de gea was what when? i thought he's pretty great at man u-- not the best ever but a good keeper.

lol @ abramovich.

--

anyway, regarding MATH in football. when i used to follow teh MLS they had these useless stats that meant nothing, because they have no context.

like "possession time". i mean that's good and great if you're playing a possession game-- then measure possession. but if you're not, it's meaningless. the other day i forget who dortmund was playing-- they were ahead like 3-0 and they didn't even have 40% possession. who gives a shit about possession-- the only stat that counted was the actual score.

the issue is that for a game so fluid and with so little scoring (compared to somehting like basketball, teh sample is extremely small) it's hard to find a mathematical model that describes what's going on. i mean, i can observe, intuitively, that tony kroos is GREAT at scoring from outside the area, but how do you account for that? measure average distance to goal, per goal? measure the speed of his shots? if he for some reason scores with a header from a corner, does that "ruin" his average? that's the kind of thing that's hard to figure out. but eventually someone (likely lots of people) will figure something out-- there's some kind of measuring going on and it's been going on forever. i remember when i was a kid i saw this old german documentary about football and they discussed how a properly kicked penalty couldn't be stopped because the average speed was 60kph and the speed of the keeper blah blah blah-- still penalty kicks get stopped (mostly by guessing).

in baseball, because things happen in very fixed positions and situations, it's easy for the statistics to describe a whole game. it's been done for i don't know how long, a century maybe? i'm not an expert but there's that notion around that a lover of baseball can read the whole game just from looking at the stats.

some years ago i read an article in wired about basketball-- i think it was about the dallas mavericks. the article talked about how people used stats to evaluate the game but there were somethings that weren't accounted for. like how there was this player who was kinda average when you looked at his personal stats but when he played for some reason everyone else's stats went up. because he enabled other players to do better. so the mathematical models are always changing. and even with mathematical models though, there is an element of randomness and let's call it "human inspiration" that cannot be accounted for-- so with the right math you could, in theory, optimize a team, but of course you couldn't guarantee it would win.

Stat of the century - QPR is the northernmost club Harry Redknapp has ever managed haha

you can't account for heart, hustle, "want-to" or cheating in stats.

I dont often "lol" but lol!

De Gea's probably gonna get better but he's really shaky. Fergie regular plays Lindergaard instead of him. But yeah, definitely a prospect.

The possession thing became a factor I suppose because of Barcelona, who keep the ball forever. But as Chelsea proved against them last year, it only counts if it leads to a goal.

abramovich probably threatens them with execution if they don't perform. as a result, they don't perform (just a guess).

BTW, have you had a chance to watch THE TWO ESCOBARS yet? dammit, man, you must, you must.... an indispensable film.

thats a very interesting read

West Ham 3 - 1 Chelsea

Holy fucking Christ yes!!!!! This has officially made my weekend. And all without Andy Carroll. Beautiful. Happy days.


I haven't but I'm totally into seeing it. I've put it on my Lovefilm list but they send me stuff in random order. My list is short though so I should get it soon.

just waking up here to catch the bayern-dortmund game in like an hour.

CONGRATS ON YOUR VICTORY OVER THE OLIGARCH'S PLAYTHING.

i'll try watchin it later.

Chelsea and Arsenal lose on the same day, both booing their managers, Spurs meanwhile crush Fulham and keep a clean sheet against a team thats been scoring for fun. Would Arsenal fans like AVB now?

dammit, bayern-dortmund ended 1-1. probably a fair result but bayern had better chances. tough and hotly contested all 93 minutes of play. great fucking game, couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. HEYNCKES WHY DIDN'T YOU PUT GOMEZ EARLIER YOU TWAT.

I just watched the highlights of that. As you say, pretty fair, but Goetze's equaliser was something special. I'm really starting to like Dortmund, I think.

When Becks came to LA it was sort of like *yawn*

the dude has been quite the good luck charm after his tumultuous introduction, after today that is three MLS Championships out of four appearances, and suddenly people in America have been paying attention to MLS (largely because of the USA National Team but still)...




