Whitey Grandad

Mug shot mugs for mugs.

Doesn’t Bednarek’s count?

Football is the only real sport. The others are mere pastimes. I don’t see the need for technology in any of it.

It’s the rough edges that give the game its character and charm. Football and cricket are fundamentally different. Cricket is sporadic but when I watch a game of football I like to get engrossed in it, to follow the ebb and flow, to marvel at the complex interplay between one team and the other, to see everything that is going on in the peripheries. Modern TV coverage doesn’t allow me to do this with its endless meaningless replays, usually whilst the ball is in play. With its regular shots of the managers or the crowd, endless analysis o& why somebody fell over, criticism of the referee from commentators who don’t even have a modest understanding of the Laws. I get more enjoyment from watching a game in my local park.

What’s ‘tennis’?

It’s a fair result if television has had no influence on the outcome. It would then be a pure sport.

I remember everything. Except when he is supposed to have palmed the ball into his own net. Please remind me. I defend Bazunu not because he is good but because he is not bad. McCarthy has been bad for a long time. He has ballophobia.

You cannot be serious. At the end of last season his performances were woeful. I cannot forgive that goal he let in at home to Bournemouth. A pathetic dribble of a shot that he didn’t react to until it had rolled past him

There’s a bit about ULEZ in The Times today (paywall) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ulez-camera-vandalism-car-van-compliant-0mp2g66s2 ”90% of Ulez cameras put out of action in new area”

Can I say here that this is nothing to do with me 😐

And makes selling season tickets more difficult.

Over a season or over the rest of time, it is meaningless. Once you come to accept this you will be on your path to redemption.

There you go again. Why can you not see how meaningless this is?

Love is blind.

Would we have been playing with only ten men?

It’s easy to be accurate when you only roll the ball five yards. 98% of their passes were between Bednarek and Stephens and back again. (I may have made up that figure)

But you don’t do that without having an agenda. The figure you have decided to use is meaningless yet you cannot see it as such. You have chosen to use it because you think it confirms your views. But it doesn’t. ’Team concede four goals. It must be the goalkeeper’s fault.’

Bednarek had been virtually standing in Bazunu’s toes when he first came back.

“A referee is not always right, but he’s (she’s) never wrong” As far as subjective decisions go it’s just a matter of opinion.

Such metrics are tosh. ‘Expected goals against’? Who ever dreamt up such rubbish? They are subjective at best. One person’s opinion about what might happen. Why is it that figures such as ‘expected goals never, ever, end up being near the actual result? Exactly!

That remains to be seen. There are other possibilities. International football transfers would provide an opportunity for shuffling money around.

Nothing strange a bout it. Statistics are for mugs. I know all about data analysis and it can have its uses but it has to be used with extreme caution. Your two examples are not comparable. A striker scoring goals is straightforward because the player himself is in control of what he does with the ball. His results are not stochastic. Or of course he might just be facing poor goalkeepers. ”Shots on target” can mean anything. I have seen games where a shot has been blocked at source yet doesn’t appear in the figures for that game. They are meaningless and too subjective to be of any analytical use. There are too many variables. They belong in the same realm as roulette algorithms.

Referees don’t think that way.

Tyre particles, brake dust, it will never be clean.

Oh God help us. Football has gone mad.