Ah, delightful. Domestic bliss returns after the international sojourns, and brings with it new flushings of warm weather. Good feelings abound, until kick off. Then, immediately, all those lovely endorphins are shoved out by the stomach churning worry. Well, at least round my gaff.
Obviously not if you're a Liverpool fan. Comfortable win expected and delivered. Same if you're a Man City fan. Ah...
That was slightly unexpected. To be honest, more disappointed in Delia not giving it large to Pep at the final whistle. Brighton also suffered disappointment by conceding a last minute equaliser at home to Burnley. Manchester United and Southampton both showed off their devastating attacking prowess with single goal wins - Man United yet again enjoying a penalty. It is quite remarkable how a team which attacks in such a stilted fashion manages to enjoy the rewards of the same trick over and over. Ironically, Vardy made a bit of a habit of that too. Spurs and Chelsea had big confidence boosting wins against complacently mid-table sides, before 2 other complacent mid-table sides suffered embarassing results on the Sunday. Let's gloss over that, for the sake of the Everton fans amongst us.
Finally, the weekend petered out with the mid-90s Claret & Blue derby ending in a no-score draw. Yawn.
Let's get statty:
But first, a word. You weirdos. We're into season 9 and you should all know the drill by now. I really shouldn't have to tell you that you need to PUT YOUR NAMES ON YOUR PREDICTIONS
4 of you. Honestly. I should deduct 10 points from you all, but instead, I've shown my mercy and worked out who 3 of you were. There is still 1 blank unclaimed score - if you believe it is yours (ie you played and aren't on the graph below) - let me know and I'll add it to the database. After sending you a gif of my disapproval
This week, 31 people played
Most popular predicted results: Liverpool & Man City WINS (31/31)
Most disputed prediction: Wolves vs Chelsea (10-10-11 split)
Ah, the first international break of the season, or to give it its latin name Odiosis Sabbati. Regular readers will know my gross indifference to international football, unless I'm winning the Impossibilitee World Cup competition, in which case it's LITERALLY THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS.
In any case, for this batch of internationals, I couldn't tell you who is in the England squad, who they're playing or what was the score. I don't even know if they're qualifiers or friendlies. So about time the good stuff is back.
Been Jonesing for some more of that adidas good good in my life anyway.
The problem with this specific blogpost - the post-international one, is that of course, nobody can really remember what happened before the break. I could reel off the scores and do the usual one line summary, but even rudimentary analysis is beyond me at this point. It was 10 days ago people. I'm not Dominic O'Brien, Don't ever say you don't learn things from me.
So let's skip all that, gloss over the fact that Harry Kane is a filthy cheat who benefits from the media protection serially afforded to England captains and get on with the stats...
Last time out:
31 people played. Important public service announcement - in the last 2 weeks, some of you have been so keen, you've played twice! When you submit your predictions, a message should come up saying predictions submitted! If you don't see it, feel free to ask me if I've got them
Most popular predicted result: Chelsea WIN (31/31)
Most disputed prediction: West Ham vs Newcastle ( 17-7-7 split respectively)
Highest odds: Will Castle (3338/1)
Lowest odds: Joe Abbot (478/1)
Average odds: 1287/1 - btw guys, you don't need to give me the /1 (ie 1000/1, just write as 1000)
Best predictor: Brad Allix (9/10)
Worst predictors: Daniel Wigman & Joseph Machta (3/10)
Average score: 5.35/10
Best predicted results: Man City & Liverpool WINS (30/31)
Worst predicted result: Chelsea vs Sheff Utd DRAW (0/31)
3 games in and the only 100% record left belongs to the runners up from last season. A long way left to go still, and more crucially from a personal perspective than points on the board at present is the fact that only 4 teams retain a 0 in the L column. Of course - Liverpool and Man City account for 2 of those, so that's still quite worrying but let's see where we go with that....
