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Thursday, August 11, 2022
OT Soccer Thread - European Leages Return
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!
The Marksist
Posted: August 11, 2022 at 02:20 PM | 775 comment(s)
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I dunno.
That outside of the boot one touch pass by Salah was sublime, and the earlier save by Ederson was very good too.
In truth, if they get healthy and are able to play Thiago and Fabinho in pretty much every match, I could see them ripping off a both of wins in a row.
Their first choice 11 should still be very, very good.
That CB had no business being turned by Salah on the goal.
PRE-SEASON CURRENT City 57 76 Arsenal 2.5 12.75 Liverpool 26 3.5 Tottenham 6 3.5 Chelsea 5 3.5 United 2 0.5 Field 1.5 0.25PRE-SEASON CURRENT City 96.5 98.5 Arsenal 37.5 77.5 Liverpool 87 68 Tottenham 59.5 58 Chelsea 56 55.5 United 30 27 Newcastle 8.5 8 Brighton 3 4 West Ham 5.5 1.5 Field 16.5 2City, Spurs, Chelsea, United, Newcastle, and Brighton are pretty much right where when the season started. Arsenal is way up, Liverpool is down quite a bit, and the field has been devastated.Gunners looked like absolute dirt for most of the match, it's true. What's really weird is is the Jekyll and Hyde routine from Liverpool. If the side that played City today had showed up at Emirates, that would have been a completely different game.
A question: wouldn't that be typical, after a few matches? Results shake out a little bit and the sort of generic "field" starts falling away? Or is my intuition totally out of whack?
Okay, yeah. That's a much more cogent way of saying what I was thinking.
In one sense, I'm sure that's true. But in another, the field is almost always going to go down, because the one team that does put things together is going to no longer be part of the "field."
Pre-season odds copied from Post 2 of this thread. That said, no matter how you defined "field", assuming reasonably that nobody in the Top 6 properly belongs in the field, then the field this year has been devastated. Coming in to this year teams outside the top 6 were given 33.5%, and now are at less than half that. If Newcastle as a dark horse was not in your personal "field", then it has gone from 25% down to 7.5% I don't think it's necessarily true for most years that only 1/4 of the way through the season the field drops so much. It is true that near the end of the season it's more binary--where most years all the field teams are out of it but occasionally a field team still has a very high chance. This early in the season though I don't think that's normally so true.
By the way, I was going to look at 538's odds to see what had happened with their "field" teams (however you want to define it for Top 4 slots), but quickly realized that was a bad idea. For whatever reason, their odds for anybody outside the top 6 of making the Top 4 slots have been way too high every year. In some ways 538 is systematically better than betting odds, but in other ways, such as this, they are worse. Considering their non-top6 odds are too high to begin with, you would certainly expect a big dropoff each year to happen quickly, even if the betting odds non-top6 remained constant.
I missed a lot of the second half of the United game but in the first half I think they'd gotten the better of it. A draw on the road against a good team is still a solid result. It'll be interesting to see if they try to add anyone in the winter window. They've built very sensibly/slowly, much more in the City mold.
For example, last year after 10 games the title race was much, much more in doubt. Chelsea led the league with 25 points, Liverpool was in second with 22, City tied with West Ham for 3rd with 20. Even Arsenal and United had 17 each. Overall that's fairly similar, though already tighter than this year, with the massive difference of Liverpool being two points up on City rather than 10 points down (though with one game in hand).
edit: You have to go back 5 years to find a season where the title race was less in doubt after 10 games, when City started very, very hot and Liverpool started the year like this one. 76% is no guarantee though, so City could still lose out with some luck for the rest of the league. Even if they win it in the end, there is likely to be some tense moments along the way.
United play Spurs and Chelsea in their next 2 games I believe, so look for them to drop points.
It was an indirect free kick and the kick had not been taken (if the referee had deemed Trippier's touch was the kick, he would have lowered his arm since Newcastle could not have scored off of that touch). Since his arm was raised throughout, the free kick had not yet been taken and thus Ronaldo could not just swoop in. The booking was probably because Ronaldo should have known that and/or for disregarding the whislte and/or for general dickery.
