Walking out of the subway at Times Square I came across this:
Liverpool have made it.
Week 7 – Picks
Here are the weeks. Just one left to pick – see if you can guess who!
This Weeks Comments
AM: No time for idle chat this week. Ryder Cup looming so gotta get to bed, up early – first tee time UK time is 07:10. Go Europe. 🙂
Looks like Europe got up late on the first day. Here’s hoping it’s a friendly affair as I’m a bit tired of it ending up like a Duncan Ferguson era Merseyside derby.
BB: “I did enjoy the look that Mourinho gave Pogba at the training ground. I think that there may be a little bit of resentment setting in with regard to their relationship. ”
I know you like to rewrite song lyrics so here we go trying with Never Tear Us Apart (INXS):
“Don’t ask Jose
What you know is true
Don’t have to tell you
I drop you as vice-captain
What you know is true
Don’t have to tell you
I drop you as vice-captain
I was managing
You were there
Two egos collided
And our looks could tear us apart”
You were there
Two egos collided
And our looks could tear us apart”
Pretty crappy effort.
ME: I can’t find Spuds v Watford in the fixtures!
Well since our 2nd team lost to your 1st and 1/2 team in the Milk Cup we won’t be meeting again in that competition.
ME: Spuds must show a really positive attitude and get a good result! Please….
Getting desperate.. where are your team playing their next game? Milton Keynes again?
KMFE: Trying an experiment this week picking with odds quoted by the newly-legal sports books in NJ and other states… Let’s see how right they are…
Not a bad strategy. Betwin.com finished quite well last year as I tracked them week over week! Good luck – if it works you could automate this!
For those that don’t know when we were in NY we saw loads of these posters as they just made gambling on sports legal in the USA (kind of).
AA: Insert witty, informed-sounding comment about strikers and loaned players, criticism of managers and tut tuts about that one player who can’t seem to keep from falling apart at exactly the wrong moment. Followed up by slightly off-colour inside joke
Looks like Aaron Ramsey’s contract renewal has hit a snag and he may go on a free transfer at the end of the year. He could go on loan like Wilshere last year in order to gain regular first team injuries as Unai Emery doesn’t seem to understand he’s the critical link man. In other news, Chelsea released their tactics recently not realizing that they have an infinite loop.
And I think I’ve discovered what’s wrong with Sanchez!
The inspiration for this is the following amusing video….not quite Fenton but not bad.
The following is how long I spent making my picks this week:
Week 6 – Results
Well, I got some late entries from JE and LS to make this another week of complete picks. The full selections:
It seems that the extra time to prepare gave JE too much time to second-guess and finish a fairly low 8th; however, Mr LS too full advantage of the time and finished top for the week. This was an incredible 10 place jump from last week!
I don’t know how he convinced the linesman to fall asleep for Arsenal’s second and exact-points scoring goal but it worked. I feel cheated!
It was a better week for AM in his quest for a repeat over ME with a jump of 8 places.
The arbitrary table of points. I might give more points for 7th and below to help some of you out.
When you watch the EPLthis week I want you realize how lucky we are to see high quality football rather than what is played in other parts of the world.
I do appreciate everyone sending them in as it makes this interesting for me.
Note: Looks like Watford’s 2nd string lost to Spuds 1st and a 1/2 team on penalties in the Milk Cup.
Week 6 – Picks
This week will be a short post because I didn’t spend the necessary hours preparing and researching.
We’re still missing entries from JE and LS (except he said 0-0s across the board so technically he can’t be late).
Of course, there are other things that are also late! The construction is going as well as Pellegrini’s attempt to build West Ham into a meaningful team.
This weeks picks picks as of now:
For those wondering, SC1 and SC2 are secret algorithms that I’m modifying year over year. I can tell you that this year, SC2 is leading the way overall. Pretty soon I will set it loose on one of the gambling houses that sponsor one of the EPL teams.. profit and retire!
This Weeks Factoid
I don’t have a factoid submitted this week so I thought I’d ask a trivia question.
Which current premier league goalkeeper has jumped higher than the crossbar?
This Weeks Comments
AM:”Get my predictions done early. Off on another golfing jaunt – Devon this time & if I leave this until I am in company with that crowd, the job will NEVER get done. This weeks matches seem to be a pretty straight forward lot to predict, so there you have them! 😉 What can possibly go wrong!? Stop press: One late change – BHA 1-0 win over Spurs to a 1-1 draw, that means it will probably end in a Spurs win!! :-(“
Bringing in the whole comment here so I can do some psycho-analysis and translation:
- Going to drink so much in Devon that I might pick Southampton over Liverpool so better do them now!