Friday night's game saw Villa get their first points on the board with a win over Everton. Fellow newcomers Norwich looked to be on their way to a plucky result against Chelsea until Abraham scored his second with a quarter of the game to go thus hopefully buying him a longer spell in the Chelsea side...
As an aside, he looks nothing like his son....
(cracking joke there for the Russian linguists amongst you....)
Brighton's bright start has been tempered with a home defeat to Southampton and frankly, Saturday was awaywintastic - Leicester and West Ham also cashing in. The dramatic result came at Old Trafford in one of those delightful moments for everyone who's not a Man Utd fan - a brilliant finish in the last minute from newboy James looked to have rescued a point after Rashford missed a penalty earlier, only for Palace to flood up the other end and smash one right through De Gea to take all 3 points. The Ecstasy to Agony journey is delicious when it's not yours to make...
More away wins on Sunday for Man City and Newcastle before last gasp penalty equaliser stopped the visiting clean sweep. 7/10 for the weekend...
Let's get statty:
This week, 29 people played
Most popular predicted results: Man Utd, Spurs & Man City WINS (29/29)
Most disputed prediction: Watford vs West Ham (12-12-5 split respectively)
Best predictors: Gaj Thiru & Josh Gavzey (6/10)
Worst predictor: David Silverman (1/10)
Average score: 3.86/10
Best predicted result: Man City WIN (29/29)
Worst predicted result: Newcastle & Crystal Palace WINS (0/29)
Everyone's score:
And now....for the first time in 2019/20 - the leaderboard! For those new to the game this season, to qualify, you have to play >2/3 of matchweeks - this is to prevent you smashing a 9/10 on week one and then not playing for the rest of the season. It's your average score over all games played. It'll roll all season and at the end, whoever's sitting pretty on top gets the Impossibilitee trophy to keep for next season, engraved with their name on it....
Here it is after Matchday 3:
Obviously early days, small samples etc so will be a lot of movement in the next few weeks. This is fortunate for me....
To this week's predictions:
So that's it for this week, good luck all. Remember if you want to get twitter/email or whatsapp reminders (in a group with no other chat) then let me know and will add you accordingly. You know where to find me...or if you don't, someone who guided you here does....
This week I've found myself in the Big Apple, and so had a taste of the life that some of my favourite football amateur "pundits" have with regard to timings. Arsenal played the early kick off this week - a 7.30am start for me. It's one thing as a one off to do this, but I'm pretty sure that if the gods had intervened and I'd been transported across the Atlantic when I was say, 14 (i.e. hooked already), I reckon I'd have turned into a casual fan. So basically, massive kudos to all those football fans who do stupid things for their regular lives in order to remain up to date with goings on many miles away.
In truth, I've not spent my holiday keeping massively up to date with the other games - cursory glance at the results and a look at weekly VAR controversy which I don't think needs relitigating. Newcastle and Watford continued their poor starts with away defeats to Norwich and Everton respectively. Liverpool held on for a win at Southampton where the curse of the ex nearly came back to haunt them. Villa also lost their home return to a Bournemouth side who seem more invigorated this season. Brighton & West Ham played out a score draw, as did Man City & Spurs in a statistical quirk of a game. Sheffield United got a good result against a Palace side struggling to find their mojo, whilst Leicester eventually turned up to spoil the Lamps Homecoming. The weekend was completed by an absolute TekABoo of a goal from Neves to rescue a point for Wolves against Man Utd.
Let's get statty:
This week, 29 people played
Most popular predicted result: Arsenal WIN (29/29)
Most disputed prediction: Norwich vs Newcastle (11-12-6 split respectively)
Let's start with an apology. We've had loads of new players this season and I was quite lazy with the first blog and it was remiss of me to not explain the rules, so I thought I'd direct you to the sub-pages above that explain the game.
Impossibilitee started out as an accumulator-accumulator - a few people did 10-match accumulators and always lost, so it was a way to see who was the least worst. It's evolved since, and has used various statistical prediction models (EuroClubIndex, Who Scored.com) and Ex-Pro (Lawro) as comparators. We've also utilised previously Stan Collymore who has been dropped because 1) he's flakey and 2) he's a complete *$£*!&%* of a human being who tried a pile-on on me so he's barred, and the FinkTank, now sadly departed. If you know of any other models to include, please let me know.
