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Sunday, November 28, 2021
OT Soccer Thread - Domestic Cups, Congested Fixture Lists and Winter Breaks
Champions League Group Stage End - December 7/8
MLS Cup - December 11
Champions League Knockout Stage Draw - December 13
Women’s Champions League Group Stage End - December 15
One Year to World Cup Final - December 18
Women’s Champions League Knockout Stage Draw - December 20
FA Cup Third Round - January 8
CONCACAF World Cup Qualifiers Window - January 27-February 2
EFL Cup Final - February 27
Jose is an Absurd Sultan
Posted: November 28, 2021 at 10:39 AM | 517 comment(s)
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*brighton placed here due to relative difficulty of remaining schedule. Same for other teams slightly out of order (by points expected per game), with brighton being the most extreme case.
newcastle is expected to be essentially a below average midtable team in the second half. That would give them a slightly better than 50/50 chance of staying up.
538 essentially agrees with all of these, except for 538 absolutely hates United, dislikes Newcastle, and slightly likes Brighton and Brentford. (You could even argue those last two are within the margin of error.) Really, since betting odds are high on Newcastle with the expectation of signings, which 538 has no method of adjustment for, the only true difference of opinion is with United.
betting odds now views arsenal and spurs as essentially equal in quality going forward, with tottenham a hair ahead in the standings but possibly with slightly more variance in performance. 538 thinks arsenal is a little bit better than spurs.
Interestingly, the xG table would put Brentford and Palace in the top 10 as well, but few systems appear to think what they are doing is sustainable. Leicester, Villa, and Wolves have not done well by xG, but are expected to be better in the second half.
Game of the day going on right now between Barnsley and 4th tier Barrow. 8 goals on 9 shots on target, including 5 goals in the last 15 minutes of the 90. Currently in extras. Barrow has scored 4 times after the 68th minute. And they have played with 10 men since the 38th minute!
Battle for the 3rd and 4th spots in La Liga is interesting this year. Atletico and Barcelona are by no means guaranteed to get them.
538 has them as 5th worst in the league, ahead of only the teams scrapping to avoid relegation. They are not a good team.
edit: ok that last Minamino chance should have been a goal, probably. Also not on target though.
Part of me says, you've got a U23, U18, etc. squads. These guys are professionals, and even if you don't want them playing big minutes, you shouldn't be rewarded because Xhaka is suspended or you don't have enough injury cover. Also, sometimes 2 injuries to the "right" players can be more impactful than 6 injuries. Also understand that leagues and national teams are playing these guys so threadbare that injuries are going to happen, and forcing the matches will lead to players playing 85% which could lead to more injuries (though a lot of teams are likely already doing this).
Liverpool still has a small chance, with an emphasis on small.
In the Championship, Blackburn's been on quite the run since the 7-0 drubbing by Fulham in November. (Fulham pulled another 7-0 against Reading just last week as well.) Tied for most points in the Championship now and getting close to a lock for at least the playoff.
Class of the second tier is still Fulham, though, with Bournemouth second. There's still a very good chance both will be promoted
Speaking of Manchester United, they are still up but haven't played that well. The better side today, yes probably, but only by a little. Since Villa is considered a decent team and the game is on the road, that's not such a bad performance, but it's not exactly top 4 material either.
edit: heh. no longer up at all.
I don't get why Rangnick waited so long to make subs, nor why he made the ones he did.
I wonder what difference Pogba would make. With Van De Beek now a seeming flop at Man U, Juan Mata was the only other midfield option off the bench.
United is really slipping in the odds now. Everton is now most likely to be relegated after the bottom 4. Burnley/Watford relegation 6-pointer mid week.
I'm getting a bit frustrated with the /r/chelseafc subreddit. Lamenting about the title chances being over is getting old. Man City (especially being healthy) is a tough mountain to climb. Top 4 in the EPL should be the goal, and yeah, maybe occasionally everything will break right and you can win the league. But losing both wing backs is certainly not breaking right.
Not I.
Me either, I've always had a soft spot for them despite or perhaps because of the buffoons who have generally been in charge. And I like Howe.
Yay for sports betting. Well if Jake Paul can be a boxer, maybe this is our future.
edit: rumors are that it was Xhaka against Leeds. Got booked for time wasting with a 3 goal lead. Could be just a rumor.
Championship: 106 games - 69 goals
Premiership: 104 games - 24 goals
Hard to see Spurs not scoring again in this one. The one goal they did get was terrible defending by Söyüncü, but it was hardly undeserved overall.
United look much better in the second half, and will likely win now.
