S14M25: Ping

Usual post international FA Cup break rules apply.

No recap. Couple of points.

1. KARMA (or KHAAAARRRRMMMEEEEHHH) move fast eh Scousers....Now who's complaining about Oliver & the PGMOL. Maybe try some solidarity next time for improvement.

2. I'm proud to share that Eli Daniels has finally had his trophy presentation ceremony. I wanted a big glitzy, black tie affair up in Park Lane but he's a humble man and demanded he received it when sweaty post-powerleague (sponsorship opportunities available). It's that kind of commitment to the grind that keeps him at the top of his game.

I'm sure it's already got pride of place in the new trophy cabinet delivered from Ikea (seriously, sponsorship cash is accepted) the following day.

S14M24: Sacrifice

Well, I wonder what this week's conversation topic should be.

Please God. More Officiating Larks.

It's honestly so boring - the main character energy, the utter distaste for other parties, the overinflated egos - both corporate and individual, and most galling, the prevailing fixed mentality.

I honestly hate it. It is the antithesis of everything I hold dear in personal, professional and footballing lives. It's the opposite of how you (should?) parent, how you educate and how you develop and learn as an adult.

It's a patrician - frankly Victorian British establishment - attitude to a classically working class environment and it's absolute nonsense.

Every sport in the world has officials. Every official makes errors. Nowhere does coverups, wagon circling and deflection like the PGMOL.

Alcoholics Anonymous famously have 12 steps to recovery. The first step - critically, is accepting there is a problem, and that you cannot solve it alone. The powers that be - and this is not a critique solely of PGMOL, the FA, FIFA or football alone, just cannot get to this point unless dragged there due to the reputational risk in the court of public opinion.

The Nolan principles frame how behaviour in Public Life should be led. They are equally as applicable here - I'd argue that football, whilst not public sector, is very much pubic life. I spend huge amounts of my life wanging on about how cold, calculating capitalist industry spends huge amounts of resource on reflecting, learning, evolving and growing (and treating people well) to improve their output - whethere that's profit (for them) or...I dunno, in this case, getting to a better level of productivity like....being better at your job.

The other thing I talk about a lot is how you can translate knowledge, learning and skills across different areas. My (to be written) postgrad thesis will one day be on this. The bloody aviation industry regularly get pulled up as a beacon on this - and they are, in some ways, for something things but veyr much not the panacea. Transferrable skills (ie communication, teamwork) & processes (ie implementation of VAR) are all around us. You just need the humility to look for them and accept them.

This isn't an Arsenal thing by the way - thought clearly triggered and inspired by the MLS farce. But how many times have I written about referees on this blog. It's a wider football thing, and whilst it's short-term funny to see your rivals suffering, it is the most pyrrhic of wins. We all suffer as a result.

So, Oliver, England, Webb et al. Keep chugging along. Or don't. You do you - you clearly know best.

On the pitch, some stuff happened.

---

Let's get statty:

This week, 20 people played
Most popular predicted results: Brighton, Liverpool & Newcastle WINS (20/20)
Most disputed predicted result: Bournemouth vs Nott(s) Forest (9-5-6 split)

Highest odds: AFM (1577/1)
Lowest odds: Josh Daniels (155/1)
Average odds: 663/1

Best predictor: Aron Kleiman (7/10)
Worst predictor: Oli Elton (2/10)
Average score: 4.40/10

Best predicted results: Liverpool & Newcastle WINS (20/20)
Worst predicted result: Everton WIN (0/20)

Everyone's score:

Leaderboard (>2/3; 16/23)

---

To this week's predos:

Good luck all

S14M23: Card Wrecker

As noted by Impossibilidisciple JD, the first game threw up a big surprise. 

It's always annoying that, even though I no longer actually place my penny acca like I did back in the day. The good old days, when the streets were paved with gold and you couldn't move for disposable income. Not like nowadays where every penny needs to be justified. Even the 'leccy used to write this blog came with a cost. It's fine. My kids didn't need hot water to bathe with. Character building, as the monarch said of his school days.

I've somewhat lost the point I was making, which was that Newcastle are streaky buggers and this might be the start of a downtick, which, if I were, hypothetically speaking, a 6ft 4 Swedish bloke with a love for goals and Eritrean food, would probably make me think, sod this for a game of soldiers and be right on the phone to my good friends Norwegian Martin and Spanish Mik asking if they had room for a little one at the inn, ideally within the next 8 days.

But, I'm not a tall Swede. In fact, I'm neither of those things, so unfortunately, Mart & Mik will probably see their Whatsapp message left on read which is always awkward when a former colleague does the ghosting. 

