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Thursday, December 22, 2022
Premier League - Boxing Day December 26
Serie A - January 4
La Liga - December 29
Bundesliga - January 20
FA Cup - January 6
Champions League - February 14 (Knockout Stage)
MLS - February 25
Transfer Window - January 1 to January 31 (some differences within individual nations)
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It'll be interesting to see how the next few years goes.
Well, no replays in the FA cup (at least at this point) this year, but pushing to avoid penalties is a similar thing.
Since Everton won it in '95, only 3 times has there been a winner outside of Arsenal, Chelsea, United, Liverpool, and City. The latest of those times was a very good Leicester team in 2021 (so, not that different from this year's Brighton maybe). There was also a pretty good Portsmouth team in 2007-2008 (maybe the 7th best team that year), which had a very easy run with the huge exception of United at Old Trafford. The last one was quite unexpected: Wigan in 2013, in a year they got relegated.
So one true surprise and a couple very mild surprises in 25+ years. I would call anyone outside of City, United, Tottenham, and Brighton winning it this year a bigger surprise than any of those other years save Wigan.
There are replays this year in the FA Cup for the 3rd and 4th rounds. Liverpool/Brighton would have gone to a replay. There were six replays in the 3rd round, and there will be at least five in the 4th round.
edit: the 1st and 2nd round also had replays.
Huh ... the Graun MBM said it would have gone to penalties ... eggs on me for trusting the MBM.
I would still expect Sheffield United to win this one, and probably by 2 or more goals. But for now at least it's a game.
edit: 3-3 now! So many poorly defended corners and throw-ins today. 4 of the 6 goals came that way I think.
Dreadful from the Blades but they got away with it at the death. They would, I suspect, have won without Davies in goal. Foderingham would not have let that first one go in, and probably done better on the third.
The "shoulder-to-shoulder" by the defender is very often simply a foul by the defense, and the Konate play was a pretty egregious example. To make matter much worse he was on a yellow and it probably should have been DOGSO too. Just a very bad miss by the refs and VAR too.
EDIT: Last week's news that Gundogan is off to Barcelona appears to not be true, at least at the moment. Incredible that the entire European continent has like one credible soccer reporter. Can we send them Woj on loan with a buy option?
Pep's seemed to always have an attitude of "If you don't want to be here, we want to get you out of the squad asap".
Also, I think from a timing perspective City were due to spend another 50 million on a full back.
He definitely does this, it just seems less than ideal to do it late in the mid-season transfer window when they're already thin back there.
I've seen the Perro talk too but I'm skeptical. Pep has already seen him, I'd be surprised if he's changed his opinion. There is apparently a buy-back clause in there, but again all soccer reporting is fake so who the hell knows.
It's so bad. My club, for obvious reasons, is reportedly on the verge of seemingly hundreds of signings each window. More bizarrely, the fact that virtually all of these are clear BS does not seem to stop many fans from believing this time it's true.
That's true of all bad journalism. But it doesn't make it any less defensible if it's the British press selling BS transfer claims or Tucker Carlson cynically stoking culture war fires. Just because there's an audience for nonsense doesn't justify the nonsense.
I'd agree with that. Technically it's the same thing; journalists throwing #### out there to generate attention. But I'm a lot more bothered by someone doing it when it is related to the future of the planet and society than when it is related to the left back of a soccer team.
Leicester City vs Blackburn Rovers or Birmingham City
Stoke City vs Brighton & Hove Albion
Wrexham or Sheffield United vs Tottenham
Fulham or Sunderland vs Leeds United
Bristol City vs Manchester City
Manchester United vs Derby or West Ham
Ipswich or Burnley vs Sheffield Wednesday or Fleetwood Town
The favorites avoid each other this round. And, we could have almost all EPL teams in the final 8. Probably will have 6 at any rate.
If you believe the reporting in the Gunnersphere, Declan Rice is practically already in Arsenal's backfield. They talk about it like it's fait accompli without ever saying why. I mean, he would be a great addition; they desperately need someone who can spell Thomas Partey but also play in the backfield. But why does that automatically mean he's on the train down from Birmingham?
The Jorginho deal seems like an American sports move you don't see quite as much in soccer- bring in a vet for depth on a short(ish) term deal. I think I like it for Arsenal.
edit: watching the replay it's a fair red. I would say harsh luck as Guimares appears to be trying to play the ball, but there's no need to play on the edge when you are up 2 goals with 10 minutes left. At that point you don't need to take chances.
I couldn't watch the game and the replays I saw were lacking, but that seems to be the consensus from the Newcastle fans. Tough break, but the right call.
I'm not really sure WTF Doherty did to Conte, but it had to have been something. I really don't get it. I mean--yes, defensively he's limited, but when Spurs were on a run last Spring, he was clicking on all cylinders and actually Spurs struggled a bit after he went down with the season-ending injury.
I know having 3 right backs/wing backs might be 1 too many, but just watch--one of Porro or Royal will go down with an injury against City.
That might be your answer, it's possible he's just not quite the same player anymore.
