_Ilya_

I ❤️ TT. Just wanted to say that. Oh, and to me all of this negativity is mad. It’s very rare to get those truly magical moments from football. Beating RM in CL semi is something I am going to remember and treasure for years. Like beating Barca in ‘12. We can lose every remaining game 10:0 - and this is still going to be a good season. Leicester is a good team and losing 1:0 having been the better team is not quite the catastrophe people seem to pretend it is.

4:4:2, Tammy and Giroud up front, put some crosses in… 🙂

I don’t know at what level of familiarity with tech industry to pitch, so apologies if this sounds obvious/patronising - not my intent. A company makes an app - e.g. a forum for Chelsea fans 🙂 - and an analytics person looks at the usage data to advise how to make it better. Can involve things like experimentation, forecasting, problem diagnostics… Fascinating! I never considered this. Feel kinda stupid now. 🙂 Makes sense, things like xG are calculated based on some sort of average conversion rate of a given opportunity, but, of course, individual players can digress from average. And it’s possible for a team to systematically create “good, but not good for their attackers” chances. Say, put a lot of good crosses on a head of a guy who is bad a heading. I don’t know if this is true of our attackers. If I had to hypothesise - I have felt that we don’t have a lot of powerful shooters on the team, right now. Don’t remember the last time I saw a Lamps-style screamer. Could we be creating chances that require a bit more power? Likely bollocks… 🙂

"Product analytics" at a tech company. 🙂 Interesting. I suppose the point I was making is fatalistic in way, inasmuch as fatalism can coincide with optimism. 🙂 I was trying to say that , imho, we are creating a lot of chances, possibly not converting quite as many as we should and possibly won't fix the under-conversion with just one striker. But I genuinely don't believe it's a bad place to be in. We'll score more goals next year even if we don't buy anybody - this attack will improve.

How so?

I do data analytics for a living, so should really be into this stuff, but ... did they maybe overthink this a bit? If we are doing well on xG - we are creating chances. If we are doing less well on converting those xG into G - we are a bit sh*t at finishing. That's about it. Or one can just watch games, observe the chances missed, calm down a bit, remind themselves that other teams also miss chances - and then compare us missing chances against other teams missing chances. And conclude what they will - probably that we miss a few too many chances. 🙂 That our xA / Chances stat is low - means very little. Just means that our Chances stat is bloated for whatever reason. If I wanted to prove with data that buying one good finisher will not fix things in itself - I'd look at how much the chances / shots / xG is spread across the team. Does replacing one of these people with a better finisher who will convert a few more of their own chances make such a big difference? I would guess - no. And if we change tactics to be more focused on creating chances for this one good finisher - well that's just a whole other team, playing a whole other game. Might be a good idea, might not be.

And if you just predict “6:0 loss x4” the Gods get offended? “You don’t even mean it! You never take me seriously… Do you even respect me?”

Also Havertz completely loses it, headbuts Pep, breaks his jaw and gets suspended for a year.

The problem with Ings is that he doesnt make that challenge on the Arsenal defender and wouldnt have created separation afterwards. Yes! I felt it was a very non-trivial chance to create, so don’t agree with (a) all the sh*t Havertz is getting and (b) the “a real striker would have put that away” comments. Having said that, we don’t seem to have a good plan for beating deep defences, so we may potentially need a “real striker” for a plan B. 🙂

Is it some kind of a superstition thing - predicting absurdly bad results in order to create luck or some such? 🙂

We have four games left. It’s not, like, super-likely we win all 4. I equally don’t believe we win fewer than 2. So I reckon 2-3 wins, 1-2 losses. Everyone can have their own preferences for what trophies we get out of that. (By the way, 2 wins guarantees one of FA, CL, top 4 - so the apocalyptic prognoses of *nothing* rely on a serious meltdown, not sure how it’s justified) The most surgical bang-for-your-buck would be winning two finals. 🙂 The least interesting, IMO, - FA cup and AV in the league.

In what way the is 3 CB system more likely to get figured out than the 2 CB system? My impression, for what it’s worth, is that we are over reliant on fast counters, so might at some point need a plan B against deep defences. But I don’t see how this problem is solved by back 4. As for defensive flexibility - I feel we have it already: the WB vary between fairly defensive ones and wide forwards 🙂 depending on plan/strategy/requirements.

Question for the "law of averages" peeps. If I am tossing a coin two times and for whatever reason want the second toss to come out heads - do I want the first toss to be heads or tails? 🙂

There is no law of averages.

Somehow Leicester losing yesterday has made me feel all gung-ho. Dunno, maybe because we have a bit more breathing space to get it wrong. f**k it. We are playing amazingly well. Everyone’s raised their level at the right time. Why do this strategic losing? Let’s win. Let’s have top 4 wrapped up by the end of next week. If Man City don’t play full strength - better for us. If they do - it will give us useful experience for the CL final. I trust TT to learn more from it than Pep will.

I like Leicester, they are a nice football story and, as long as it’s not at our expense, I want them to do well, but… if they end up not getting into top 4 having had 3rd place pretty much nailed-on, it’s going to be very funny. And can only help us, of course.

Interesting angle. We want to maximise our learning/experience of them while minimising their learning/experience of us. 🙂 If done purely via team selection, I guess one could pick some aspects of the game where we need most learning/experience. E.g. pick best defense to see how they handle MC, but play Tammy and Giroud because (for example) we have a pretty good idea of what our best attack looks like and how exactly they will play. For exmaple.

Personally I thought we bought him to be the next Maradona, so his coke consumption as been very disappointing. But you know ... he is still young ... adjusting to new country ... surely he'll raise his level.

West Ham have very winnable games. I'd be seriously stressed if we lost this weekend and then relied on winning the remaining three. Can we, like, play for a draw? 🙂

I feel the “is it luck that wins you CL” debate hasn’t lasted long enough, so gonna add another dimension (apologies if this has come up and I missed it). Some years CL is just harder than others. A few years back PSG and Bayern were roughly same level, while all of Barca, Real, Juve were much stronger. This year is just an easy year. 🙂 Which is not to downplay Tuchel’s achievement - I am pretty much ready to have his children already.

I'd have Frank visibly take control for games with Spurs and Arsenal just to troll. Or better still - Dennis Wise.