Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, August 11, 2022
The new season kicks off in Europe without a peep from the BBTF cognoscenti. Are the fans turned off by the stratospheric player salaries? Dismayed at increasing stratification in domestic leagues? Bored with the prospect of more meaningless Champions League group games? Gearing up for a World Cup boycott? Or, you know, just kind of tired in general. Whatever the reason, we can’t go without a soccer thread, surely!
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ManUnited's ineptitude had them dropping a lot even before the season started, at least from where they were 2-3 months ago. Spurs is the consensus third place pick, by pretty much everyone. Oddsmakers like Newcastle as the most likely to challenge the top 6.
Differences between 538 and betting odds are in large part due to structural changes that 538 is not so aware of, in particular for Chelsea and Newcastle. Of course, betting odds still sees something in ManUnited while 538 has pretty much given up on them. 538 is also much more bullish on Brighton and Brentford. The other teams aren't that different in each mehtodology, once overall adjustments are made for the table to out them on the same scale.
Spurs had a good start, but they also had the very easiest game by a top team in the first week, since Southampton is first in line for the drop if any of the newbies falter, and they also had to travel to Spurs.
At some point you would think the results of the structural changes at Newcastle that have already resulted in a much different level of performance would start to be accounted for by 538, but they've been behind them from the get go.
I think Newcastle must be viewed by bettors as likely to keep spending and improving, especially if they start to falter. 538 is mostly only backward looking, to results and current squad value. They can't anticipate a squad increasing its overall player value through future spending. They also only adjust for squad value in the offseason, so cannot account for signings after late July.
Maybe I'm just a hopeless fanboy of teams owned by humans rights violators, but it seems 538 never adjusted to the stark improvement in team quality that accompanied the changes last year (the site consistently low on Newcastle's projections throughout the back half of the 2021-22, though they did ultimately peg them for mid-table while they were finishing mid-table). They picked up the fourth most points in the league since the January transfer window. The team that closed out 2022 under Howe is nothing like the one that didn't win any of its first 14 matches last year, but it doesn't seem reflected in those numbers.
They are still ahead of Newcastle in odds for top 4and top 6, but not by much.
Currently projected for 59 points, one more than last season's 58.
All that may be true too, but this is mostly about money. Barca wants to break the backloaded contract that they negotiated with FDJ to survive the covid years. That way they will have gotten a bargain deal for 2 years and renege on the back end. The ways they can do this are by making it so uncomfortable in Barca he is forced to move to a Chelsea or United, who will presumably pay him a fair wage but it will be less than the backloaded amount he would have made at Barca, or by forcing him to take a pay cut at Barca. Either way FDJ loses millions.
So far FDJ, to his credit, has told Barca to pound sand. He refuses to give up his money, and why should he.
If the last wasn't a reason before yesterday, it probably is now.
The only tactic really available to the current roster is to defend deep and play on the counter. The problems come -- as Rangnick discovered last year -- when they try to play a more sophisticated game, and those problems are evident even against mid-table teams. Because the front office is both arrogant and incompetent, they failed to build a roster that can compete with the top 4-5 teams but want their coaches to play like one.
#13: Spot on.
Just wish the design of the shirts and crest were better.
Which reminds me. Looking at a 10-game rolling average of results and/or xG results is really not enough to control for opponent quality, as there is a lot of variation in schedule difficulty for 10-game stretches. 19 games (half a season) is much better. Sure you can get some idea of whether a team is playing better recently looking at 10-game rolling average, but most of the movement will just be due to opponent quality.
edit: there's going to be a lot of discussion after this one. Both Spurs goals came shortly after very clear fouls by Spurs that weren't given.
I am also a fan of the horror movie that is Barcelona setting themselves up for actual bankruptcy by selling all their revenue streams for lump sum payments.
https://twitter.com/WalkerBailey8/status/1558874013950173191
I also think the goal was significantly after that. Yeah it was the same action but Tottenham went from ball in their own half with no advantage to the goal, which also included a Chelsea possession in their box.
The usual contenders for seventh such as West Ham, Leicester and Wolves all seem to have taken a step back. Meanwhile Newcastle, Brighton and several others seem to be moving up. Right now its hard to say who could be sixth through 14th or 15th.
The amount of money flowing into the EPL means that each team can afford to buy good players. The teams that are best at that, or luckiest, can over achieve. Teams that are stuck in the old boys network, or beholden to a fixed way of working, may struggle.
