undertow

unjinx unjinx unjinx...

I agree, it seems more of a guesswork than a proved concept. It also disregards form, or more exactly how rapidly form can change. A glance at the predicted table in the second article clearly shows the method to be faulty. Partially it can be. However stats also show us that the importance of luch is higher in football than in other sports where skill is much more dominant (that's why basketball or tennis are more suitable for betting). In football the skill/luck ratio is roughly 1:1 which makes statistical analysis extremly hard.

We might have meant the same but certainly wasn't saying the same. Anyway, I'm happy to concede that dkw thinks I'm right ;) Relying on stats only is like analysing a game based on the highlights. That doesn't mean though that stats can be extremly useful to understand trends and thus refute or corroborate longstanding theories. For anyone interested in stats used right for football I suggest to read this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Numbers-Game-Everything-About-Football/dp/0241963621/

Erm, no. You were blaming the stats. It's not the stats themselves, it's the people misinterpreting and abusing them.

Nonsense. Don't blame the stats for people not being able to understand and properly analyse them.

I have a colleague who's from the Canary Islands originally, Las Palmas is his home team. He's a Barca fan though... well, no one can be perfect. At least he's a nice guy and a great colleague.

He'll join the scouting department if I heard correctly. The U18 will be taken over by Jody Morris.

Check the user reviews for the shop you choose, some of them are a bit shady.

allkeyshop.com shows prices from most online key shops, great tool to find deals.

In that case making ultimatums is not the smart play. If no one buys him in the summer and he makes it clear that he will not sign a new contract then he might end up playing zero minutes next season.

I'm surprised it's not Chelsea's fault somehow. Maybe JT blackmailed him? "Take that drug or I'll blueblur your wife!"

There is. His name is Eden Hazard.

So how is being involved with player transactions translates into direct influence over team selection?

That's not exactly what I wrote, now is it?

It's not Roman deciding, that was a typo obviously :) I was arguing that the manager has way more influence on the selections than him.

You might as well have quoted only my last sentence seeing that you fully disregarded the first in order to twist my words. It's a wee bit ironic after starting with "I didn't say that".

You really think that the owner has more say in the team selection than the manager? Come on now. Roman has his faults and made his share of mistakes but at the end of the day it's him deciding whether this or that youngster is in the match squad or not. The problem is not coming from a single person, the blame has to be shared by all parties involved. It's the manager however who bears the most responsibility.

So which one is it? It wasn't about Bath's performance, it was about correcting a factual mistake. I thought that's pretty clear... It's obviously the manager's (or first team head coach, however we call him) responsibility, he is picking the match squad and the starting 11.

He oversees all youth level in his role as Emenalo is involved in loan decisions for sure. He's not involved in the actual coaching though and he's not picking the first team. He has zero direct influence on whether youngsters are getting opportunities at Chelsea or not. It's a very simplistic view to blame a single person for the failure to integrate academy players to the main squad. Sure, Emenalo has to bear some responsibility but it's not all him, far from it.

He isn't though. Head of youth development is Neil Bath.

So it's not a mental issue then at all?

He's been like that all season.

It's good for the PL then that Leicester is proper old school ;)

Could be but as far as I know there is no proof of this. Were there any direct quotes on the topic from the coaches or the players? He should have learned from Lamps on how to be an utter professional, on that I agree.