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Friday, April 02, 2021
NWSL kicks of on April 9, we learn who the last UWCL semi-finalist is on April 18, we watch as Chelsea and Man City duke it out for the FA WSL title, and follow some minor stories like the Premier League run-in and the Fella’s Champions League last 8. Springtime COVID ball! Please don’t catch a fever!
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And Chelsea get one back right after I make that post.
Regardless, Chelsea's loss really opens the door for one of the chasing teams, making that Liverpool game this afternoon even bigger than it was before.
And West Brom. Well, their performance was absolutely awful for 3 months, but the betting odds had pegged them for a decent recovery long before the stats did. Maybe they were predicting regression to something more like an EPL team, or maybe they were betting on big sam. Either way, betting odds were way more correct on this particular team than (say) 538. In late December, betting odds had them as just a merely run of the mill relegation team, where 538 had them as once in a decade terrible team.
Lille beat PSG, so Ligue 1 is still very much up for grabs.
Today Arsenal is "winning" the style of play, since their boringness is overcoming Liverpool's watchability, resulting in a snoozer. They may be better than Wolves but today they've been even less watchable.
And like a lot of these late-season games, a draw does almost nothing for either team, so you'd think Arsenal would be a tiny bit more keen to play some offense this half.
Remaining schedules:
Chelsea: Palace, Brighton, West Ham, Fulham, City, Arsenal, Leicester, Villa.
Liverpool: Villa, Leeds, Newcastle, ManUtd, Southampton, West Brom, Burnley, Palace.
Taking out the two teams in common, that's 5 above average teams plus a now-decent Fulham in the thick of the relegation battle for Chelsea, as opposed to 5 below average teams plus ManUtd (yes Newcastle is also in the thick of the relegation battle but they are a very bad team and right now if you need points you'd play them 11 times out of 10 over Fulham). If they go even on points it requires Liverpool to win one more game than Chelsea (or lose two fewer), so Liverpool is also likely to have won GD. I'd much rather be in Liverpool's shoes right now, schedule wise.
Or maybe you think Chelsea is the superior team going into the last 2 months of the season? That's a pretty hard sell, and not one that was backed up by the Champions League pre-draw odds, which viewed Liverpool as slightly superior. Liverpool has also been viewed as superior all year on expected points totals, though it has tightened a lot in the last several weeks.
Looks like people aren't fully weighting the coming schedule, which is a common refrain for bettors (bettors tend to weight it of course, just slightly less than they should).
Spurs playing like a solid Europa Conference League contender, so there is that.
Sevilla is close to wrapping up the 4th CL spot too. So looks like nothing new going on in La Liga this year after all.
Betting odds can't seem to face that Dortmund is probably not going to be in the CL next year. Betting odds has been wrongly high on Dortmund most of the latter part of the year, and it continues through right now, where they have Dortmund still at maybe 28% to be top 4. 538 has them at 16%.
Remaining schedules:
Dortmund: Stuttgart, Bremen, Union, Wolfsburg, Leipzig, Mainz, Leverkusen
Eintracht: Wolfsburg, Gladbach, Augsburg, Leverkusen, Mainz, Schalke, Freiburg
Wolfsburg: Eintracht, Bayern, Stuttgart, Dortmund, Union, Leipzig, Mainz.
Eintracht schedule is fairly easy, and slightly easier than Dortmund's schedule (and they don't play each other). Wolfsburg's schedule is very hard, and includes Dortmund, but 11 points is probably just too many at this stage.
You have to go back 6 years for the last time Dortmund missed out on the CL, which is probably why it seems hardly believable right now, especially since they are still almost certainly one of the top 3 teams in the Bundesliga. The table is what it is though, and Wolfsburg and Eintracht are very decent teams in their own right. We've seen far lesser teams in quality snagging spots from better teams in the past, and we'll see it this year too if Leicester takes a spot from Liverpool or Chelsea.
That's probably it for Everton's CL chances, considering that their schedule is pretty hard and they aren't very good in the first place. They do have a game in hand but that won't be enough.
Also bad news for Spurs fans hoping to avoid the Europa Conference.
1-3 now, after an absolutely superb run and cross from Traore. Some great goals today. Wolves leads xG 2.05-0.99 (infogol).
Announcers said at 15 minutes in that the 0-2 scoreline "didn't flatter West Ham". I know that's done for effect, but there has virtually never been a game in the history of professional soccer where 0-2 after 15 minutes didn't flatter the leading team. West Ham led xG at that point 0.20 - 0.65 or so, so to be fair they were doing quite well even if you ignore the actual goals. West Ham has been absolutely dominated since though, with Wolves having 10 or so shots from great locations in the center of the box over the course of the next 30 minutes.
current relegation odds:
current top 4 odds:
First half xG: 1.41-0.14
Second half xG: 0.00-1.59.