I also wonder if some of the teams in the seven to ten range might be asking if its worth spending a lot of money to move from eighth to seventh, for example. The big six have been splashing the cash this off season and some teams might be saying why try to outspend them?
For the other play, VAR was in a tiny bit of a bind, since I think they had to either give it a red card or nothing (not sure about that though). With 30 seconds left in the game, a red card seems like fair punishment to me. In the first minute of the game it's a much harder call.
Of course, turns out that not giving the foul allowed Spurs to get the draw, but there was no way VAR could have predicted that.
According to betting odds, maybe Newcastle has a shot at top 4, but no one else outside the big 6 does. Current expected gap between Newcastle (7th) and Leicester (11th) is bigger than the gap between Leicester and Southampton (19th).
Betting odds for top 6 spot
Top 6 is wide open right now.
Each player was not made to run the full distance. I'd be shocked.
edit: also just to say, they did really hardly run at all. I think it was 95k or something, which is super low. Yes part of that is the roster has a lousy attitude, but the biggest portion is that they were down 4-0 after 30 minutes and were shellshocked with no hope of winning. Not easy to run hard under that scenario, especially if it is hot.
Newcastle at 10% to be top 4, so that's thought of as almost as likely now.
Still not Germany/France levels: Bayern: 83%, PSG: 92%
Romero should have been sent off but I read somewhere that the proper rules application is that he's sent off but it's still a Spurs corner since it happened with the ball out of play. Granted I have a Spurs bias so I'm inclined to believe that.
Not a huge deal in the scheme of things, but shouldn't Tuchel have gotten a second yellow for his reaction after Chelsea's second goal?
Probably you have the rule right though, but the ball was most definitely in play.
And I thought things would take a while before they got *that* bad.
I have no particular animosity (not even sports-hate) for Man U, its fans, or the city of Manchester, but there is something delightful about watching a titan self destruct.
That said he's a good player and, more important, he fills United's single biggest need. I think he'll have a substantial impact on the team going forward.
Palace has been making a strong case that it is a top half team. They have an incredibly hard run to start the season, so don't sleep on them if their stats aren't great after 9 games. (In the first 9, they face all then top 6 except Tottenham, and of their other four games, three are against Villa, Newcastle, and Brighton, all expected to be in the top half this season).
Dortmund are in a tough spot. They are like Atletico Madrid-lite, they are competitive and bring through a lot of great players but u less other teams falter they are not winning anything or keeping stars through their prime.
I think Dortmund are closer to Tottenham, really, but with less financial power, but maybe more financial power relative to their league.
West Ham is the only team without a goal through 3 games (though to be fair they haven't been that close to the worst in xG). Still will be ahead of Man United after tomorrow in the table anyway.
Brighton and Palace came into the year a little underrated and West Ham a little overrated. It's way too early to say stuff like this and things could easily shift a lot going forward, but the first two seem like top half teams while West Ham does not.
538 loves Brighton and has them clearly slotted in for Europa next year, with an outside chance at top 4. (Part of that is that 538 hates Manchester United and Newcastle, which are their main competition for Europa.) That may be a tad too high on them, but the point stands. They've been getting it done on the field now as well as in the xG table.
Like they were armed with a chainsaw?
GO Dismemberment United!
...
And he escaped with a yellow on VAR.
Far too low.
I thought Tyler Adams was MotM.
There's every chance that Casemiro will be very good for a couple years, then ok, then another albatross. He might be a piece you add to an already very good team trying to get over a critical hump right now to win trophies and championships. At the moment, I guess he could be the difference between ECL play next year and not.
Also, they better be sure Casemiro has a highly self-motivated and team-oriented personality. He's now on his last big contract and as his skills start to deteriorate and especially if the team is mediocre, it's going to be hard to motivate him otherwise.
Likewise, 538 has the 5 EPL teams in the top 11, with Brighton 22nd, United 27th, and Palace 30th.
Betting odds have United at 12% for top 4, and only 38% for top 6. That's a lot better than 538, who has them at 9% and 23%.
If Chelsea had another CB (aka pulled the trigger on Fofana), they could have moved James back to his best position at RWB and moved RLC back to his best position at MF (playing for the injured Kante and Kovacic).
That's 3 positions improved upon for the Leeds match. And RLC missed a shot that my gut says James buries. Chelsea got absolutely crushed in the midfield and RLC would have been an improvement.
Not sure if it changes the result, but shoot man, there's only 38 matches, and Chelsea isn't at full strength because it's trying to save a few bucks.