So many acts in the game are taken that are truly cynical and cause delay, like standing right in front of the free kick
(happens multiple times a game) and no card is given for those. Seems excessive to give one here as I don't think it was pure dickery on Ronaldo's part.
(In a cosmic sense give him a yellow, because I generally dislike Ronaldo and thinks he's a terrible drag on this United team, and probably a pretty terrible teammate and person. But from a pure sporting sense it seemed like a bad use of the card.)
I think pieces get written like this when what they really mean is, "Hey, maybe someone other than City and Liverpool will finish 1-2."
No argument there. It was worth a shot. The entire Man U club subsequently surrounding the ref and trying to argue against the obvious was less reasonable.
Newcastle were denied what I thought was a pretty clear penalty. Which is about 0.8xG right there. And had another pretty decent shout on a pretty aggressive shirt pull (that they only showed one replay of).
Was it this one?
I didn't see the first half, so I haven't seen video of it or the Wilson play all the Toon fans are complaining about.
I'm a United hater for the record, but totally agree and said as much at the time to a friend. Clear penalty in real time to me, though, but referees have a difficult job when guys so obviously swan dive through the air like that.
From the laws of the game:
The referee indicates an indirect free kick by raising the arm above the head; this signal is maintained until the kick has been taken and the ball touches another player, goes out of play or it is clear that a goal cannot be scored directly.
Except the third part of that statement answers that. If the free kick had already been taken by Trippier, it was clear that a goal could not have been scored directly, therefore the arm would have come down.
Signals
Direct Free Kick: the Referee keeps one arm horizontal pointing in the direction the kick has to be taken
Indirect Free Kick: the Referee indicates an indirect free kick by raising their arm above their head. They maintains their
arm in that position until the kick has been taken and the ball has touched another player or goes out of play
I have no problem with Ronaldo trying it. And I don't necessarily think a booking was in order.
But the entire team (many of whom who could see the referee's hand) haranguing him over what was obviously not a goal was a bit much.
Arm raised is still irrelevant though, so shouldn't be cited any further.
Well, your link sucks so I'm not going to just take your word for it.
But this one is also from the FA that says otherwise.
INDIRECT FREE KICK SIGNAL
The referee indicates an indirect free kick by raising the arm above the head; this signal is maintained until the kick has been taken and the ball touches another player, goes out of play or it is clear that a goal cannot be scored directly.
I think football needs a very clear rule, that the only people allowed to talk to the referee during a dispute are the involved player and the captain. Anybody else gets within 5 yards of the ref in order to try and pressure them, and it's an automatic yellow. Give assistant refs / the fourth referee authority to police that, so the ref can focus on the dispute. And outside of that, any type of harassment or yelling is also a yellow. The mobbing situation needs to stop, and has for a long time now.
Agreed. He has made some questionable decisions in his life, but there is no denying that he was fabulous last year and I do not think anyone can claim they clearly had a better season than he did. I do wonder if there was some vote splitting between Salah and Mane which made them both lower than they could have been in the final count, but ultimately Benzema checked all the boxes and it was well deserved (again setting aside his personal faults).
After a while you have to at least wonder if there's something systematic about how they play that breaks xG. If I were still into doing calculus about sports, maybe I'd try to figure it out. But these days I leave that to the pros.
I'd just start with the fact that they don't have a striker. Their xG is dominated by Pascal Gross, Danny Welbeck, and Leandro Trossard, all of whom I think are good players, but none of whom I'd be surprised to learn are below average finishers. Put, I don't know, Ivan Toney up top and you might get a different outcome.
And I think if they had better finishers, they'd have to fundamentally change how they play (unless the attackers were guys like Firmino, Sterling, Jesus, etc. that are also really good at pressuring and playing in a possession style on top of scoring. But they can't draw those kind of players)
Note: Yes, to be fair, they are playing more with guys like Welbeck now. But historically have played with Maupay, who is good at things that helps make their system work, but scoring goals is not one of them.
There's probably a middle ground in there. Your Firmino's before he arrived at Liverpool or the best pressing striker in the Championship or something. You might have to tune the systems slightly away from controlled possession, but maybe not enough to destabilize it entirely.