Interesting. I don't know anything about MLS other than that Galaxy here in LA seems to have been kicking asses for years running. Good for them, but it combined with being the anchor of the national team is killing Landon Donovan. At least like Jordan he is having the opportunity here to go out on top.

Yes, but it isn't necessarily as exciting as other varieties of American football

That just looks like an episode of American Gladiators. And in women's soccer you have Hope Solo. Come on America. It's like you have a (re)fridge(rator) full of filet mignon and you're running to the supermarket for microwavable cheeseburgers. Send her to us (more specifically me) if you don't want her. Whatever you do, keep Hope alive. Yes you can.

dortmund is a great fucking team and they did a good job of containing bayern who dominated the najority of the game i think but couldn't score (i blame mandzukic). the first half of the match was played on dortmund ground, but it was absolute trench warfare.

badstuber had an unfortunate fall and fucked his knee and was replaced by boateng who was returning after an injury. what a great fucking deep bench bayern has.

2nd half they took turns on the attack, and yes gotze was brilliant but i think mandzukic ended up bungling bayern's attack-- also notice it was his header that enable the dortmund goal. the poor guy had a cursed day, wish he had been replaced sooner, he was going to, but then the goal came, heynckes held back to see, then dortmund's goal came, then he took too long to decide finally to put gomez in, and with gomez the bayern attack got better but there just wasn't enough time.

anyway worth a watch in replay if you can catch it. commentators are complaining the first half was "slow" but i saw it differently-it was extremely intense and contested so that nobody could do anything, but that wasn't boring, you just had to now where to look for the action. anyway i enjoyed it lots.

i also realized i like bayern more than dortmund. yes dortmund has great players like reus and gotze and lewandowski but i also dislike its dirty-playing defenders like pizcek and subotic, whereas in bayern everyone is great, even that new mule-faced spaniard that cost (why the fuck so much) 40 million euros.

anyway, i loved the game, made my weekend.


you might be a little late for that :(

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_1...abuse-reports/

she says it's rumors and slander but we'll see

Even more reason why the lovely Hope should come to me, instead.

As for the Bayern/Dortmund game. I'll try and find a full replay but the highlights I saw were extended (1 hour) so I got a decent picture of what happened. I'm definitely with you, the first half was a great chess match that Bayern definitely edged but it looked like Dortmund actually benefited from Kroos scoring, as it forced their hand while at the same time appearing to unsettle Bayern who looked unsure how to play the rest of the game out. I totally agree with you that Bayern needed to make a change earlier to really get another goal. I didn't pick up on the dirty Dortmund defenders (I support a Sam Allardyce team, remember, so I just call it 'firm') but I thought they were excellent. Very together in all positions as the game went on and as you say, the draw was probably fair, even though Bayern were clearly the better team. (Chelsea played West Ham off the park in the first half but West Ham deserved the win because they simply kept going and hoped that Chelsea would crack - which they did, and took their chances when they came. Very similar to what I saw with Dortmund's comeback). Too many commentators embarrass themselves by insisting that the only good games are 100 miles an hour pinball affairs but I love those nervy, edgy kinds of 'who's gonna blink first' and who will have the nerve to hold it together, kinds of games. If anything, I actually thought the first half was more exciting than the second.

pizscek's way of coping with ribery was highly annoying and over the course of the match deserving of a yellow card in my opinion, but the ref was not the carding kind.

check this at the start of the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPFJScUcYXE

more on that "brendan rodgers" youtube channel (is it the real rodgers, i wonder) (no he isn't, the last name is spelled wrong--but hilarious)

Honestly, I'm purely neutral in all this but that's nothing more than a foul for me, and maybe a talking to. I'd even go so far as to say that's just a 'proper' defender doing his job against someone who wants it all his own way. Although he probably deserved a yellow eventually. It's hard to defend in terms of the spirit of the game but I do like those defenders who push everything to the limit and sometimes over it - unless they're doing it against the team I support, obviously, and even then I just wish we'd sign them. It's that thing of not liking a cunt until they're 'your' cunt. But I wouldn't even put Piczsek in that category. Like I say, I honestly don't see much wrong in the way he plays, even if he did it against West Ham.