The accumulator odds bit then stems from this - if you do a 10 match accumulator, stick in the odds (to /1, don't gimme a complex ting) for comparison and to go into my big database which one day I'll sell to someone for #mining and make billions.
How this works, as you may have worked out, is that you choose a result for each game. You get a point if you get it right. That gives you a weekly score which is averaged out over the course of the season and put onto a leaderboard (if you play >2/3 of available weeks so you cant bang out a 9/10n on week 1 and then never play again). Every week, I publish a blog with the following structure:
I bang on about some nonsense. Sometimes I'm proud of what I write. Other times I phone it in. Watcha gonna do. I've just decided I'll take guest blogs here for this season - pitch me if you want in
Very brief superficial recap of the football as it's nearly a week later and everyone knows what happened
Bit of basic stats & results outcome
Leaderboard (from Matchday 4 blog)
New predictions
Hopefully that clears up some of the confusion regarding everything before - my apologies for not doing it properly the first time....
So, the new season starts and immediately, we turn from yearning for the football to return to complaining about the obvious that was always going to occur - the implementation of VAR.
I've held forth here before about my stance on VAR, but my blog, my rules and if you don't like it....scroll down. I'm pro-VAR in concept. Yes, sport is entertainment and should be fun. However, the game that the inital laws were laid down for and what it is today are markedly different. The improvements in sports science, materials technology, even groundsmanning along with the high financial stakes for failure mean that the old adage of "evening itself out" should be consigned to the scrapheap. It's not reasonable to expect humans not to make error and so systems need to reflect and support this (oh hello there day job...).
Football is late to the VAR party - look at how many other sports have incorporated technology to improve accuracy. There's nothing magical about football which means the same benefits wouldn't apply - it's just all in the execution.
It's not right yet. 2 things really have come up from this matchday - both entirely predictable, and indeed, previously discussed by those far more familiar with the VAR world than I. These issue are:
Offside
In-stadium experience
It's worth pointing out that, like Brexit, the lines are already pretty entrenched between those who are pro & against, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change these views. The justifications just keep shifting. My feelings are that we should be looking to improve the game, and technology is a part of that, and so to throw the concept out because it's not perfect is ridiculous. We need to improve how the in-stadium communication occurs - ie mandatory screens, miking up refs and listening in to the VAR conversation, and crucially, why has the decision been upheld/changed. With regard to offside, all it's done is highlight how flawed the rule in in current context. Like the taxcode, the devil lies in the complexity. If this is the nidus for reviewing and rewording the law, then I'm all for that. The principle was to avoid goalhanging, not to deal in micrometres. Until such time as wearable tech/ball chipping allows for the level of accuracy required to look at decisions in that detail, I'd relax the rules down to "visible daylight" and give the attacking team the benefit of the doubt. In this context, where the technology remains subjective, we're looking for clear and obvious error, rather than perfection.
Anyway, to briefly recap on the football, Liverpool and Man City started the season off by humbling the peasants sent to them as fodder on the opening weekends. Surprise result was probably at Vicarage Road where Brighton's bright young thing, Graham Potter went home with a great 3-0 away win in the bag. Spurs rallied late after it looked like a brave point was there for newly promoted Villa, whilst fellow newcomers Sheffield Utd looked good in their return against now-established Bournemouth. Burnley started well against a Southampton side who have unimpressed for a few years under various managers - more of the same on the South Coast this year? Palace, Everton, Leicester & Wolves all failed to trouble each other in the race for 7-10th ('arf 'arf) whilst a delightful Aubameyang goal was enough to get Arsenal all 3 points in their relatively drab opener against a Newcastle side who seem to be fitting into the Southampton bracket now. Finally, in the battle of the young club icons, Solksjaer took bragging rights after the youngest side in the history of humanity, without a midfield, took apart a Chelsea side heavy on potential, but light on experience. 4-0 may be harsh, but it's done the #narrative no harm.