- I’m super over-confident like Mourinho
- I want to defeat ME and I want his team to suffer a loss so that I will complete the perfect trifecta this week! (Golf, Beer, and ME humiliation)
BB: “Man City looked pants without Kevin DB”
KMFE agrees! Citeh without Kevin is like the rainy city center without bucket-hat wearing scallies and wags taking drugs at a Madchester rave and getting into a fight. In other words, grim.
BB: “BTW – Ibrahimovic – what a great 500th goal.”
Totally missed that – so thanks:
Think Messi’s 500th for Barcelona was a better goal:
ME: “Chris Hughton will offer Spuds a lifeline this week… another loss will be disastrous!”
Looking for that potato chicken alumni help? It has come to this for Spuds fans?
ME: “Arsenal may have turned a corner… at least I hope so!”
Has BE hacked this account? Or entered picks as you given that there is little hack prevention currently employed 🙂
Analysis
And give away my advantage? I don’t think so! Anyway, I reserve the rights to change my guesses before the games and I’m very much undecided on whether the hornet moosemen can beat Fulham away – have this feeling that Mitrovic will bang in a brace.
Week 5 – Results
This week was the week that the hornets failed to win. It’s on occasions like these where I try to pick against the home team which is something I learned from LJ.
- If Watford win I don’t care about my iotj pick being wrong.
- If Watford lose then at least I get an iotj pick correct. Hopefully, exact.
This weeks results:
Looks like this was the week that the leader, AM, took a bit of a tumble dropping a whopping 7 places from last week. KMFE is consistent (at least?).
Don’t forget the picks this week!
Week 5 – Picks
This weeks picks are all in and not one person was late.
So here are the weekly guesses from all.
Weekly Quotes
BE: “Had to go for a diplomatic draw, although one JE will probably still think that I’ve dissed his team.”
Good job BB doesn’t have a team in the Premier League because your picks have too many outside influences!
LJ: “I think the Hornets will suffer their first loss of the season but I’m hoping it wont happen.”
I am going to read this as you slowly becoming sympathetic to the Watford fan’s cause;however, I know as a fan of the mighty Reds you just want Mourinho to fail!
ME: “I have Watford to win because it’s your birthday and they undid Spuds so they can’t be all bad!”
Or maybe the Potato Chickens are worse than we want them to be! Lots of away games but another loss make it look like it could be a typical Spurs year…..
AM: “Banana skins everywhere, not least at Vicarage Road! “
Are we going to park the Banana bus?
JE “City will win the league with 38 wins and 152 goals and no goals conceded according to me!”
I haven’t posted KMFE or BE’s pre-season predictions but that is not far off what KMFE predicted!
AA: “Land of the living, I have returned!”
Welcome back. Keep picking the Wolves!
BB:”I have no idea what I am doing on this. I am afraid after 25 years working in football, I am more likely to forecast the temperature and flow in cubic metres of the Thames at Maidenhead than I am the correct score between hornets and devils”
Interesting.
This Weeks Factoids
Today, according to Twitter:
River flow and water temp this morning, 11.7m³/s and 15.24°C, wind is Gentle. River is NOT FLAGGED.
— Maidenhead Rowing (@MaidenheadRC) September 14, 2018
So how does that compare to a football?
Volume
The volume of a ball is approximately V=4/3*pi*r^3 if we ignore the fact that it’s not quite truly spherical and is actually a truncated icosahedron. The size of a football is roughly 22 cm (8.65 inches) in diameter for a regulation size 5 ball. Rules state that a size 5 ball must be 68 to 70 cm in circumference.
So the volume a ball will displace is 5500 cubic cm which is about .0055 cubic meters. I’m not sure that matters but anyway, the key is the area of the ball which is roughly pi*r^2 or 400 cm squared.
Time
During a game we can assume the ball is travelling for approximately 100 minutes. Now, if it’s at Old Trafford and United are behind it’s going to be closer to 105 but we’ll keep it simple.
Distance
This is tough so we’ll make some huge guesses. Let’s start with 10km as the baseline as this is what the average distance a footballer runs. Of course, it’s probably less if you’re Pogba, but we’re just base-lining here. It’s also a lot less than cricket players run.
