S7M7: Brasso orders spike in Cheshire

Apologies for last week folks. That placeholder stayed there all alone, munching on a breadstick, refreshing a glass of tapwater whilst fending off progressively more pitying enquiries from wait staff as to whether they wanted to place their order.

Sorry babe. Something came up at work. Let's reschedule yeah? x

Er yeah. Great metaphors aside, it's all getting a bit tasty oop north. Guardiola has found his feet - they were being hidden by average full backs, but now unleashed, his City side are storming. Surprisingly enough, the other big spenders in the league & the city are also flying - Lukaku hasn't missed a beat stepping up whilst many of last year's cast have improved. A difficult performance at bogey team Southampton appears ominously like the cliched 'mark of Champions'. Liverpool managed to win, just about in a classic Liverpool performance at Leicester, where Vardy's rubbish penalty technique has finally been sussed. Everton also recovered somewhat to beat a Bournemouth side in real trouble at home. Burnley & Huddersfield did some War of the Roses reenactment or something 'cos they weren't playing elite level football amiright...

Wandering down south (I feel like a weatherman), to the taxpayer stadium, Spurs gave their annual charity to an awful side - hope of a comeback with 2 late goals and a red card for Aurier. The game also saw a significant milestone - Eriksen overtook Lord Bendtner as the all time top scoring Dane in the Premier League. Poor form from the Danish peon. Chelsea hammered a Stoke side who seem to have lost their identity - Morata sticking 3 fingers up at his critics. Watford will be happy with a late smash'n'grab from Wales with the Boy from Brazil grabbing the winner.

Late weekend games saw Brighton puncturing the Newcastle resurgence with a lovely goal from Hemed, who then decided to book a nice family break for a few weeks to celebrate, but work wouldn't give him the time off so what's a guy to do?

Arsenal beat WBA quite comfortably but admittedly some of that comfort comes from Tony Pulis' fury at the failure to award a penalty when Mustafi absolutely took Rodriguez out at 0-0. Oh well.

For what it's worth TP, there were at least 2 Arsenal pens not given and a red for Dawson that seemed to be ignored in your post-match interview, so yeah...gums be hushed son...

Let's get statty:

Matchday 5

This week 24 people played
Most popular predicted result: Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool & Spurs WINS (24/24)
Most disputed result: Crystal Palace vs Southampton (12-6-6 split)

Highest odds: Doron 3249/1
Lowest odds: Steven D 1261/1
Average odds: 2283/1

Best predictor: Tarek Najm 8/10
Worst predictor: Whoscored.com, Josh Daniels, Steven Daniels & Joni Kleiman (2/10)
Average score: 4/10

Best predicted result: Man Utd & Man City WINS (24/24)
Worst predicted result: Liverpool vs Burnley DRAW & Spurs vs  Swansea DRAW (0/24)


Matchday 6

This week 22 people played
Most popular predicted result: Arsenal & Man City WINS (22/22)
Most disputed result: Swansea vs Watford (10-6-6 split)

Highest odds: Josh Daniels (840/1)
Lowest odds: Steven Daniels (376/1)
Average odds: 659/1

Best predictor: David Silverman & Aron Kleiman (9/10) - Tomer Hemed did for them both
Worst predictor: 4 of yous (5/10)
Average score: 7/10

Best predicted result: Arsenal & Man City WINS (22/22)
Worst predicted result: Burnley vs Huddersfield DRAW (4/22)

Everyone's results:

To the leaderboard (>2/3 weeks; 5/6)

 Storming from 2 players who don't routinely challenge at the top of the table.

This week's predos:

Huddersfield vs Spurs  - SPURS
Bournemouth vs Leicester - LEICESTER
Man Utd vs Crystal Palace - MAN UTD
Stoke vs Southampton - DRAW
WBA vs Watford - WATFORD
West Ham vs Swansea - SWANSEA
Chelsea vs Man City - MAN CITY
Arsenal vs Brighton - ARSENAL
Everton vs Burnley - EVERTON
Newcastle vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL

Good luck guys

S7M6: Just a quickie

Just gonna leave a placeholder blog here for now.

Resutls & Blurb to follow

Matchday 6 predos:

West Ham vs Spurs - SPURS
Burnley vs Huddersfield - BURNLEY
Everton vs Bournemouth - EVERTON
Man City vs Crystal Palace - MAN CITY
Southampton vs Man Utd - MAN UTD
Swansea vs Watford - SWANSEA
Stoke vs Chelsea - CHELSEA
Leicester vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL
Brighton vs Newcastle - NEWCASTLE
Arsenal vs WBA - ARSENAL

Good luck guys

S7M5: The game's gone forwards

The attacking greats tend to take more of the plaudits - Pele, Maradonna, Cruijff et al certainly gain widespread plaudits - Maldini, Beckenbauer etc less so. (Plug here for Daniel Storey's Portrait of an Icon book with beautiful essays about loads of legends...£10 from each book goes to the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation - available here )

It's obvious why - goals are the currency of the game. They're emotive in a way that a great tackle or big defensive header aren't. As Maldini said, the best defenders don't even do things that get noticed. Defensive skillsets are a connoisseur's pleasure - whilst brilliant attacking play is a much more visceral thrill.