Finally, finally for this week - let's get statty:
This week, 32 people played! A new Impossibilitee PB!
Most popular predictions: Liverpool & Spurs WINS (32/32)
Most disputed prediction: Man Utd vs Chelsea (13-11-8 split respectively)
Highest odds: Andrew Feneley (252,851/1)
Lowest odds: Will Castle (608/1) - curated.
Average odds: 32,431/1 (7940/1 without outliers)
Best predictors: Loads of you (7/10)
Worst predictors: Loads of us (4/10)
Average score: 5.40/10
Best predicted results: Liverpool & Spurs WINS (32/32)
Worst predicted result: Brighton WIN (0/32)
Everyone's scores - hopefully you can work out who you are. Your tag will stay with you forever now:
To this week's predos:
Good luck guys! And remember, the more the merrier - please share with anyone you think might be interested.
Welcome back all - hope you all had a lovely summer break. Speaking strictly with my red & white tinted specs on, I was very ready for a few weeks of no football which made me slightly forgive & forget. Until that first failed offside trap, at which point I reserve the right to ramp the fury right back up again.
It's been a reasonably quiet transfer window without much of the hype and saga of previous years. The business that's been done seems to have been done reasonably efficiently and those deals that seem stupidly expensive (ie Zaha £80m, Maguire £90m) seem to have reached dead ends relatively quickly - is there a change in the transfer ecosystem somehow?
Edit: Obviously the Maguire deal was then agreed about 30 minutes after publishing. Great trolling from Woodward there.
Manager-wise - loads of new faces, and some very old - Bruce back in after Rafa finally called it quits at the Toon. It'll be interesting and refreshing to see how many operate in the Premier League.
Loads of new kits - again there's a local bias but I've considered spending all my money at the club shop - Brighton, Spurs and Wolves also have nice looking shirts. Some horror shows too - Watford, Southampton and Norwich the worst for my money. Speaking of new aesthetics, as you can see, we're going for a new aesthetic, and all the historical pages are now up to date.
So, what are we going to see - well this season, as you can see, we're going for a new system. No more comments - we're going with last decade's tech and using a Google form to collect the data. This will hopefully be more efficient and solve some of the tech issues that some of you have had with leaving comments.
So, without further ado, let's start with the season predictions...
And next up, let's look at the Matchday 1 predictions:
Reminder that the more the merrier, so if you've got friends, family, colleagues, animals, enemies or anyone else who you think might be interested to play, especially given how easy it is now, then share the blog. Will be continuing with the social media/Whatsapp reminders - so if you want in to the whatsapp group then be in touch. Good luck all!
This blog is very delayed. Basically, since this game I've had an absolutely hectic schedule and when I've been off, the last thing I've wanted to do was sort out the blog - so took advantage of the fact that there were no further games to stick it on the back burner. Apologies for those of you waiting with baited breath to find out how the season ended.
The final day threw up no surprises - at least, none that changed the trajectory of the season. Man City very briefly went behind at Brighton, so for one minute, Liverpool were winning the league. However, they hit back instantly and were in front shortly after and that was that. Chelsea and Spurs held on to get top 4.
There seems little sense in rehashing the events of 3 weeks ago, so instead let's rattle out the stats, get straight to the leaderboard and then review the predictions made at the start of the season! We'll then move on to the FA Cup game for those who played.
Let's get statty:
This week, 18 people played
Most popular predicted result: Liverpool & Southampton WINS (18/18)
Most disputed result: Watford vs West Ham (6-6-6 split respectively)
Nobody submitted odds...
Best predictors: Steven Daniels & Joe Machta (7/10)
Worst predictor: Andrew Feneley (2/10)
Average score: 4.67/10
Best predicted result: Liverpool WIN (18/18)
Worst predicted results: Cardiff WIN & Southampton vs Huddersfield DRAW (0/18)
Everyone's scores:
And now...to the leaderboard...