It wasn't Liverpool's worst offensive half of the season though. they slept through the first 60 minutes against Fulham, generating just 0.1 xG during that hour. Then they turned it on offensively.
Still so much time left though.
That was the best I've felt about a United performance in quite a while.
If they can change the interpretation of that rule, then surely they can change the interpretation of what is "violent conduct" or "serious foul play"
You could definitively argue that any slide tackle with no chance of getting the ball is serious foul play, as it both endangers the opponent and is excessive with respect to making a play on the ball (because there is no play on the ball). In fact, that's exactly how I would interpret the rule if starting with these rules from scratch. (Yes, I know that's how they are generally interpreted. The leagues are far, far too lenient on intentional fouls.)
We just had a classic example of a play where everyone in the stadium "knew" the PSV player was offside, and the linesman let the players run all the way down towards the corner before blowing his whistle, much to the annoyance of the Rangers players who had to sprint 40 yards. No groans from the home fans either, since the forward was "clearly" offside.
Except the replays showed he was onside by 18 inches and it wasn't particularly close. It was one of those plays that is extremely hard for the linesman to get right... as it was on his side of the field but in the opposing half, was a fast long pass from deep in PSV's own territory with the forward moving at high speed through the static Rangers back line. Almost impossible for the linesman to see, so he correctly let it go despite it looking clearly offside to everyone (including me watching live).
Then, again correctly, the linesman followed the guidelines and blew for offside when it was clear the ball and player were headed toward the corner not straight at goal.
I just bring this up to complain about the announcers who repeatedly, in game after game, complain about the offside rule and about how the linesman don't raise their flags earlier when "everyone knows" the play was offside. Some plays are very hard for linesman to see (in particular based on the angles of the play from the linesman's perspective, and his duties at one end of the field when the ball is quickly payed to the other end), so the guidelines now are, on a play that the linesman thinks is offside but can't be sure, to wait to see if the play goes towards the corner or towards goal. If they think it is offside but was too close to call upfront, then if towards goal they wait for the immediate scoring chance to resolve, and if towards the corner they raise the flag. In this way, if they end up getting it wrong, as they did in this game, at least they don't prevent the offense from losing a very big scoring chance.
You would think that announcers, watching so many games, would intuitively understand these points, but you would be wrong.
Pot 1
Spain Real Madrid CC: 124.000
Germany Eintracht Frankfurt CC: 61.000
England Manchester City CC: 134.000
Italy Milan CC: 38.000
Germany Bayern Munich CC: 138.000
France Paris Saint-Germain CC: 112.000
Portugal Porto CC: 80.000
Netherlands Ajax CC: 82.500
Pot 2
England Liverpool CC: 134.000
England Chelsea CC: 123.000
Spain Barcelona CC: 114.000
Italy Juventus CC: 107.000
Spain Atlético Madrid CC: 105.000
Spain Sevilla CC: 91.000
Germany RB Leipzig CC: 83.000
England Tottenham Hotspur CC: 83.000
Pot 3
Germany Borussia Dortmund CC: 78.000
Austria Red Bull Salzburg CC: 71.000
Ukraine Shakhtar Donetsk CC: 71.000
Italy Inter Milan CC: 67.000
Italy Napoli CC: 66.000
Portugal Benfica CC: 61.000
Portugal Sporting CP CC: 55.500
Germany Bayer Leverkusen CC: 53.000
Pot 4
Scotland Rangers CC: 50.250
France Marseille CC: 44.000
Denmark Copenhagen CC: 40.500
Belgium Club Brugge CC: 38.500
Scotland Celtic CC: 33.000
Czech Republic Viktoria Plzeň CC: 31.000
Israel Maccabi Haifa CC: 7.000
Zagrab or Bodø/Glimt
Pot 1 -
City
PSG/Bayern
Real Madrid
Inter/Ajax
Porto/Frankfurt
Pot 2 -
Liverpool
Barcelona
Chelsea/Tottenham
Atleti/Juve
Leipzig
Sevilla
Pot 3 -
Dortmund/Milan
Napoli/Leverkusen/Benfica
Salzburg/Sporting
Shakhtar
Pot 4 -
Marseille
Rangers
Celtic/Brugge
Pizen/Zagrab or BodøGlimt/Copenhagen/Maccabi Haifa
The top 4 here are given 2/3 chance to win it all. The top 8 are given 87%.
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