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Thursday, December 22, 2022
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The four teams realistically fighting for Top 4 are rated even more close to each other for the second half, with virtually no daylight between them: United, Chelsea, Newcastle, and Tottenham. All grading at 64-65 point teams (full season) over the second half. Brighton is considered to be well back of these four in expected quality over the second half, in the mid-50s.
Villa and West Ham are considered neck and neck for 9th/10th.
City is considered far better than everyone else: about a true 90-point team. That seems a bit high to me, but it's hard to say. Liverpool (high 70s)) is still comfortably ahead of Arsenal (around 70), who themselves are comfortably above the tightly packed group of four.
Forest (mid-30s) and especially Bournemouth (high-20s) trail the rest.
I think City is quite a bit better than everybody else, though (a) I don't think Liverpool is that kind of side anymore, (b) I think Arsenal is probably closer to a high-70s side than a 70-point side, and (c) . . . I don't have a point (c), but it felt like I should.
Basically, I think Liverpool is the 3d best team in the league and Arsenal is no way, no how a true-talent 20-point underdog to City.
Also, the more I think about Thomas Partey the more I think Arsenal needs someone more effective at CDM.
It's not really correct to say the left arm was "tucked" though. You can see if you look closely the ball would have completely missed the player's torso region and only contacts the left forearm just above the wrist, which is out in front of the player's body. With the player turned more than 90 degrees when the ball strikes him, it had already gone past the torso and was headed into the middle of the field. Under the old silhouette rule that's a penalty but now players are given some leeway so long as their hands and arms are fairly close to their body and in a natural position, even if they interfere with the play. Especially if the ball is kicked from close and there really isn't time to get them out of the way.
The shirt pull just isn't given that often, and especially not on VAR. Maybe they'll crack down on these in the future but for now if it's not given on the field--and it very seldom is--you can put pretty much forget about VAR giving it unless it's just about the worst one you have ever seen. (Speaking of... I was still pretty shocked VAR didn't give a foul where Cucarella was pulled down by the hair,. I think they give that one now if it happens again.)
Top 4 odds
Approximate relative expected team quality going forward, based on betting odds.
Current expected quality over second half based on projected points prorated over full season adjusting for schedule. As you can probably see, 538 is overall quite a bit more volatile than betting odds. Many teams overall quality expectation has not changed much despite their good (Brentford) or bad (Wolves) performance to this point.
It took me quite a while top figure out what that quote, which appears to be in reference to 538's projections for the top 8 in the EPL, was supposed to mean. I'm still not sure. The main point of 538 is to provide an objective estimate of expected relative team quality, so the sentence is first of all incoherent.
In reality coming from a stat-heavy xG person I think the quote is probably saying that 538 "should" be placing more weight on current season performance (primarily xG) over the first 18 games and less on whatever other prior estimates they are using for team quality. As clearly shown above 538 is already probably overcompensating for 18-game preformance as compared to betting odds, so this seems exactly backwards. Making matters worse, there is an implication in the comments that the offseason transfermarkt values might be having an outsized effect, when again that's generally the opposite of correct. The transfermarkt values tend to act more like a regression than anything, bringing teams like Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham back down from the heights they achieved in ranking at the end of last season back to a more reasonable estimate for the current season.
Ultimately 538 is an elo-based system, so the pre-season ranking will have a big effect regardless of current season performance. Not as big as betting odds, but big nonetheless. And it should. 18 games is still a small sample, and performance over 18 games is much less predictive of future expectation than a combination of performance and pre-season expectation. It's clear betting odds is generally weighting preseason expectation more than performance to date, but I'm not sure the exact ratio. 538 is probably also weighting preseason expectation higher, though by a lesser amount than betting odds.
Apparently she reffed at least one men's FA cup last year as well.
Chesterfield couldn't hold on, so they will have a replay against West Brom. Another 5th tier team Boreham Wood also has a replay against Accrington Stanley. The last 5th tier team is the famous Wrexham, who jumped out to a 4-1 lead against Championship Coventry and then barely held on despite Coventry going down to 10. There will be at least two League 2 (4th tier) teams in the next round as well.
Admittedly it was a bit borderline but it's extremely annoying to me that they put out fairly clear guidelines and then don't bother to follow them. It all becomes a bit arbitrary.
The call was not as bad as the one earlier this year in the EPL where the ball came off the crossbar right at the defender who barely had time to react and it bounced weakly off his head to an attacking player who had been in an offside position when the original ball was played. To me that was the worst call of the season in the EPL.
edit: just saw 114/115. I posted the new IFAB guidelines with example calls a couple months ago and that Liverpool goal I'm pretty sure falls squarely into the offside category.