No shots for Brighton the second half, just a fairly weak penalty shout. 12 shots to 0. United's first half was probably not quite as bad as it looked, though it certainly wasn't good. The goal came off a huge xG chance, off of a decent xG chance that was saved right into the attacker, which overall was fairly lucky on Brighton's part. More relevantly, Brighton is a very decent team, and any victory against them is a good game for United. On an average year with HFA you probably expect United to win most of those matchups at home. This year it is very dicey proposition, and you have to say overall United played well enough.
United is miles away from City right now, but quite deservedly top 4. Hard to really complain about their season, except for the way they bowed out of the CL.
Speaking of which, current 538 team rating v 538 pre-season, and also by normalized ELO:
Normalized ELO doesn't do a very good job with teams that overperform or underperform their stats by a fair margin. Probably close to half the teams on the list.
I watched this, it was a decently exciting game despite the 1-0 result (and only 0.5-1ish xG). It seems almost impossible for PSG to be held scoreless, given their attacking talent.
And speaking of which, for soccer fans the Fanatiz app continues to be a really great deal. The streaming quality is not great and the interface is also bad, but for I think $5.99 a month you get Ligue 1, La Liga, some other smaller European leagues (including Portugal, I think), plus some South American leagues.
$6/month for ESPN+, $5 for Peacock Premium, $6/month for Paramount Plus, then another $6/month for Fanatiz. Cutting the cord wasn't worth it. I know there are all sorts of promotional deals, but interfaces suck, production values are uneven and switching games is annoying. I guess I have reached 'get off my lawn' territory.
Liverpool are getting embarrassed. I didn't love their lineup (playing Keita and their weak 2 CBs means they're not fielding anywhere near their 11 best healthy players), and it's not been a good first half for them. Absolutely don't look up for it. Still early, so maybe that changes. TAA playing like a man that got dropped from the Euros squad.
City blowing it? Maybe, but a 2-1 home win is considered par by 538. Their odds of advancing went up very slightly after the result.
Not sure if the stupid #### being referring to here is about the ref or Ederson, but both would be accurate. Ederson seems to be a very good GK overall but has a weird habit of forgetting that other players are allowed to compete for the ball when it is on the ground.
Arsenal is definitely not outperforming their 538 pre-season projected points, but 538 thinks they are better now than it did when the season started. I think it's fair to say that most people are higher on Arsenal now than they were at the start of the season.
Even with their lousy EPL record, Arsenal ELO has them flat on the year. So based on pure scorelines they've been treading water. And they arew definitely better than their record. Betting odds has had them as around the 6th best team most of the year.
The Foden goal changes things quite a bit. At 1-1 going back to Dortmund I think it was pretty interesting. Now Dortmund need to win and it can't be 3-2 and let's face facts, 3-2 is more likely than 1-0 with these teams. I can see Dortmund getting some goals and stealing the victory, I can't for a minute imagine them keeping a clean sheet for 90 minutes.
And what a goal that was. The initial ball in was laser accurate then Gundogan's control and patience to lay it off for Foden who did well not to panic. Then on top of all of that Foden reacted like he was asked if he wanted a drink menu. The way he reacted I thought the play had been ruled offsides. He didn't react at all.
Betting odds is also now projecting 56 points for Arsenal, so they also think they are pretty good right now. However, the current betting odds projection for Arsenal as 5th best team in the league is much more in line with the betting odds projection pre-season, which was also 5th best. In pre-season 538 had Arsenal down in 7th/8th, after Tottenham, Leicester, and maybe Wolves, and with way fewer projected points (56) than projected by betting odds (63).
86% seems quite high to me, but without much home field advantage and Dortmund needing a low-scoring win, maybe it's about right.
Liverpool has gone from very slight favorites (52%) down to just 22%. Definitely not out of it, but pretty much everything has to go right for them.
Bayern's been really good aerially and on set pieces in this game. It's now 2-2 and would be surprised if it ended that way.
Davies is the best LB in the world, for me.
He's on a short list that's for damned sure. I kind of wonder how serious a contender for a WC spot from CONCACAF Canada is going to be. I suspect they don't have enough beyond Davies but I think he makes them a threat. Presumably they will play Nicaragua for a spot in the octagonal (the Hexagonal is dead, long live the Hexagonal). I would assume that the US, Mexico, Honduras and Costa Rica should be the teams expected to get the 3 1/2 spots but could Canada/Nicaragua be a fly in the ointment? 2018 showed the US has no guarantees and of course only four years prior the US bailed out Mexico.