Usual rules apply (>2/3; 25/37)
Congrats to the ECI, who, like Man City, just held off their closest rival to take the title. They become the 1st player to win multiple titles - number 2 for them. Congrats to Joe Abbott who was the best human player. Adrian Daniels brings up the rear, quite a way off the pace. Of note, Lawro had a shocker, which given he usually goes for a Liverpool win every week, and they actually won nearly every week is quite impressive.
The remainder - those who didn't play enough weeks to get onto the main leaderboard, in order of games played.
Let's look at some of the pre-season predictions. 14 of you were kind enough to furnish me with your predictions before Matchday 1 which I was prescient enough to tabulate in August, saving me loads of time now. Some people can feel pretty happy with their work, others...less so:
League Champions: 13 correctly went for Man City (RD, DS, JA, DSIL, JG, DB, TN, AK, SR, DWIG, JK, JMAC, WOD). Josh Daniels was more than slightly optimistic that Unai would come in and take the title.
2-3-4: Nobody got this totally right, although everyone had Liverpool to finish in the CL places. Lots of misplaced optimism for Arsenal & Man Utd. AK gets special mentions for being the only person who thought Spurs would still get top 4. 7 votes for Chelsea (RD, TN, JD, SR, JK, JMAC, WOD). On Mastermind scoring, I'm giving it to Will O'Doherty, who got LFC & CFC in their correct places (4 points). He thought Mourinho would have a decent season though...
Relegated: Everyone had Cardiff to go down. 12 had Huddersfield to join them (RD, DS, JA, JG, TN, AK, SR, DWIG, JK, JMAC, WOD). The 3rd team was trickier - Wolves (RD) was a bad call in hindsight, Spurs (DSIL) might have been wishful thinking. Brighton, Bournemouth and Southampton were all popular choices, but kudos to Joe Abbott who went for Fulham to get the perfect hat-trick.
League Cup: Nobody went rogue for the first silverware of the season. Arsenal and Spurs were thought to be good candidates to fill their trophy cabinets. Joni Kleiman was a GK substitution away from sitting all smug and alone with a Chelsea win. Ultimately though, it was Man City who triumphed leaving 6 smiley faces (RD, JA, DSIL, TN, AK, WOD)
FA Cup: Interestingly, and maybe it's a sign of priorities/squad size, but there was a big difference in predictions for the 2nd cup. Joe Abbott the only person to go for Man City, and therefore the only person to correctly predict a Man City domestic treble, to go with his 2nd place in the Leaderboard and getting all 3 relegated teams correctly. We might have to rename him from Yo to Auracle, after his favourite Ivorian Right Back. Several thought this would be the trophy to end the Klopp drought - I think with hindsight, he'll live with the disappointment. The usual smattering of Arsenal/Man Utd/Chelsea, which is mandatory when talking about the FA Cup, but some blue sky thinking from Will O'Doherty saw him pick 1995 winners Everton. They of course went out in the 4th Round to Milwall, after squeezing past Lincoln City 2-1 in Round 3.
1st Manager to go: Let's start with the atrocious choices. 4 (& 1/2) people went for Javi Gracia who ended up having a pretty good season all things considering. Nobody actually went for the correct manager which was Slavisa Jockanovic at Fulham. Next up was Mark Hughes, correctly predicted by David Brickman. Mourinho was the most popular option with 5 guess (and the next to go), whilst Hodgson and Warnock had 2 votes each. He of course, wasn't fired but did that weird Ostrich thing so should have been...
Best new signing: I was going to use WhoScored.com data to decide this but there are a lot of players and it all became a bit complicated. So it's decided by me, by the powers invested in me by me.