There are 10 players that are in the outfield for each team. We’ll exclude the team managed by Pep who insists that there are 11 outfield players.
That’s 200 km.
Now I’m going to adjust for the fact that the ball is stationary during throw ins and other periods (like as much of the last 5 minutes as possible if Watford are hanging on to the lead). That’s a 20% adjustment.
That’s 160 km.
Now we can add in the fact that not everyone spends the whole game with the ball at their feet. Some teams love the long ball and some teams smack in a lot of long crosses. Most goalkeepers will also occasionally kick the ball out of the box on a kick off. So let’s factor in the long ball.
In the EPLabout 25% of passes are crosses (except anyone at Arsenal who is genetically programmed to pass the ball 10 feet back and forth – except Xhaka who passes it all the way back to the goalkeeper. About 5% are considered long passes! Get Fellaini in the box and bomb it!
So this takes 16 km for when the ball is not at the feet and adds about another 80 km for the long ball (I’m just estimating).
Finally let’s adjust for the fact that many players aren’t making decent runs and are moving with the ball. So the movement of player can’t be considered cumulative and you we need a negative factor to reduce the overall distance of the ball.. and in the end we get a volume displacement of something way less than the Thames.
It should also be noted that ball doesn’t maintain it’s shape and the integrity of the ball is often ruined leading to a loss of shape and suppleness that makes it “bobble” inexplicably whenever in the vicinity of players with inherent skill and dexterity, such as Zaha try to control the ball.
I hope this was educational and not just providing evidence on how much my mathematical ability has deteriorated during the last lots of years since I left Uni as well as the ability lost in the last few minutes since I finished my birthday drink.
Thanks for the Birthday Wishes.
Week 4 – Results
So it has been a full week since the games ended (and a bit) and I’ve been keeping everyone in suspense with regards to who won. After Saturday AM was leading the charging and it looked like he was going to extend his lead at the top but luckily a surprise win by the Hornets and an exact pick on the Monday put him back just a little.
The winner this week was the last place finisher last week showing that there’s no difference between being average consistent and wildly inconsistent.
The current overall standings.
Interesting to note that I actually prefer the Alternate Scoring system (as I usually do better) but that has ME leading the pack!
There is a phrase in football – “Sing when You’re Winning” which other than, apparently being a Robbie Williams album, is one of the oldest chants in the game of football.
“It’s all gone quite over there!”
Well this week the Watford Hornets stung the Potato Chickens of Tottenham with a great win and the BIGGEST fan of Vicarage Rd was seen singing!
That’s not singing..that’s Elton John having a heart attack. Anyway, he’s not the Hornets biggest fan.
Don’t forget your picks!
Week 4 – Picks
Most of the picks are in – remember that you can always change your mind up until kick-off.
AB’s Fun Factoid
Unfortunately, we don’t have one this week. So the question is – who is the youngest player to score in the Premier League?
Clue 1: It wasn’t Jason Dozzell who scored for Ipswich against Coventry at age 16 years and 57 days
Clue 2: He did it playing for Everton.
Clue 3: It’s not who you thought after reading Clue 2.
This Week’s Comments
LJ: “Ambitious prediction for the Reds game but I’m sticking with it”
No one knows these days with the Reds – sometimes they look like they can score at will. Can you imagine if they had two Mo’s?
JE: “I can’t believe I’m picking a United win again.”
To be fair, they are playing Burnley
ME: “Arsenal will improve on their form and put Cardiff to the sword…maybe I’m still thinking about the team from a few years ago!!”
Spoken like a true Spuds fan.
ME:”Watford’s run will come to end…hope I don’t have to eat my words!”
Really spoken like a true potato chicken fan. Hope you’re wrong!
KMFE:”Shakhtar, Lyon and Hoffenheim?! If you’d asked me, I wouldn’t have even thought any of them were in the Champions League. ”
You’ll need the easy teams without Kev. Bit easier than the Liverpool group with PSG, Belgrade, and Napoli!
AA:”Last week. I actually tried to make educated-esque choices. It may have been my worst result”
First lesson you will learn is that the more you know about football the worse you will perform. This explains LJs performance week after week and year after year (or so he insists!)
BE: “Today I’m going for the 4-4-2 system. Four home wins, four aways and two draws……but not necessarily in the right order. Before JE says it….not necessarily all the right results either!”
I thought I would post the referenced link.
This Week’s Summary
Due to the fact that I randomly selected numbers this week I don’t have any real analysis to share.