Anyway, loads of away wins on the Saturday. As much as I dislike rejection, I also like patterns in the universe, and 4 consecutive away wins (Bournemouth, Palace, Liverpool & Fulham) made my heart happy. Nearly as happy as a 2-0 Arsenal win with 2 Emi Martinez errors. Nevermind.

The next day, I was talking to a friend, who I've been trying to get to play Impossibilitee for years (unsuccessfully). We'll call him Adam, because that's what his parents named him. Adam is a Man Utd fan and has been miserable for years, which serves him right for being a Man Utd fan, especially one who lives in London.  Adam was seeing another mutual friend, who is a Spurs fan. They were being miserable together. I was assisting them in their misery by pointing out that their respective pummellings to Brighton and Everton were quite funny, objectively.

They disagreed. Weirdos. Both results were clearly funnier than City going all City, or Chelsea beating Wolves. Finally, what's going on at Forest? Maybe Spurs should have a look at their manager, seems to know what he's doing. 

---

Let's get statty:

This week, 22 people played
Most popular predicted results: Forest & Man City WINS (22/22)
Most disputed predicted results: West Ham vs Crystal Palace & Everton vs Spurs (12-6-4 & 6-4-12 splits respectively)

Highest odds: Josh Daniels (1516/1)
Lowest odds: Hannah Daniels (264/1)
Average odds: 610/1

Best predictors: Me & AFM (7/10)
Worst predictors: Loads of you (4/10)
Average score: 5.09/10

Best predicted results: Forest & Man City WINS (22/22)
Worst predicted result: Bournemouth WIN (0/22)

Everyone's score:

Leaderboard (>2/3; 15/22)

---

To this week's predos:

Good luck all

S14M22: Dr Bob says Smile

Double bubble as they say.

Don't know why people get all grouchy about the festive fixture pileup, Jan is much worse. Work is relentless, games every 5 minutes and some weirdo has decided to compound that with the imminent arrival of a small child. So yes, the M20 results blog could have been sorted pre-FA Cup weekend but frankly, I was having a little breather (and was working nights).

Anyway - suffice it to say there's been some movement. Not so much at the top - Liverpool are still way out in front but bubbling along beneath them, Firest are still maintaining pace, as are Arsenal, who are publicly on a recruitment drive for *checks notes* "anyone with a pulse" it says here. If you have boots and 90 mins free every 3 days, please slide into Mikel's DMs on Insta.

Chelsea have gone a little wobbly whilst Newcastle have gone hot, led by Isak and Gordon looking superb. The former especially is on the purplest of purple patches. Just below the surface, lies the recuperating corpus of Man City - haemoragghing blood into the ocean but still with a fearsome set of teeth - snapping away grouchily whilst they wait for their shark croc dunno where this is going clotting physiology to kick in in the guise of £120m of reinforcements from Brazil, Egypt & Uzbekistan. 116 charges you say now?

Villa continue to look dangerous but inconsistent, which is in fairness the entirety of the mid-table grouping - Brighton, Brentford and maybe Fulham. Then you have the eye-bleeding dross. of Man Utd, West Ham and Spurs - I've had several discussions with Spurs fans in recent weeks as to why they aren't rioting to et rid of Postecoglu and the general answer is shrug. What's better? 

As a not neutral on this, literally anything. Apathy kills.

Anyway, then we have Palace and Wolves who are bad but inconsistent with sparks of magic, and then just bad in Everton (who have been trying to be relegated for years - could this be their lucky year?), Leicester and Southampton. Special mention for Ipswich who, whilst bad, are also raw at this level, a mitigation not on offer to the other clubs.

---

Let's get statty:

Matchday 20 This week, 20 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man City & Liverpool WINS (20/20)
Most disputed predicted result: Wolves vs Nott(s) Forest (3-3-14 split)

Highest odds: Geoffrey Skolnick (736/1)
Lowest odds: Hannah Daniels (253/1)
Average odds: 414/1

Best predictor: Chris Sutton (7/10)
Worst predictor: NJSPTC (3/10)
Average score: 5.3/10

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (20/20)
Worst predicted result: Liverpool vs Man Utd DRAW (0/20)

Matchday 21 This week, 23 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man Utd & Newcastle WINS (22/22)
Most disputed predicted result: Leicester vs Crystal Palace (6-5-11 split)

Highest odds: AFM (3828/1)
Lowest odds: Feneley (409/1)
Average odds: 1276/1

Best predictor: Chris Sutton (8/10)
Worst predictor: WhoScored.com (3/10)
Average score: 5.64/10

Best predicted result: Man Utd & Newcastle WINS (22/22)
Worst predicted result: Brentford vs Man City & Chelsea vs Bournemouth DRAW (2/22)

Everyone's scores:

Leaderboard (>2/3; 15/21)

---

To this week's predos:

Good luck all

S14M20: It's Very Cold

No blurb. Too much to catch up on.

