hovered over the link before clicking it. Now I gave The Daily Mail a hit and I feel dirty.
Thiago Motta, Matuidi, Pastore, Lucas Moura, Lavezzi. Subs:
Douchez, Sakho, Camara, Gameiro, Armand, Van Der Wiel, Beckham.
Valencia: Guaita, Barragan, Mathieu, Victor Ruiz, Cissokho,
Parejo, Albelda, Feghouli, Tino Costa, Jonas, Soldado. Subs:
Diego Alves, Ever, Piatti, Joao Pereira, Haedo Valdez, Guardado,
Canales.
I know they're the underdog and they have to overcome PSG's away goals, but I think Valencia led by Soldado gets it done today. 2-0 Valencia.
I prefer the one I saw that had Dembele's face adorned with giant antlers and the moose's chin beard thing.
I know that there aren't many here that find anything "cute" about Chelsea, but keeping with the hybrid man/animal theme, I present to you Chelsea's Puppy XI.
If there is such a person, I would not want to know them.
Usually that kind of statement is followed by commiseration not congratulation.
Well, John Terry is a dog after all. Anyway, I see your racist, referee-abusing, student-shooting, teammate's-girlfriend-shagging puppies and raise you The Greatest Ever Impersonation of Harry Redknapp by a Dog.
This is a fun exchange:
Bold & italics are mine... I don't think he understands what "exponentially" means.
SPURS THINK FACTORY will soon be SPURS INTER TUBES!
Ha, I was just reading this and thinking it seemed familiar and then I noticed the name. Nice writeup. Is it too early to ask Ray to come in here and declare the Top 4 race over?
I would have thought Giroud being through on goal 1v1 with Lloris until Vertonghen intervened would be classified as a big chance. Same for Benny's cross that Bale somehow put over the bar from about four yard out with the goal gaping.
I know it's subjective, but jeez. RB will surely vouch for the fact that the Shooty/Mattbert demographic felt very strongly that the Bale chance was "a subjectively classified situation where a player 'should' score, either one-on-one with the keeper or otherwise in excellent scoring position."
I refer to these colloquially as a "Redknapp's Missus", and yes that seemed like one.
You might be able to get some insight for a team's "preferred" XI, but other than that I can't see it being very useful. There are simply too many permutations for most of the groups to rack up significant playing time. There is also a huge strength of opponent problem in there.
What are you talking about? Harry would have buried that in his playing days...
Yep, and not only him, even his Missus would have slotted it home.
Ah! My faith in your Spurs mastery is restored.
In practice, unless someone has a rich aunt, we don't have the data. I'm getting my numbers from Fantasy Football Scout, which already costs £15, but they only provide a subset of the Opta database, and it doesn't allow for in-game splits based on which players were on the pitch at the time. The full Opta database is like the old stats database from back in the day, it runs like ten grand or something.
(I went on the Opta site to see if I could find the actual number, then gave up. But I discovered something about Opta - you know how they've got that OptaJoe twitter feed? That's just the English one. There's also OptaJuan and OptaJean for Spain and France, and then is gets a little odder. OptaIvan, OptaPaolo, OptaFranz, OptaArabi (that's not even a name!), and my favorites, OptaJason for Australia and OptaJack for the USA.)
**I'm assuming. All I've got is a breakdown of big chances by player for the match, and I'm extrapolating from there. I could have sworn I looked up the big chances and one was logged to Sigurdsson earlier. It could have been a coding problem on their side, but more likely I'm just an idiot. Regardless, Bale's miss must have been the third BC.
As for extrapolating via FFS, their numbers change all the time. They claim it's Opta and I see no reason to believe otherwise. You will see BC and CC numbers change for matches a month back on a fairly regular basis. Because of this, I run the full season numbers every single week rather than simply add on the current gameweek to the previous tally. My guess is that Opta is using somewhat of a FootballOutsiders game charter approach and is tweaking things after the powers that be get a chance to review. There's absolutely no way one could expect consistency and quality when the company is offering detailed stats for nearly every major European league. That's a #### ton of games to chart and one should expect major discrepancies when it comes to subjective measures.
@ MCoA -
I see you have started using Big Chances in your metrics as I am. When did this begin? I ask as I recall you were using SOT + hit WW previously. I am presuming you found the increased correlation using Big Chances to be quite appealing.
I've always felt +/- would be useful for football at the component level (i.e. +5.1 passes/90m or -2.6 tackles/90m) and/or using groupings (i.e. one back four is +4.2 interceptions/90m, another back four is -0.8 interceptions/90m), but we don't have the data, so it's stayed a theory.
But what the hell!
So, this kind of freaked me out. I have the team ratings run on a match-by-match basis, which means I need to collect weekly data and then input separate numbers for double gameweeks by hand. (How do you re-run full season numbers every week? Do you have a spider for the data?) But I went back through all my data, and I only found changes at the team-match level in week 15 and week 28. That was worth fixing, but it wasn't the data disaster I expected.
On the other hand, my CPWHFPS* still sees them scoring just six points the rest of the way (at home to Wigan and Reading, if you're wondering) which would give them 39 points. I suppose that puts them above the drop, but not by much.
*Crazy Paranoid West Ham Fan Projection System
This is true. In fact, I know it was quite such a chance, because that was when I was about at my crankiest regarding the slow food delivery, and I still remember it.
Subs: Pomazan, Gadzhibekov, Tagirbekov, Logashov, Carcela-Gonzalez, Traore, Smolov.
Newcastle: Elliot, Simpson, Yanga-Mbiwa, Perch, Haidara, Cabaye, Anita, Ben Arfa, Marveaux, Obertan, Sissoko.