I agree. Bamford (before he got hurt) was also a great example. Danny Ings was too, imo. Though maybe mostly on the pressing and tenacity front.
I do feel like they are just a guy or two away. But at the same time, I'm sympathetic to the fact that they've been playing at a mid-table level and recruiting well in a number of other areas, while not spending at a mid-table EPL level. I try to also look at it as glass half full - they are punching above their weight.
Spurs need to get their game right because they have Newcastle and then an important CL match in their next wo.
Spurs have obviously gotten off to a good start, but it seems like they've been pretty poor against the teams at the top.
Home against weak team: Southampton, Wolves, Fulham, Leicester, Everton
Record: 5 wins
Goals: 15 -- 4
xGoals: 9.5 + pen -- 2.8 + pen
Away against good teams: Chelsea, West Ham, Arsenal, Brighton, United
Record: 1 win, 2 draws, 2 losses
Goals: 5 -- 8
xGoals: 4.4 + pen -- 8.5
They also beat up on Forest on the road, which is not listed above, since it doesn't fit into either category, unless you would recategorize with just good and bad teams, forgetting home/away. If you do that it's even more lopsided.
Interestingly, they haven't yet played the few teams that appear right now to be the most midtable, unless you want to count West Ham or maybe Brighton. The most midtable right now are probably Villa, Palace, and Brentford.
Top 4 odds are kind of interesting:
PRE-SEASON CURRENT City 96.5 98.5 Arsenal 37.5 79 Liverpool 87 70 Chelsea 56 51 Tottenham 59.5 49 United 30 36 Newcastle 8.5 11 Brighton 3 3 West Ham 5.5 1 Field 16.5 1.5Chelsea and Spurs are basically each 50/50 for top 4 now, and United is very much still in the picture. Newcastle may be making waves. If they beat Spurs people will be really taking them seriously.
It's a year where all of the top 6, and Newcastle too, have points. So even with Spurs' good start they are falling back slightly from where they started.
Today was very bad. I may be reading too much into one player's absence but it seems like in some games they're very dependent on Kulusevski to get anything going offensively.
That said, we may not find out for sure. United seem to be playing it close to the vest and letting Ronaldo hang himself.
Some of the fanbase still think he can be "sold" for something, but there's no way that happens unless United eats most of the wages through the end of the year.
It was really a thrashing of a pretty good Dutch squad. It was one of those matches that felt like the score was 3-0 instead of 1-0. Anyway, I'll take the result. Gave up no goals to a side that scored 11 in its previous three matches, too.
PRE-SEASON CURRENT Forest 41.5 71.5 Bournemouth 65 55 Leicester 6.5 26.5 Southampton 24.5 25 Wolves 15 24.5 Leeds 30 23 Everton 22 22 Villa 4 18 Fulham 39 16.5 Brentford 24 7.75 Palace 11.5 5 West Ham 3.5 3 Brighton 10 2.5 Newcastle 3 0.2 Top 6 0.25 0.05Villa has had terrible results, but their underlying stats haven't been nearly as bad. They've suffered from poor finishing among other things. Still they've been a disappointment considering they came into the year with lots of hopes. Betting odds had them as 9th coming into the season after Newcastle and West Ham. If they had beaten Leeds and Forest, as they probably should have, they'd be at 13 points and Gerrard would still have a job.
Bummer. He was one of my favorite players back in his day. It often seemed like he was the only player who actually played well on those hugely underperforming England teams of the 90s and early 00s. And it was easy to root for someone who played for Liverpool back in those days, when he was often their main, if not only, bright spot.
I still doubt he would have been better off at Rangers awaiting a better spot than Villa, though. I guess the idea was that if he kept on doing very well at Rangers a Top 6 team in England would give him a shot directly from Rangers? That seems questionable unless Rangers continued to set the world on fire, which is not so easy to do. (And they aren't doing it now, for example.)
Villa was also a significant step up from Rangers, and he probably would only have needed to have done reasonably well there to eventually get a shot. If he's a good enough coach to make it in the top half of the EPL he'll get another shot at this eventually. Even if he's not, he'll likely bounce back from this at the very least to the level of a Rangers again.