Yeah, Bayern should have scored more. I guess if they had Gnabry and Lewandowski, they probably do? But PSG was playing without 2 of their best players in Marquinhos (much of the game) and Verratti. So, no excuses there, the guys playing just didn't finish their chances.
According to ELO, Nicaragua has never been better than Haiti, in their entire history. They are crap.
These ties aren't over yet. Chance of at least 1 of Dortmund, Liverpool, or Bayern advancing is over 50%.
It will be interesting to see who does play.
Gnabry just tested positive for COVID a few days ago, so may not be back?
I am less familiar with PSG's team, but saw in discussions afterwards they were missing not just Verratti but also Paredes. Verratti is out for COVID and seems like on timing he could be back, but not a 100% guarantee. Marquinhos sounds like he'll be missing the return leg.
By ELO, Zagreb also is also quite decent. Part of both of these high ELOs is that it takes a good bit of winning to get this far in a cup tournament (regardless of how well you actually play). That said, Slavia has been very good in this tournament. They were second best in their group to Leverkusen, but outplayed them in one of the two games they met (but definitely not the other). Outplayed Leicester over two legs, and played Rangers more or less even but got the goals. That's a very good showing.
Zagreb hasn't been as good. They were probably best in a very weak group, barely outplayed Krasnodar, and got dominated by Spurs except on the score line.
Both ELO and 538 think Granada is the worst team remaining in the CL. Betting odds thinks they are better than the other two, but only a little better than Slavia.
Teams with higher ELOs than Slavia outside the Big 4:
PSG (#10)
Ajax (#17)
Porto (#22)
Additional teams with higher ELOs than Zagreb outside the Big 4:
Slavia (#33)
Lyon (#34)
Lille (#35)
Salzburg (#37)
Shakhtar (#41)
Benfica (#42)
That's my sense too. But it certainly poses some challenges trying to overturn a deficit in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. I'd like their chances a hell of a lot more if he were going to play.
I know of at least 5 publicly available xG systems, with the average being an xG differential of 2.2. That's high, but not quite as high as 2.5
Here's that Swansea game. Swansea's only goal came off of a penalty, so they had no goals off of about 3 xG of shots from open play. It could have been MUCH more insane, as Bristol got a tap in deep in extra time for an insurance goal. Without that chance, that had no impact on the result, it would have been a differential of close to 4.
Arsenal absolutely dominated Slavia after a slow start, but could only get 1 goal. Slavia equalized with their only real chance in the waning moments of extra time. That's a disappointment for them, but they are still in very decent shape.
Villarreal took care of business 0-1 on the road.
Final xGD margin for Ajax was 2.46. They must be gutted.
xG stats have Leeds with only 0.1 xG, but that is certainly too low. The last chance was probably worth at least 0.2 alone. xG differential was 2.3 by 538 and infogol, which would be yet another gutting loss liek the ones by Bayern and Ajax, if the game this morning actually meant anything.
City had the one of the highest non-shot xG of the year with 3.6, second only to United beating Southampton 9-0. Second highest non-shot xG differential as well, at 3.3. Reminiscent of Liverpool's 0-1 home loss to Burnley.
Chelsea schedule: Brighton, West Ham, Fulham, City, Arsenal, Leicester, Villa.
Liverpool schedule: Leeds, Newcastle, ManUtd, Southampton, West Brom, Burnley, Palace.
That Chelsea schedule is hard. Five out of the seven games are likely to be against highly motivated opponents (all but Arsenal and Villa). The teams are also mostly quite good. The Liverpool schedule is much easier, with even the West Brom and Burnley games fairly likely to be meaningless for their opponents when the games finally roll around.
Both could still pass Leicester too, especially if Leicester don't win tomorrow (60% chance Leicester does not win). By the way, West Ham is a fairly decent underdog in that game, but if I had to guess I would have thought the game would be much more evenly matched. Maybe not having Rice is pushing the odds a bit.
Leicester schedule: West Ham, West Brom, Palace, Southampton, Newcastle, ManUtd, Chelsea, Tottenham.
With that schedule, a win tomorrow puts Leicester in very good shape, despite their clear inferiority to Chelsea and Liverpool. A loss puts Leicester even with or even behind Liverpool and Chelsea, but brings West Ham firmly into play. Yes, it's quite the high leverage game.
West Ham schedule: Leicester, Newcastle, Chelsea, Burnley, Everton, Brighton, West Brom, Southampton.