The one off the crossbar earlier this year in the EPL was quite a bit worse, since the defender was very close to the crossbar and had no time to react and make any other play than the weak header he made. Barely a peep from the pundits about it though.
Rules there. It's tough. It's a judgement call on if it was a deliberate play. I think it was. The defender had enough time to make a real clearance there, imo, it was just a ######, and it wasn't a situation where the defender was so stretched or had to react so quickly that we'd expect this kind of #### up a high percentage of the time. But, I still think that rule should consider this offside. The fact is he only played the ball because of the offside player.
Announcers are mystified by that last offside call against Wolves on the would be Wolves goal, and I am too. Was it on the cross that was cut out by the defender? If so, why wasn't that a deliberate play as well?
edit: some are saying the corner taker got the ball from an offside position. Maybe that's what happened...? If so, it still must have been very close based on the position of TAA when the ball came back to the corner taker.
edit: ... and ITV said that's there was no camera angle showing the position of the corner taker so they had to stick with the call on the field, even though they don't actually know if he was in an offside position.
It would be nice if everybody could operate that way, but there's no way the EPL is going to give up all that money now.
Somehow City is going to go out this round. That's a pretty big shocker.
I say this not to be a pedant but because it is in fact cooler the correct way: it's just Wolves, not the Wolves.
I do think Alisson is an excellent keeper, and definitely better than Ederson imo. He has that Lloris gene in him though, he's good for throwing away a couple of goals a season.
I've heard that before, but I completely disagree that it's cooler. "The Wolves" sounds much, much better and more natural, like "the Angels" or "the Red Sox."
And I will never, ever submit to the way the soccer community uses the plural conjugation of a verb behind the singular name of a team. I'm just not going to do it. "Wolverhampton is the better team right now" will always be the correct construction to me, even while I understand the other way is not technically incorrect to my knowledge. I can't even bring myself to type the word "are" directly after "Wolverhampton." It gives me the jitters just thinking about it.
I know that I'll be viewed as a soccer neophyte as long as I write that way, but I'm comfortable with it. I'm happy to maintain my grammatical principles while appearing as an outsider. (Yes, I've thought about this a decent amount since I've become a soccer fan, which is probably a decent amount too much. But while I'm not a perfect grammarian by any stretch, it is important to me.)
For sure! One or two tragicomic errors a year sounds about right.
The best goal keepers are also given the most responsibility. My guess is I think that 1-2/season number is probably a bit high for the keepers who just hoof it a high % of the time. If we're starting to count letting savable shots, then yeah, everyone's prone to that now and again.
Well ten players injured is a start. Chelsea have won around 70% of their games when Reece James is in the lineup and almost as many when Ben Chilwell is available. They also do well when Ngole Kante is fit. It would also be nice if they had a striker, Lukaku was loaned out and Broja is out for the season. Joao Felix looked good and got sent off. Dennis Zakaria has been their best midfielder over the last few games and he is now injured.
I agree he hasn't shown much but as the old saying goes if he didn't have bad luck he would have no luck at all.
But despite the injuries, their team has a ton of talent, and a team with the money Chelsea has shouldn't be so reliant on 2 injury prone players (it may be fair to say this about James now?). They don't have a goal scorer or any particularly creative players (besides James) though, and you could argue a lot of their best players are on the way down, and they don't fit super well.
I would imagine Potter got some assurances about how much rope he'd be given before he took the job. It is weird that, say, Cucurella, who was so great with Potter last year, is playing so poorly this year. Hell, I thought he was better last year than Chilwell has ever been.
(a) I am not an expert, and
(b) I have not watched every match Chelsea has played, but --
Why on earth is Kai Havertz still starting for a PL club that sees itself as a Champions League contender? He is dreadful.
For me that's offside. Rashford was right on top on the ball. You can't argue that he didn't affect the play just because he didn't actually touch it.
And there’s the game. Delightful.
Almost all these borderline cases that force defenders into a catch-22 would be ruled offside under this interpretation. The offense should not benefit from a player in an offside position.
It's not the case that there has to be a physical disruption of the defenders (contra to what this person says), as can be seen in the Preston v United case in the examples, where the keeper had to wait to see if the offeensive player would play the ball.
I guess another interpretation is the whole "obvious action" rule does not apply in this case because no City player was close enough to "play the ball". If so, that's also ridiculous, as (others have noted) Rashford could have pulled feints and stepovers etc so long as the other players were far enough away.
Maybe that's what they are saying. Unless a player is clearly trying to play the ball, there has to be an opponent close to the ball that can make an immediate play on the ball. Neither were the case here. If so, the rule is absurd.
The TAA call mostly makes sense to me because without TAA there maybe the Brighton player makes a real effort to keep the ball in play rather than allowing Liverpool a throw. But if that one is offside no way the Rashford one should not be.
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