Recently, we've had MSN, BBC and now we've got NCM a Paris and the joy of whatever you want to call Man City's attacking unit. Jesus - both exclamatory and descriptive - Aguero, Silva, de Bruyne,  Sane, Sterling...it's a multi-talented multipronged approach to unpicking any team's defensive lock.

Liverpool, in fairness, were the perfect houseguests and decided not to even close their bedroom door. I think this metaphor is done. Like Liverpool were when Mane got revenge for Patrick Battiston

If you don't think that was a straight red, no questions asked, then you need you head examined. Was Mane entitled to go for the ball - yep. Was it reckless and dangerous - yep. Not mutually exclusive. 

Brighton, Newcastle and West Ham will be happy with their first wins. Watford's good form continued, whilst Chelsea & Spurs did as expected. Man Utd weren't quite there against Stoke whilst Palace & Bournemouth's struggles continued - Frank de Boer paying with his job already, which is frankly ridiculous. Surely after only 4 games where you've hardly backed the man's methods, you have to go all in and give the guy a chance?

Anyway, that's enough chat for 1 blog...let's get statty:

This week, 24 people played

Most popular predicted result: Arsenal WIN (23/24)

Most disputed result: Brighton vs WBA (5-8-11 respectively)

Highest odds: Doron Salomon (6563/1) 

Lowest odds: Steven Daniels (2273/1)

Average odds: 4343/1

 

Best predictor: Fink Tank (8/10)

Worst predictors: Loads of you (3/10)

Average score: 4.63/10

Best predicted result: Arsenal WIN (23/24)

Worst predicted result: Stoke vs Man UTD DRAW (1/24) - well done WSC

Everyone's results:

 

To the leaderboard (>2/3 games played; this week: 3/4)

To this week's predos:

Bournemouth vs Brighton - BRIGHTON

Crystal Palace vs Southampton - CRYSTAL PALACE

Huddersfield vs Leicester - DRAW

Liverpool vs Burnley - LIVERPOOL

Newcastle vs Stoke - NEWCASTLE

Watford vs Man City - MAN CITY

WBA vs West Ham - WEST HAM

Spurs vs Swansea - SPURS

Chelsea vs Arsenal - DRAW*

Man Utd vs Everton - MAN UTD

Good luck guys

S7M4: Shankly was wrong

So I was super organised this week. Utilising the international break, I'd done all the stats in advance - which isn't something I normally do.

Prescient because earlier this week, the Impossibilibaby arrived weighing in at a decent 7.2 average footballs, making me the Impossibilidad. Which, I am reliably informed, is Spanish for Impossibilitee - ¡que bueno!

This means I'd have had no time to have done the stats, and so would have set a new record for being in arrears during the season.

No bueno.

Anyway, I'm vaguely aware of some international football having happened, and conveniently, don't need to talk about the Premier League football from 2 weeks ago as it's 1) ages ago, 2) I can't remember much outside of humiliation and 3) talked to death. As has TDD.

So it's a results only post, with predos to follow:

Matchday 3

25 people played
Most popular predicted results: Man City & Man Utd WINS (25/25)
Most disputed result: Huddersfield vs Southampton (8-10-7 split)

Highest odds: AFM 2856/1
Lowest odds: Steven Daniels 532/1
Average odds: 1413/1

Best predictors: WhoScored.Com, Matt Abbott, Josh Gaon & Aron Kleiman (6/10)
Worst predictor: Loads. (3/10)
Average score: 4.32/10

Best predicted results: Man City & Man Utd WINS (25/25)
Worst predicted results: Swansea WIN, Watford vs Brighton & Spurs vs Burnley DRAW (1/25 - WSC, Tarek Najm & Josh Gaon respectively)

Everyone's scores:

The first leaderboard of the new season - to qualify you have to have played in >2/3 of available games (ie 3/3 so far)

Very early door yet, so no need for complacency or depression

This week's predos:

Man City vs Liverpool - MAN CITY

Arsenal vs Bournemouth - ARSENAL

Brighton vs WBA - WBA

Everton vs Spurs - SPURS

Leicester vs Chelsea - CHELSEA

Southampton vs Watford - WATFORD

Stoke vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Burnley vs Crystal Palace - BURNLEY

Swansea vs Newcastle - SWANSEA

West Ham vs Huddersfield - DRAW

Good luck guys!