Happy New Year!

S14M17, 18 & 19: Good Tidings

Firstly, thanks for the lovely comments from last week's blog. Much appreciated.

Weird weekend. Very low odds all round - but plenty of surprise results saw a poor score for many. 3/10 games scored 0. Unusual! Huge pet peeve is the first match of the weekend going all Pete Tong. My brain cannot accept this. So a flat Arsenal performance at home versus a very organised Everton broke us all, and especially me. I was having a lovely lunch with a fellow Arsenal fan & former Impossibilitee player and frankly we forgot all about our woes until we saw the score. Woeful and Woefull. Liverpool dropped points at Fulham, but given the circumstances, will probably think it was a point gained rather than 2 dropped. Newcastle are in a boom phase at present as is the Geordie tradition - it will not last because that's also a Geordie tradition. Big, late away win for Ipswich saw the end of Gary O'Neill at Molineux, and and equally late winner for Forest has seen a few more moans around Emery grow. Forest are having a good season though to be fair. Palace got a good away win in the weirdest derby in football, whilst yet more late derby drama at the Etihad saw City hilariously throw away a win and keep piling the pressure on Pep. Chelsea continue to be pretty good without being good and then Spurs THUMPED Southampton, who too have dispensed with the services of their manager. Lastly, another lovely late goal saw Bournemouth rescue a point with a wonderful free kick from some bloke I'd definitely heard of beforehand. Promise.

---

Let's get statty:

This week, 22 people played
Most popular predicted result: Arsenal, Liverpool & Chelsea WINS (22/22)
Most disputed predicted result: Forest vs Villa (9-7-6 split)

Highest odds: Josh Daniels (653/1)
Lowest odds: Feneley (183/1)
Average odds: 335/1

Best predictor: Josh Daniels (5/10)
Worst predictor: David Graniewitz (1/10)
Average score: 3.36/10

Best predicted result: Chelsea WIN (22/22)
Worst predicted result: Arsenal vs Everton DRAW, Fulham vs Liverpool DRAW & Ipswich WIN (0/22)

Everyone's score:

Leaderboard (>2/3; 11/16)

---

To this week's predos:

Matchday 17

Matchday 18

Matchday 19

Good luck all & wishing you all well over the festive season!

S14M16: 1946 and All That

 A slightly different blog from me this week. Forgive me, but it's my canvas...

This week, my grandfather passed away. He'd had a long, fulfilling life full of excitement and adventure. Equally importantly, he also had a good death - peaceful and comfortable, surrounded by his loved ones, with just enough time for everyone to say goodbye, but not so much time that he was suffering.

My grandfather was very keen on sports. He would regularly tell us of when he boxed at school (complete with shadowboxing a left jab uncomfortably close to your face), and is responsible for the golfing spark in several of his grandchildren. Later on in life, he took up bowls and competed at a relatively high level, including internationally. He loved "rugger" and I have very vivid memories of watching Grandstand on a Saturday afternoon when we were at my grandparents' house growing up. In fact, that TV often had some sort of sports on - I also remember watching Freddie Flintoff smash South Africa all around the park in the 2003 test at Lords, including this moment where his bat just gave up on him. One smash too far.

Strangely though, he never really had an interest in football. He was nominally a Derby County fan - a boy who'd grown up in North London, spent part of the war evacuated in Berkshire and latterly ended up in Hertfordshire professed allegiance to the 1946 FA Cup winners in his early adolescence and never really shifted. As reasons go.....

Of course, he knew nothing about Derby. He could tell you their strikeforce in 1946, but knew nothing of the Jim Smith revival, the Paolo Wanchope-inspired massacre at Old Trafford or the infamous trivia answer that was the 2007-2008 season. I told him this week's result - a 0-0 draw away at Burnley when I saw him this week - a great result breaking a streak of 3 defeats, and I got nothing back. Admittedly, he was on some lovely medication to keep him comfortable, but the truth is I could have had the exact same response to a Derby result 5 years earlier. I never really understood why he kept up the charade - in a family full of passionate football fans (~70% Arsenal, 30% Spurs - how North London...) maybe he just wanted to be a part of the conversation. 

Anyway, I'll never find out now. But you can be sure I'll be following the Rams for the rest of the season, hoping for a mid-season revival and a play-off charge. And when they bounce back up, I'll have a little toast (of cloudy lemonade) in his honour. 

💗