Oh and Conte's no good awful season continues ... he had emergency gall bladder surgery last night and is out for an undetermined number of matches.
I still feel like Doherty is better than Emerson, but Emerson has more long-term value, and at least offers something different in being defense-first.
Bale has moved on to greener pastures. His handicap of 2 at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am is extremely impressive. Doesn't top the amateurs though, at least not while Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel Air is about.
I didn't have the heart to tell the streamer in his chat that these articles are all auto-generated and that he hadn't gotten any actual human being to write about him, but I was impressed how quickly the SkyBet odds moved.
Everton: Arsenal, @Liverpool, Leeds, Villa
Leicester: @Villa, Spurs, @ManU, Arsenal
We agree this is a big weekend for the bet. I can’t afford Leicester to beat Villa and even a point hurts. I’m not sure Everton can get four points between now and the 3rd. I’m officially saving money because he’s getting liquored up on my credit card that night I think.
edit: and now Everton just miss on two big chacnes. The Calvert-Lewin one was given an xG of .62 on infogol--way too high since he was at full stretch and only got the slightest of touches, but it was still a big chance.
I'm not sure what algorithm they are using but it is not similar to what betting odds are doing.
They've played really tough, aggressive football today.
Based on expectation certainly Arsenal's most underwhelming performance of the season.
By understat, Arsenal had most overperformed their xG this year of any team, with only Fulham anywhere near them. I would say they wouldn't be able to complain too much about some bounces going the other way. This wasn't really an example of bad bounces though. They were mostly just beaten.
Massive shakeup at the top and bottom of the table. I'm rooting hard for Arsenal to take the title, but they are (at the moment) second favorites again to City. Everton did themselves a lot of favors but they are not out of the doghouse yet as they are still considered one of the three most likely teams to get relegated, but stand-alone its under 50% now.
It's probably just a basic model that only includes score and time remaining, and makes no adjustments for team quality.
Can't be just that. They just flashed United is being given 77% to win in the 27th minute. They are also (like Everton was) a home team up 1-0. So there must be some adjustment for team quality.
(Actual betting odds have United at over 85% right now (very different), so whatever they are doing does not seem to be based on betting odds.)
It's really hard to model, tbf. You probably need to weight the favorites as even more favorites because they're going to be all out attacking and the worse team is going to be all out defending, most likely. Which adds variance, but increases the likelihood of a draw, I expect. Then maybe you need to think about if you're considering how the teams are actually playing in this game (this probably should be accounted for in a perfect scenario, but how you do it is really challenging given the small sample size). That's why... you always trust the betting odds. People that have millions or billions of dollars worth of incentives on getting this right, generally will.
Those probabilities pop up in baseball all the time too. Both in season long situations and single game situations. They are generally less than useless IMHO.
I'm not sure if Wolves have been great or Liverpool terrible. Probably somewhere n between but if I didn't know anything about soccer (not a word from the peanut gallery!) and you told me one of these teams was 20 minutes from the league title last year and one of them was in the relegation zone I wouldn't assign the two teams the correct designation.
Taking the highest (.55) or adding them all up (1.53) are both going to give misleading results. Using the 1-(1-i)^n yields about .89 xG.
I guess I would say West Ham is a top half team this year, and betting odds treats them as such. There seems to be a big dropoff this year after the top 6 plus Newcastle and Brighton.
Despite this, West Ham has been very unlucky with results this season while Newcastle is pretty much breaking even. In Newcastle's case, you might have expected another win or two to replace some draws, but balanced out by 3 or 4 more losses also replacing draws. In West Ham's case, you might have expected 4 or so of their losses to be draws, and 4 or so of their draws to be wins. West Ham mostly has had a tough time actually scoring their xG chances, and the underperformance has generally been coming at very costly times.
If Newcastle keeps drawing at this rate, which is highly doubtful, they would set the 38 game EPL record for draws, currently at 17. They've also only lost two games in all competitions all year. Once away to Liverpool in August and again at Sheffield United in the FA cup. Haven't lost at home this year. After Bournemouth next week they have three hard games: Liverpool, United, and City. One each home, neutral, and away. By odds they should lose (before pens) a little more than one of those.
And Liverpool needed the eighth minute of five minutes of stoppage time to do it. Sheffield Wednesday, however, needed no such bonus time.
I am not surprised that the goals conceded are mid-table.
Leeds is definitely in a relegation battle now. Unlike West Ham, they are not quite good enough to survive a lot of bad results. They will probably need to get results that are no worse than their underlying performance the rest of the year to survive. Back-to-back games against Manchester United coming this week.
I'm confident Liverpool is not better than that.
Despite the tough matchup that both of these teams have against each other, they are both considered more likely to win the CL than Napoli. All of that puts Liverpool as "considered to be" in the top 6 of the world, though certainly it is debatable. (Arguably higher depending on how you view Arsenal and even Barcelona as well.)
And I say this as someone who thinks Arsenal is over performing by a good bit.
Liverpool has had a ton of bad games in a row now it feels.
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