Finally, Spurs at this point need a near miracle. Anything but a win tomorrow and they can probably forget it. What's worse for them is that United wouldn't be too upset with a draw, considering their lead in then top 4 race, and that United don't need to save anything up for next week's Europa game at this point (or at least shouldn't be doing so). the good news for Spurs is after the next two weeks they face a string of teams with nothing to play for.
Tottenham schedule: ManUtd, Everton, Southampton, SheffieldUtd, Leeds, Wolves, Villa, Leicester.
Betting odds now has the La Liga winner race as now almost exactly level.
Barca 34.5%, Atletico 33%, Real Madrid 32.5%
Time - It took a bit over 3 minutes to make the decision. Any replay that requires that long is not a “clear and obvious error.”
Impact - Did McTominay put his hand into Son’s face? Yes without question. it was not the decisive part of the buildup to the goal nor was it remotely violent or intentional. Son grabbed McTominay’s arm, why is that foul not given also?
Outcome - So after all of that if McTominay hits Son in the face (he did) and the ref determines that’s a foul (he did) then that has to be a yellow card. In this case that would be a second yellow card that would have sent McTominay off.
I watch sports to watch sports, not to watch a frame by frame recap of some minor event. I have no dog in this fight. I’m a genuine neutral in this matchup. I hate this stuff.
Tl;dr - See #70.
EPL teams are now 114-70-123 at home. xGD/xPoints at home is slightly positive at home, so there is some bad "luck" involved. Regardless, home field advantage in the EPL this year still appears to be very, very slight.
Top 4 betting odds:
Relegation odds
City's only away loss so far came against Tottenham, in a game City mostly dominated. City also has the same number of points as United on the road this year, despite playing one fewer game. Long and short of it is that United isn;t doing anything special on the road at all this year. They are benefiting from a lack of home field advantage and a little luck
Top half of the EPL listed below.
In the bottom half, Villa and Wolves (no surprise there) have been good 2nd half teams. Southampton, Burnley and West Brom have been bad ones. None as extreme as Spurs or United.
A lot of conjecture over the contract, though I did see it mentioned that if Tottenham doesn't make Europe the cost for sacking him would be lower. And that's unlikely at this point, with West Ham, Liverpool, and Leicester all being above them and probably you'd say better.
Either way. The team is worth over 1 billion. The cost of doing nothing is far more than the cost of sacking Mourinho.
The Newcastle non-penalty was ridiculous as well. If you are going to have the high dangerous kick rule at all for clearly inadvertent plays, it has to be called there, in the box or not.
But I prefer the world in which it's neither reviewed nor called off.
edit: on the McTominay play you feel a bit for the onfield ref, who might have been boxed in. (There was still a very decent argument that the play would only be called a foul on the field some fraction of the time, far below 100%, due to the grab by Son, so the on-field ref did have an out if he wanted to use it.) The real issue though is that VAR has not been sending similar "foul-in-the-buildup" plays to the onfield ref this year, and to do so now is inconsistent.
Yes exactly.
I believe the answer to this is that VAR may not be used for yellow cards.
The twitter link above said that: "The VAR decided that it wasn't a natural move of McTominay's hand in catching Son, but at the same time the officials decided against a second yellow card because it was accidental." So, apparently you had a non-natural move with the arm causing the foul, but the hand to the face was accidental. I guess if the offensive player intends to swing his arm back non-naturally to distract or obscure a player or maybe off gently or something and accidentally hits the player's face, conceivably it could be a foul but no yellow. Realistically we all know that if he didn't have a yellow to start with and they called a foul, they probably would have given him a yellow there.
I watched the replays over and over again to finally see what happened and it is pretty subtle how it all went down. Instinctively it looked like a penalty on initial view, but in order to see it unfold it took two separate views, one from the side and one from the front/back. Dean didn't catch it all on the field apparently so wasn't sure. I wasn't sure either after watching both side views but eventually pieced it together to my satisfaction. I think it's one of those where the ref on the field often calls it instinctively as a penalty even thought they aren't 100% sure. Sometimes those ones that look instinctively like a penalty really aren't, which is (I guess) a reason for VAR. Here though it was quite difficult to see without watching it repeatedly on replay from multiple angles, so it's not a great one even for VAR to catch.
It was a little bit like the one in the Chelsea game a couple months ago, that also was not called a penalty on the field and thus by VAR I think for the same reason. To me that one was much easier to see though and I didn't understand how the VAR ref couldn't pull the trigger and rule it a pen. Here I understand why they didn't even though I think they got it wrong.
Yes I realize this is a meaningless factoid but I don't like it anyway.
This wouldn't apply to City of course, who are much better than Dortmund and who are on then road in the second leg.
edit: of course, as I type this City is already behind in the tie.
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