S9M11: Enough to Say

I'm not sure where to start this week. Quite a lot happened...

Friday night saw a scarcely believable 9-0 away win - Leicester scored from only 15 shots on target...a mad conversion rate and were against 10 men for 80 minutes but even so...they're flying...

Next, Man City dispatched Villa, whilst the Everton revival lasted all of a week. Points were shared at Vicarage Road and the publicly-funded complete public sector fiasco that is West Ham's tenancy of the Olympic Stadium. Guess who's blog isn't doing purdah...

Chelsea remembered they had a signing they were allowed to play, so played him and rescued a win from an otherwise 2-1 defeat at Burnley. FIFA should investigate.

Then came Sunday. Which usually follows Saturday. Bizarre.

Let's do the easy one - Newcastle drew with Wolves.

Then the late kick offs - Man Utd won comfortably and still managed to miss 2 penalties. Are they back? I think, just, just, just, that this was also the first of the VAR overturns, about 30 seconds before the higher profile VAR overturn at the Emirates, which turned a 2-0 lead into a nervy 2-1 to take into half time. The 2nd VAR controversy ruled out a late winner (and a career first double for Sokratis) for an invisible foul - I've spoken before about how poor the implementation of VAR has been, and I'm not sure it's worth covering again, but being in the stadium and hearing random bits of official comms over the PA system but basically being left in the dark for a few minutes is no bueno. That's not even going into whether the decisions reached are correct. I'm a VAR advocate in principle but they've had a shocker....

It's not an Arsenal blog so will leave the Xhaka chat for my personal Twitter feed

Liverpool also came from behind - Salah scored his 2nd penalty in 5 months against Spurs to send them back empty handed. Again. ROFL.

Let's get statty:

This week, 22 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (22/22)

Most disputed predicted result: Newcastle vs Wolves (6-5-11 split respectively)

Highest odds: Feneley (579/1)

Lowest odds: AFM (4542/1)

Average odds: 1558/1

Best predictors: Dagmar Dvorak & Joe Machta (8/10)

Worst predictor: Lawro (2/10)

Average score: 5.27/10

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (22/22)

Worst predicted result: Arsenal vs Crystal Palace DRAW (1/22 - well done me. Saw that one coming, although admittedly not VAR assisted)

Everyone's results:

We had some chat about people being left off the graph last week. I've looked into this. All the data points are there but for some reason, names are left off and it just leaves spaces (why some columns have no name next to them). So basically, its broadly speaking in alphabetical order from AD to WOD but if anyone knows how to fix it on google sheets that's be great, otherwise I'll go back to Excel which is a pain

To this week's leaderboard (>2/3 weeks; 7/10)

To this week's predos

Good luck all!

S9M10: Whole Lot of Bluster

There is nothing - NOTHING - quite like the feeling of the joy that come the end of an international break - proper club football returns - being dashed on the rocks of entirely predictable despair.

Hi, I'm Albert Einstein and my falsely attributed quote has been pinned up on the IKEA corkboard in the Emery Lair.

Fortunately, my job protects me from such trials by crushing my soul and spirit in other ways, so I don't have the time to watch utter guff like that. Yay!

Everton had a little post-international break megagame of their own, which they came through with a 2-0 win over West Ham. Villa too continued their good start whilst Chelsea and Leicetser also kept their winning form going. Bournemouth, Norwich, Wolves and Southampton all flew out the blocks like snails, whilst Spurs were lucky to get their draw after another VAR disastAR. That's a joke for the ages

Man City closed the gap to Liverpool who were held to a draw at Old Trafford, thus keeping Ole at the wheel and that's all I've got time for as I'm off to work as thanks for saving my sanity from another Emery mastercass

Let's get statty:

This week, 27 people played
Most popular predicted result: Chelsea WIN (27/27)
Most disputed prediction: Everton vs West Ham (11-12-4 split respectively)

Highest odds: Joe Abbott (983/1)
Lowest odds: AFM (127/1)
Average odds: 357/1

Best predictor: David G (7/10)
Worst predictor: Gaj (2/10)
Average score: 4.44/10

Best predicted result: Chelsea WIN (27/27)
Worst predicted result: Sheff Utd WIN (1/27 - Nick with the self-loathing)

Everyone's scores:



Leaderboard (>2/3 week, 7/9)

To this week's predictions:

 
Good luck all

S9M9: Incomplete Business

Usual post-international blog - does anyone really remember much for 2 weeks ago? Other than Lloris dislocating his elbow, Salah diving (again), Ole driving like the 17 year old old who totalled 5 cars in my road at 4am and Watford being rubbish, does anyone remember anything?

Speaking of memory - I'm not quite sure where my brain was with the last blog. It seems that I didn't give it a title nor caption the graphs. A sloppy effort, much like the focus of the Man City team in the last 10 minutes at home to Wolves amirite? What else? Chelsea look good, Everton looks bad and Villa look fun.

Let's get statty:

This week, 28 people played
Most popular predicted results: Arsenal WIN & Man City WIN (28/28)
Most disputed result: Watford vs Sheff Utd (14-3-11 split)

Highest odds: Will Castle (7906/1)
Lowest odds: Aron Kleiman (452/1)
Average odds: 2306/1

Best predictors: Feneley, Steven Daniels & Nick Taylor-Collins (5/10)
Worst predictors: Hillel Chemel & Brad Allix (2/10)
Average score: 3.57/10

Best predicted result: Arsenal WIN (28/28)
Worst predicted results: Wolves & Brighton WINS (0/28)

Everyone's results:

To the leaderboard (>2/3 weeks played; 6/8)

This week's predos:


Good luck al

S9M8:

3rd month of the season starts and it's still very bunched. Maybe as expected, given the gulf in class between the mini-leagues but it's still quite an interesting start with nearly a quarter of the season now played.

Liverpool maintained their 5 point lead at the top with a nervy win over Sheffield United - followed by a nervy win this week in the Champions League. They keep winning but look less fluent and more vulnerable than at the start of the season. Man City also won to keep the pressure on and maintain the gap from the chasing pack, fronted by Leicester who are rolling back the years (well, all 4 of them) with some thrilling football so far this term. They thumped Newcastle on the Sunday. Next in line are Arsenal who got a point at Old Trafford in a low quality game that nobody was happy with - either performance or outcome. Joga Boninto.

Also in the score draw club for the week are Villa & Burnley & Bournemouth & West Ham. All the claret & blue. And Bournemouth, who's regional cocktail is red wine and WKD. I think that what Harry Redknapp has on a Saturday night out in Sandbanks. Comfortable home wins were the other results for Chelsea, Spurs Crystal Palace & Watford, 

Let's get statty:

This week, 31 people played

Most popular predicted results: Chelsea & Spurs WINS (31/31)

Most disputed prediction: Man United vs Arsenal (7-13-11 split respectively)

Highest odds: Will Castle (5020/1) 

Lowest odds: Josh Daniels (369/1)

Average odds: 1168/1

And for Jeremy (leave a surname....there are plenty of Jeremys out there...) - the odds are if you place a 10 match accumulator. Rules of the game are in the Rules tab above. It's an optional part though

Best predictors: David Brickman, Dagmar, Josh Gavzey & Adrian Daniels (9/10) - think it's a record to have 4 9s in the same week

Worst predictors: Hillel Chemel (5/10)

Average score: 7.32/10 - season high, but not all time high - as can be found in the Historical Stats tab above.

Best predicted results: Chelsea & Spurs WINS (31/31)

Worst predicted result: Bournemouth vs West Ham DRAW (11/31)

Everyone's results:

To this week's predos:

Good luck all