Can someone paying $7/month paste the rest of this for me. I need a good laugh.
I mean, do the math yourself, homie.
Another, less team-quality-dependent option is to rank teams as if the rest of the season were played as all drawn matches. By that math, Burnley would sneak out of last place to 17th, on a four-way tie for last place. (Goal differential still holds for EPL.)
Everton did a nice job at the end of transfer window with Dele Alli on a free (likely 10M if he plays), el Ghazi and van de Beek. That’s a decent boost in potential talent for the attack. Like the addition at Liverpool of one more attacker and a kid to add next year. Klopp may start dropping Firmino back and playing 4 attackers. United blocks Lingard and Henderson from heading out on loan. Can’t figure out what they are doing. Neither play and neither likely to play.
Disappointed that Spurs are losing Alli.
There are … ways … to get around the paywall. “Easy” ways, not “here’s an add-on that you may not trust.” That’s for another time, though.
They start with this:
Oh, OK. How is that more useful than what we’ve had in the past?
Um … why couldn’t you do that still? Oh, yeah - not everyone has played the same number of games. So instead let’s use “points per game” which is … (checks math) a lot like saying “if every teams continued peforming at the same level for the rest of the season, where would they finish?”
Also, this nugget:
We’re not saying that if what every team has done so far in the season continues to be true, this is where they’d finish. It probably will be, but it could be different. Forget all the stuff I said about using points-per-game, it’s a stupid idea.
Summary: we need to use points-per-game, which tells us how teams would finish if they kept up their to-date season performance for the rest of the season, which you could also get from the league table, except the league table can’t be trusted because of different number of games played. And since people running teams could be utter morons [but not yet qualified to be Prime Minster] and not know what math is, we should not use points-per-game either.
Makes you want to drop $7/month on that incredible analysis, amirite? I’ve got $20 some Big-4 franchise hires that writer to at least join their analytics department in the next 12 months, if not run it outright.
Thanks, Ted. That was laughter enough.
I still think ties the rest of the season would be a better method, even though the EPL has a way of determining the season standings if play were to stop and not ever resume. And that is PPG.
Since it’s PPG, it does make sense to order the teams by PPG, as nearly every league in every sport does this.
But, it also seems like overkill, especially since matches occur F, Sa, Su, and M on some weekends. And, of course, when one pair of teams play of the first Friday, there will 18 teams with “DIV0!” in the standings. And, where does a team that lost that very first match go relative to these 18 teams? (Cue meep to caution us not to use Excel for things like this.)
And this isn’t even the worst issue of bad tables. Some leagues use head-to-head as the first tie-breaker, but that is not easy to display on the table without footnotes. While wiki includes the footnotes, ESPN doesn’t. Example: there was only one tie in the Champions League group tables. ESPN shows GD, and while Sporting CP did best Borussia Dortmund on GD, that is NOT why Sporting CP advanced in second place and Dortmund is heading to the Europa. The two teams each won a match v each other; SPC had a better goal difference in the two matches. ESPN does not note this.
To determine this, I went to wiki, of course.
When I first heard we were getting Ali, my first thought was another bunch of money on a player who won’t end up recapturing their best form. Everton has plenty of previous on this resulting in the problems we’re having now. The deal is quite shrewd in protecting against that so I now think it is a good signing.
Still the strongest chance of relegation for decades though. Hope Lampard can turn around a struggling team.
Unless the bottom falls out, I can’t see Everton getting relegated. Worst finish since 2004, yeah - that’s probably in the cards. But at a -11 goal differential, this isn’t a “really bad” EPL team that’s got a really negative GD and ends up getting relegated. [Hello Norwich City and Newcastle.]
Wait, I need to convert this to some per-game thing, don’t I. Crap, math is teh hard.
I had more hope after the Villa game. Although they lost, they didn’t concede within the first 20 minutes and Villa are a decent side.
Letting teams like Norwich score for fun was extremely concerning. In addition, Benitez sacked loads of people behind the scenes so the club is barely functioning right now. I hope Lampard knows what he is doing but I would have prefered to see a defensive midfielder who can run and a centre half who can defend and play more than a couple of games at a time.
I will not be surprised if Everton get into top 12 and will be surprised if they finish below 12. Their 3 catch up games are Leicester (H), Burnley and Newcastle (H). Their next 3 games are Newcastle, Leeds (H) and Southampton. Their front 6 could be:
Doucoure, El Ghazi, van de Beek w Townsend
Dele, C-L, Richarlson w Gray for pace sub
They have some depth for the additional games and should definitely move up from 1.2 goals/game. They still need to defend, but their 3 additions should all contribute a far amount down the stretch. if Donny can hold the middle ground.
Wolves, BHA, Brentford and Southampton will all drop from where they are. Burnley, Watford and Norwich are no threat to Everton.
Watching him in earlier years I felt that Alli had much talent. If he realizes his potential with Everton he will be a bargain.
Already lost to two of those.
Agree completely. Unfortunately we’ve signed a lot of these that didn’t pan out - Iwobi, Walcott, etc.
Yeah, it’s the same for all international players, and that’s why your rich team has depth. It’s worse for any international player who has to cross 8 time zones to get to their regular job.
This year, CHE get additional matches for Club World Cup cuz won Champions League. At least it’s warm there.
This season is hampered a bit by postponements of qualifiers cuz COVID. Euro international players didn’t play this break, but CONCACAF, SA, and Asian players did.
And Africa Cup of Nations still going on. LIV represent! as expected in Finals.
And, this weekend, FA Cup, though one EPL make-up match will be played.
Again with the slant that VAR is changing things for the worse, not correcting actual mistakes.
Premier League without VAR: Arsenal in Champions League places; Everton soar to safety - ESPN
In September, they were leading away to Burnley when Aaron Ramsdale conceded a penalty which could have cost them victory – but the VAR came to the rescue.
The only other result-changing VAR decision came against Manchester City on New Year’s Day. Arsenal were leading 1-0 when the VAR gave the champions a penalty for Granit Xhaka’s foul on Bernardo Silva. It was a game they would go on to lose. The Gunners were playing well when the penalty was awarded, and calculated by the VAR Effect to go on and win without the intervention.
No, no, no. VAR corrected a mistake. VAR didn’t “give” anything to any team nor 'take away" from any team. ESPN clickbait, I guess.
Hoping some EPL team owner doesn’t dangle some pounds in front of John Herdman. Even though he would probably succeed as an EPL coach, Canada doesn’t want to lose him until at least after 2026.
I would mention that the Canadian players playing in Europe are into their third round of CONCACAF qualifying games. The American players at least got a bye to the final round.
CONCACAF qualification is a thankless proposition for the European Leagues. At least with club competitions like the Champions League there is glory and money for the club. What positives do the individual clubs get out of World Cup qualifying games other than the general promotion of the sport?
Yeah, there are always some clubs that whinge about it. But they all agree to let players go on the official international breaks, and they don’t play through them, unlike The MLS. (And they let them play in The Africa Cup of Nations, which is always during the Club calendar.)
But FIFA would punish clubs who didn’t release players. They were going to ban affected players from league matches last year before deciding that it was unreasonable during covid.
Alright, midweek matches! On USA-TV! Taking a couple hours off of Olympic Coverage for three straight days! (It is 4AM or something like that in China, so…)
Just discovered I apparently have a free year of Peacock Plus through Spectrum. Might have to use that to watch a few matches on occasion, just so I feel like I’m getting something out of it.
It is so hard to be a TOT fan. They were up 2-1 late in the game at home today and then gave up two late goals to Southampton. Could have moved up nicely in the standings with a win.