Will O'Doherty got sucked into the post-World Cup fever that always happens and went for Yerry Mina. He played only 13 games. The Toffees clearly were highly rated going into the season, with Josh Daniels also picking from their squad - Bernard his choice. Josh Gaon the other wildcard, choosing Seri. In fairness, at the time this could have been a blinder. Narrator voice: it wasn't
Everyone else went for a big club signing. In third place, I've gone for Lucas Torreira (DSIL) who looked brilliant when he played, but missed a couple of chunks of the season. As runner up, Naby Keita (DS, SR, DWIG, WOD) who we'd waited a year for, and then took a while to get established, but ended the season showing what the hype had been about. However, for me, there was a clear winner - correctly picked by Joni Kleiman & Tarek Najm, and that was Alisson who was such a significant improvement on his predecessors that he took Liverpool to 1 point off a League & European double.
Special mentions to Jorginho and Mahrez who were both good but didn't revolutionise their sides as hoped.
Worst new signing: Mahrez (JG, DWIG, JK) and Seri (JD) managed to get themselves in both categories. Fight it out amongst yourselves kids. I went for Deulofeu which wasn't a great look, whilst Mitrovic (DS), Sokratis (WOD) & Richarlison (TN) were all fine enough. Actually, I'm upgrading Mitrovic - he was pretty good.
So, my top (bottom) 3: in 3rd place, Kepa (AK) who was fine, but not £70m good. He was the most expensive goalkeeper to arrive, and was overshadowed by many others. In 2nd place, Fred (JA, DSIL, SR, JMAC) - the popular choice before the season. £50m did look poorly spent initially and he was quickly out of favour. A late season comeback of sorts under OGS suggests there might be a future for him at Old Trafford though. The winner however, in an inspired bit of predicting is Joe Hart, as called by David Brickman. He's gone from England & Man City no.1 to the Burnley reserves via Turin in little over 2 years. Sterling work from the big man - head & shoulders above the rest.
Top Scorer: A little easier to call here: Aubameyang was popular (RD, DSIL, JD, SR, JMAC & WOD). Salah has fans too in Tarek Najm & Aron Kleiman, Nobody saw Mane coming. Kane & Aguero the other nominees.
Golden Gloves: 6 calls for De Gea to repeat his past heroics fell on deaf ears and clubbed feet. 5 went for Ederson who was level on 20 clean sheets going into the last game, but conceded from Glenn Murray whilst Alisson kept a clean sheet at Wolves to win outright. Tarek Najm saw this coming. Single votes for Leno & Lloris were optimistic at best.
Will Harry Kane score in August? 9 correctly called this to be the year that the streak was broken (RD, DS, JA, AK, JD, SR, DWIG, JK, WOD). Josh Daniels gets an extra half a point for correctly predicting that it's be against Fulham, which he promptly loses for predicting that it'd be an own goal...
Overall, Tarek & Auricle had the best predictions, Josh Gaon the worst, only predicting Man City to win the league correctly.
Congratulations to all.
FA Cup Game
Now, I thought I was updated to the QF, but I can't find that post, so will go from there:
R6:
6 people played
Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (6/6)
Most disputed prediction: Millwall vs Brighton (2-4 split)
Best predicted result: Man City WIN (6/6)
Worst predicted result: Wolves WIN (1/6 - Feneleys)
Best predictor: Feneleys (4/4)
Worst predictors: Steven Daniels, Josh Daniels & Joe Machta (2/6)
SF:
6 people played
Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (6/6)
Most disputed prediction: Watford vs Wolves (2-4 split)
Best predicted result: Man City WIN (6/6)
Worst predicted result: Watford WIN (2/6)
Best predictor: Doron Salomon & Steven Daniels (2/2)
Worst predictors: The rest (1/2)
Final:
6 people plated
Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (5/6)
Best predicted result...
Best Predictors: All those who weren't Steven Daniels (5/6)
Cumulative graph:
Total scores therefore:
So joint winners were Doron & I (2 trophies in a year), with the Feneleys & Josh Daniels joint 3rd place.
Monies to be transferred across imminently.
Thank you all once again for playing this season, enjoy your summers and we'll be back, full of sunburn and optimism in August.