Relatedly and somewhat notably, Tuchel has apparently turned down Villa as not a big enough club for him. He has also apparently turned down two other EPL clubs as well as Leverkusen. He's definitely looking for a top job, which must mean one of the top 10-15 or so teams in the world: EPL top 6 plus maybe Newcastle, the top 2 in Spain, Bayern, PSG, and maybe a few others, like Atleti, Dortmund, Leipzig, Juve, and Inter. Not even a second glance at Villa means he is not going down very far on the list yet. I'm not sure if any of those top jobs are likely to become available soon, but one probably will.
Pirlo and Lampard got elite jobs with almost no coaching experience. Pirlo I think had literally none, he got the job before he even had all of the required badges. Zidane I think had only coached as an assistant and with youth teams.
Getting the big jobs is definitely an old boys club and being a legend can allow you to skip proving yourself. So from that perspective, it's hard to say - Gerard is a legend and maybe would have been better off hoping for that. Trying to work his way into the inner circle of coaches "traditionally" is really, really tough. Who has done that recently? Poch, Ten Hag, Nagelsmann, Potter? I guess there are a few, but the hit rate is so, so low.
Villa just has a bit of a glass ceiling. Even Potter's results with Brighton maybe wouldn't have been viewed the same way at Villa.
Lampard and Pirlo are not exactly managing success stories.
edit: somehow I didn't notice Zidane above. Same story about having played for the club, but obviously he was a success story so that is different.
The first route one goal was well done, and created by Brighton's early pressing on City goal kicks (pretty effectively too). I'm guessing that won't be Ederson's last assist on a Haaland goal this year.
Why would you put Ronaldo into a game with just a few minutes left in it and you are up 2-0? Sure, I get the idea that he is being paid and should do what he asked no matter what but this team has generally struggled to score goals, something that he is still really good at. I just don't understand what the coach is trying to prove to ask him to come in so late in the game when his skill set is not what is needed at the moment.
I'm not saying Haaland fouled him there, but 9 out of 10 times they call that a foul on the offensive player. Maybe a bit of justice since they didn't get the penalty right before and I wonder if that's part of why the ref let the play continue. I think there's a human bias of not wanting to give to many 50/50s to the same team.
Realistically that's the only time to put him on now in an important game. It's that or nothing. (Slight exaggeration about how he will be used, but that's actually my view right now.)
I was actually commenting on the City penalty given.
On the Haaland goal I wouldn't say it's 90% on the offensive player there, but it certainly could easily have been called and would not have been a surprise. That said, they would virtually never call that much contact on the defense, so letting it go doesn't seem unfair. I thought there was no chance they would overturn it on VAR once it wasn't called on the field.
I'm happy they didn't have Ronaldo on the bench. Takes the pressure off Ten Hag to put him in having the team shape suffer.
PRE-SEASON CURRENT City 57 80.25 Arsenal 2.5 11 Liverpool 26 3 Chelsea 5 2.75 Tottenham 6 1.25 United 2 1.25 Field 1.5 0.5PRE-SEASON CURRENT City 96.5 99 Arsenal 37.5 77 Liverpool 87 58 Chelsea 56 53 Tottenham 59.5 44 United 30 39 Newcastle 8.5 22 Brighton 3 4 West Ham 5.5 2 Field 16.5 2*Cries in Jude Bellingham*
PRE-SEASON CURRENT City 96.5 99 Arsenal 37.5 81 Liverpool 87 60 Chelsea 56 47 United 30 44 Tottenham 59.5 40 Newcastle 8.5 21 Brighton 3 4 West Ham 5.5 2.5 Field 16.5 1.5Relegation odds:
PRE-SEASON CURRENT Forest 41.5 64 Bournemouth 65 59 Wolves 15 37 Leeds 30 34 Southampton 24.5 25 Leicester 6.5 20 Everton 22 17 Brentford 24 11.5 Villa 4 11 Fulham 39 9.5 Palace 11.5 6.5 West Ham 3.5 2.8 Brighton 10 2.5 Newcastle 3 0.1 Top 6 0.25 0.1You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
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