Subs: Alnwick, Santon, Bigirimana, Tiote, Steven Taylor, Ameobi, Campbell.
A false 9 for Newcastle?
I don't think that's right. Going back to the LFC-Wigan game, Liverpool were only credited with two "clear-cut" chances, despite IMO having three -- Downing's opener, Suarez's first and third. I say this not to nitpick, but just would be curious to know if this is a systemic issue -- after all, most teams average fewer than three(*) clear-cut chances, so being off by even one per game would seem to throw a wrench in things. I'm pretty sure certain hockey stats suffer from a similar issue of certain stats (hits, scoring chances) being judged differently depending on if the team is home/away. I don't know if the same thing is going on here.
(*)This is just a guess. Liverpool are at about 2.50 clear cut chances per game this season, and I'm guessing they're in the upper quartile of the EPL, although I have no data to confirm that.
(Also, just a general note, I'm using "clear-cut chances" interchangeably with "big chances", in case that wasn't clear.)
I believe the adjective is "dire".
Steua Bucuresti are not exactly a lovable underdog.
My Romanian friend, who is a die-hard Dinamo fan, would agree very strongly with that sentiment.
Team BC Conv RateMUN 93 40 43%
MCI 79 31 39%
EVE 70 22 31%
LIV 65 26 40%
CHE 58 24 41%
ARS 58 21 36%
TOT 52 20 38%
SWA 51 23 45%
SOT 45 22 49%
NEW 45 18 40%
WBA 41 19 46%
WIG 41 16 39%
WHM 41 12 29%
NOR 41 12 29%
FUL 40 18 45%
AVL 39 15 38%
SUN 38 15 39%
STO 37 12 32%
QPR 33 11 33%
RDG 30 16 53%
XI: Friedel, Walker, Vertonghen, Gallas, Assou-Ekotto, Dembele, Parker, Lennon, Sigurdsson, Bale & Defoe
Subs: Lloris, Caulker, Naughton, Dawson, Livermore, Carroll & Holtby
By which I mean totally amazing. Nice cross from Sigurdsson.
Yeah, at first I thought it was a harsh yellow but after seeing the replay I can understand it.
The attacking front four of Gylfi-Bale-Lennon behind Defoe looks insanely good.
They're moving around a lot. Defoe keeps showing up on the left wing with Sigurdsson and Bale in the middle.
I was about to make the same comment. It's hard to say how much of this domination is Spurs playing really well and how much is Inter not being arsed about it.
And as I type this, Inter almost got one back.
So, so easy. AVB has an interesting task now, I think, to temper the enthusiasm after this game and get everyone focused for Liverpool without undercutting the positives too much.
I always use a ball winner in Football Manager. Does that give me hipster credential?
Based on the URL, I'm assuming this is about Schneiderlin, who has indeed been fantastic for the Saints this season. Okay, clicking through now...
EDIT: Haha! I am super genius. Kneel before Zod. Southampton has some nice young pieces in their squad. Schneiderlin's still in his early 20's, I think. Luke Shaw, a teenager, has been mentioned in the soccer threads a few times before. He looks like real talent. I also like James Ward-Prowse, another teenager. Reminds me of Tom Carroll.
So, this is sort of cross-post spamming, and I apologize. But I've been playing around with my team stats, and I've gotten into posting some of the material at CFC - one thing you can say for SB Nation, that is one super easy publishing interface. Feels weird to write up something that long for a post here. Anyway, all that is to say, I looked at Liverpool's numbers and the "flat-track bully" thing, and there wasn't that much in the numbers to confirm. Doesn't mean it isn't a real effect, but at least this one method didn't identify much. (On Liverpool and flat-track bullying).
Are the shots/big chances associated with game time in the data you have? If so, it might be possible to scrape ESPN game logs to generate the lineups at any given time. Not sure if it's worth the hassle, but if I manage to free up some time in the next month or so I could give it a try.
This is disappointing, but I'm looking forward to see Guzan start in goal for the US. He's deserved a starting spot considering his play with AV this year.
Does this make Sean Johnson the number 2 keeper? And I guess Rimando will get called in for the March games.
Yes! I remember debating this endlessly with other Spurs fans back in the pre-Harry days when the main knock on the team's seemingly ingrained inability to make the leap from upper-mid table obscurity and qualify for the Champions League was that they couldn't beat the then Big Four (United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool).
That hegemony at the top of the table looked as unshakable as anything at the time, and Spurs indeed had an utterly abysmal record against those clubs. But I always maintained that the reason Tottenham came up short was not that they were shrinking violets in the big games but rather that they routinely dropped points to crap teams in the bottom half of the table. Taking a big scalp is nice, but the Big Four were only dangling 24 points out of a possible 114. That left 90 points available to be wrested from the teams that, during the Martin Jol era when Spurs finished 5th in back-to-back seasons, were theoretically no better than equal to Tottenham in quality. Most would have been considered significantly worse.
Now, obviously no one realistically expects a top four team (or even a title winner) to run the table against everyone outside the top four. But the point remains: you can get yourself a long, long way towards where you want to be simply by taking care of business against clubs that are mediocre to poor (and occasionally abject). Win most of the games you "should" win, and everything else is gravy.
On the second, though, the ESPN game logs do have SoT data, if I'm remembering correctly. If you could find differentiation in SoT conversion based on game situation, that would be a really useful finding. And the ESPN game logs would allow for a sort of +/- stat as well. It's almost enough to make me want to get my programming skills back and try it myself.
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