I can see going for it to try to get a ball into the box in the last 30 seconds, but if you do that you have to keep one speedy guy back just in case the ball comes back at you in a 1v1... And LC didn't. (I also think had the GK come out immediately and fast that he might have gotten to the ball first but, even still... it took one hell of a finish off the post to win it. !@#$ happens.)
An absolute gift 3 points though. From the reactions afterward, you almost could see them kicking on from this and running away with 4th by sweeping their games in hand... but of course the most likely scenario is they just get pasted this Sunday against Chelsea and it's all doom and gloom again.
Conte really does seem to be the miracle worker he was claimed to be...
Against *this* Chelsea team, running on fumes and lacking in confidence right now?
Now, I'm not sure I believe with any confidence in Spurs' backline right now (I never thought I'd long for Eric Dier to return again), but I just can't see them getting "pasted".
538 thinks a Chelsea win is only 50/50. 538's system has notorious (ok, according to me) recency bias, so it's not a surprise they are more favorable to Spurs than betting odds.
Still, it was a must win game at home against the bottom team in the league. Even a draw would have been a bad result.
For their part, good on Norwich for making things at the bottom of the table a tad more interesting. They are still the team expected to finish with the least points in the league despite now being out of the bottom 3. Games in hand for others mostly, but also they are still pegged as the weakest team in the league.
Digne goes down from getting hit in the head by a bottle thrown by a fan at the end of the half, when Villa scored. Seems ok after a spell lying on the turf, but that really is lousy.
Ajax has a GD coming into the game of 59-4 and is probably at the top of the discussion for best Eredivisie sides of the last 20 years. But they are down a point in the table, and while you would strongly favor them over PSV (who has a GD around 25), a win for PSV would be huge. Both are big favorites against almost every other team (Feyenoord is good too).
One thing you could say is both calls were made on the field and both grey areas, so its not really VAR's place as currently conceived to second guess the calls.
team pts. exp. games /game yet to play played twice city 35.25 15 2.35 -- chelsea, arsenal, leicester, southampton liverpool 34.75 16 2.17 -- chelsea, palace, brentford chelsea 30.75 14 2.19 -- city, liverpool, tottenham, brighton, villa united 27.75 16 1.73 brighton west ham, wolves, villa, newcastle tottenham 29.75 18 1.65 brighton, burnley chelsea, palace, watford arsenal 26.75 17 1.57 wolves city, burnley, norwich west ham 21.25 15 1.42 -- united, palace, southampton, leeds villa 25.75 17 1.51 leeds, burnley chelsea, united, everton, brentford brighton 20.75 16 1.30 united, tottenham chelsea, leicester, everton, palace, brentford leicester 24.75 18 1.38 everton city, brighton wolves 20.75 17 1.22 arsenal united, southampton, brentford everton 20.75 18 1.15 leicester, newcastle brighton, villa, norwich newcastle 19.75 17 1.16 everton united, leeds, watford palace 20.25 16 1.27 watford liverpool, tottenham, west ham, brighton southampton 19.25 16 1.20 -- city, west ham, wolves leeds 17.25 17 1.01 villa west ham, newcastle, burnley brentford 16.25 15 1.08 -- liverpool, brighton, villa, wolves burnley 19.25 20 0.96 spurs,villa,watford arsenal, leeds watford 16.25 18 0.90 palace, burnley tottenham, newcastle, norwich norwich 11.75 16 0.73 -- arsenal, everton, watfordSome teams have harder remaining schedules than others. They are ordered by expected points per game, roughly adjusted for remaining schedule strength.
non-pen xGD/90 games points GD/90 fbref 538 understat arsenal 17 36 1.18 .73 .85 .89 tottenham 16 32 .38 .60 .79 .61 palace 18 21 .17 .16 .30 .32 man united 19 37 .68 .23 .21 .28 west ham 20 31 .45 .20 .22 .28 brighton 18 27 .17 .09 .17 .18 wolves 18 33 .28 .09 .17 .17 leicester 16 23 .19 .24 -.01 .01For CB, they've got Silva, Christensen, Rudiger, and Azpi. They've got like 6 very good (or at least expensive) attackers across like 3 or 4 spots.
I think this league is shaping up to where it's:
City
<big gap>
Liverpool
<small gap>
Chelsea
<huge gap>
Arsenal/Tottenham/United, who are all about equal
I guess you can put West Ham there too, if you want.
Looking at the odds I would have Brentford with shorter odds to go down with Burnley and Newcastle close to the same odds. But the bookies are usually very accurate.
Anyway, the US really needs to remember that there is a left side of the field.
Mexico scored twice and is now leading, and Canada is leading. Unless Panama wins tomorrow the top 3 spots are basically locked up.
4th in this group is very likely to be Panama, but could be Costa Rica. New Zealand could potentially beat either one of those teams in the one-game playoff. It would be just the third time for them at the WC finals. Panama has only gone once before, but that was the last one, in 2018.
Last night I think El Salvador did a nice job just bedding in and being organized. They did a nice job of parking the bus but at the same time really created nothing, they had two good chances all night and one of them was a first half giveaway by the US. I never had a "oh El Salvador might nick this" feeling at any point. One thing I thought Berhalter got right was he really wanted everything to run through McKennie. It seemed like basically once we got possession the goal was to get the ball to him and go from there.
Pulisic had a bad night before being pulled off. He seemed to be playing himself into trouble trying to do too much with the ball. Weah and Robinson were both really good and I thought Adams-Zimmerman/Richards did a good job just keeping things cool. One reason El Salvador never threatened is they never got the chance. Ferreira didn't do anything for me, he missed two good chances in the first half. One was a bit tricky but one absolutely should have been scored.
Enormous wins for Peru and Uruguay this round, who are making their case for the last 1.5 spots. Bolivia probably needs to turn the game right now around to have any chance. It's not looking very likely at the moment. Finishing 4th is much better than 5th this year. 5th place will very likely take on either Australia or Japan in a 1-off (I think). That is very much not a gimme.
Colombia and even less so Chile are both still in it, but it's not looking too good for them.
edit: US was playing very aggressively over the last 20 minutes. Had some chances but also gave up some huge ones the other way. Canada finally scored again deep in stoppage time. 2-0. Canada is probably favorites to top the octagonal now, and have all but punched their ticket to WC 2022! Well done.
The goal that mattered was such a dreadful goal to give up. Turner got no distance on a goal kick right up the middle, I think the cold was a factor on that (no one seemed to get great distance on their goal kicks). Then the US just let Canada come down the middle and at the decisive moment Miles Robinson slipped and that was that.
I think it’s fair to say the US has not been strong this round. With that said a loss at Canada is not a bad thing in the big picture. Win the two home games against Honduras and Panama and we are on 24 points which should get us through with room to spare.
Isn't the actual big picture that they're yet again looking fairly unimpressive in one of the least competitive qualifying groups on the planet?
Sigh.
In less happier news, Man U now has a second player (that we know of...) who by all rights should probably be convicted of serious sexual crimes.
Not sure if anyone mentioned that Lampard has officially taken over at Everton, too.
How much help does Everton realistically need right now, from the winter window? I guess they don't want to get relegated, but that was pretty unlikely anyway. They should really be thinking about next year. Apparently they have no option to get van de Beek permanently, but do have something permanent for Alli.
I hope van de Beek does well. Even the United fans knew the club screwed him.
(The implication being that a GK wearing sweatpants is, quite correctly, against the rules in most countries.)
Australia hosts Japan in March and needs a win to get the automatic qualification spot over Japan. Even that wouldn't be enough if they lost to Saudi Arabia in their other game.
Thankfully, Peru did tie it up in the 68th minute, but that didn't stop the time wasting. Ecuador really only needed a point out of this game. Peru finished the stronger of the two teams, but it was too little too late and it ended in a draw.
Ecuador is now virtually assured of advancing, while Uruguay and Peru are pretty much neck and neck for 4th/5th, and they play each other as well. Chile with the big win at altitude (I'm guessing) is still just hanging around, along with Colombia.
Maybe they should have thought about this more carefully this time and not scheduled Minnesota in the dead of winter, but my guess is when they scheduled it they just thought having the crowd was more important than the change of unreasonable weather. Hopefully that doesn't backfire with nobody able to really play well 'cause it's so damn cold.
Average high in Minneapolis this time of year is 23 degrees or so (edit: some sites say closer to 25), and average low 8 degrees. I'm guessing a 7:30 kickoff time you can reasonably expect something below 20 degrees a lot of the time. Kickoff at around 2 degrees though is probably quite a bit worse than expected.
edit: tonight is basically going to match the coldest day on record for an average year in Minnesota, so it's quite a bit colder than a normal midwinter evening. Only 3 years out of the last dozen have had days significantly colder.
edit2: don't get me wrong, it's really freaking cold! I wouldn't want to play in this either, and wouldn't be shocked if it's so cold the US only manages a 0-0 draw as no one can play real soccer. That said, I just doubt the planners when they scheduled this said let's stick it to Honduras by making them play in 20 degree weather.
Last February 11-15 the temperature remained below zero in Minneapolis for 116 consecutive hours. Almost exactly two years before that there was a 78 hour stretch ending February 1 in which it never got above 0. It's a delightful place with outrageously cold winters, there were very few scenarios in which tonight's game was going to be played in a reasonable temperature for people to run around in shorts and tshirts.
1 shot today in the first half, in a must-win at Jamaica.
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