An awkward glitch

It seems to have been happening rather often this season that individual player stats will disappear for a while, become inaccessible on the FPL website (usually with the bizarre message appearing that information "will become available after the season starts" - as if the system has somehow reset to last August?!). And it's a maddeningly arbitrary, inconsistent error: sometimes it will only affect certain routes of access - perhaps you are denied player info off your Team page or the Transfers page, but not off the Stats page....

However, for the last few days, all player information, whichever page you try to click through to it from, has been inaccessible on the site.

And this is a particularly bad time for something like this to happen... when we're approaching the season's biggest Double Gameweek, and many people are thus contemplating multiple team changes,... and a possible chip play.

I hope the FPL Gnomes can get this sorted out soon. But, really, it shouldn't be happening at all. The FPL website is a nightmare - clunky as all hell, and dangerously unreliable.

 

An inspiration

 

In my meanderings around Youtube the other day, I stumbled upon this - an engaging profile of self-taught wood-carver Ray Kinman, who became one of the leading practitioners in his field and landed a prestigious job sculpting many of the signs for attractions at the Disney theme parks. Still active at 70, he is now a beloved teacher of his craft.

A little nugget of peace and beauty in a turbulent world...

And he has a few inspiring lessons we all might seek to use:

Be passionate about everything you do.

Your greatest asset is persistence.

Cultivate mastery through repetition.

Mistakes are where the great learning and growth comes.

Always try to push yourself a little bit harder.

Lose yourself in the process.

These, at any rate, are principles that I have tried to follow in my life, and which I try to promote in my online writings. They can even have some useful application in our FPL endeavours, I believe.

More 'new beginnings'

 

Today is the eve of the Buddhist New Year across the countries of South-East Asia, where I have been enjoying an idyllic 'semi-retirement' for the most of the last dozen years.

A few years ago, the Lao Brewery Company produced commemorative cans for its flagship Beer Lao brand reminding us all of the number of the new year in the Buddhist chronology; but they haven't repeated that useful notice again since. If Google is to be believed (which it generally isn't these days, on almost anything; just a few days ago, it was trying to persuade me that Arsenal were knocked out of the FA Cup in the 4th Round this year [by Wigan??!!] - and that was just the good old fashioned regular search function, not the demented new 'AI' version....), we are about to enter the year 2,570.

I'm in the Lao capital of Vientiane at the moment. I'm hoping it will be the quietest place to ride out the festivities. The water-fighting in the streets, a custom, I gather, only fairly recently exported from Thailand to neighbouring Lao and Cambodia, gets more protracted and boisterous each year, and quickly gets a bit tiresome if you're any older than 25; but the major hazard of this period - especially in this country - is the maudlin all-night drinking parties, usually with interludes of caterwauling karaoke at ear-shredding volumes, that break out everywhere over the next few days, and can make sleep (at least at regular hours) all but impossible. The good thing about the bigger cities in this part of the world is that almost no-one's really from there, they've just migrated from other parts of the country for work or study; and for big holidays like this, they all return to their original home for a few days or a week Thus, the big cities empty out, and can often be relatively tranquil at such times - at least, compared to most of the rest of the country during this frenzy of batshit-crazy celebration. I'm hoping that will be the case again. (Although the last time I spent the holiday here, we were still under the shadow of Covid, so that may not have been fully representative. The festival does seem to have become hugely more raucous across the region in the last two or three years!)

Anyhow, Sabaidee Pi Mai - as they say around here.

Or, in the local script,....  ສະບາຍດີປີໃໝ່

Or in Thai,  Sawasdee Pi Him  -  สวัสดีปีใหม่

And in Khmer,  Rikreay Chhnam Thmei  -  រីករាយឆ្នាំថ្មី

Now,.... I must sort out my earplugs and my rain poncho before braving the 150-metre dash to the nearest convenience store to pick up a couple of beers... It might be the last time I dare to go outside for the next three or four days.

What's up with ANYONE??

 

I reflected yesterday on the great uncertainty surrounding Erling Haaland's prospects for the remainder of the season.

But in fact, as we go into this fraught final stretch - with a Double Gameweek coming up next week, and a big Blank Gameweek the week after that (and the chance of a further small Blank/Double as well, due to the FA Cup Final now being held before the end of the league programme) - we really have bugger-all idea what anyone's prospects are,.... because it's now very nearly three full weeks since we last saw anyone playing league football (four weeks since City and Arsenal saw league action!).

Such a long hiatus in the league programme is unprecedented - and highly undesirable. It is a uniquely weird time of year to be starting over like this.

Some teams may have reaped huge benefits from the unaccustomed bit of rest, and perhaps even more from some intensive tactical training over the last week or so. Others may have gone to seed, lost their fluency and focus as a result of the long lay-off (especially if they weren't even involved in this past week's FA Cup or European ties...).

Thus, this gameweek is, alas, just about the worst possible time to play a Wildcard.

Unfortunately, it also, this season, the more-or-less inescapable time to play the Wildcard: the final run-in getting under way, only 7 gameweeks left (and, for most people, all the bonus chips still to play in that cramped period!), and relatively big Double and Blank Gameweeks coming up in the weeks immediately after this one. Unless you hang on to it to 'smart-bomb' a late round of one of your mini-league cup competitions, there really is nothing useful you can use the Wildcard for after this week - there is no alternative.

But that's hard to do when we really don't know what we're going to get from any team this weekend: 'form' is pretty much out of the window. At the very least, we're almost sure to see a few big surprises...

And hence all of those Wildcard selections we make this week are even riskier than usual, a huge shot in the dark!

GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

The EMPTINESS goes on

 

Still nothing happening in the English Premier League till Friday. Damn, this has been a long break in the schedule!

At least we've got the first leg matches of the Champions League Quarter-Finals to distract us tomorrow. But I am missing my regular dose of domestic football.

A VOID in our lives

 

Warm-up friendlies for the World Cup are all very well, but - damn, I am already starting to miss my regular fix of proper competitive football. And we're barely half-way through this insane three-week intermission in the Premier League schedule....

So, here's another little bit of fun to distract ourselves with for a moment: Bored, a song that first achieved popularity during the opening year of the Covid pandemic, when it resonated with many people who felt their spirits worn down by being stuck indoors during the extended lockdowns.

[Yes, I am a fan of Tessa Violet! And I'm not even Russian. But I am a middle-aged heterosexual man with a fondness for smart pop music - so, I am easy prey. Although I defy anyone - of any age, gender, or sexual orientation - not to be beguiled by her in this video.]

Evil genius??

The estimable Adam Clery quickly produced a video explaining exactly how Pep Guardiola managed to control Arsenal so thoroughly in Sunday's League Cup Final, and win the game so comfortably.

Watching that, it occurred to me that, if the great man had indeed figured out such an insuperable masterplan for thwarting his closest English rivals,.... had he not perhaps revealed it too early??  The League Cup is a nothing trophy; this kind of tactical dominance would have been far more valuable if deployed as a deadly surpriise in the crucial Premier League clash between the two clubs looming on the 19th of April. These tactics aren't likely to work so well - or at all - a second time, particularly as Arsenal have four weeks to work out a response.

But then I thought.... perhaps the wily old fox also knows how Arteta is likely to respond, and he already has a second, even more cunning masterplan worked out for that crunch game at The Etihad??

I wouldn't put it past him.

But then again, perhaps the great advantage of deploying this masterstroke now was showing everyone else how to beat Arsenal? If Arteta can't work out good solutions quickly, a lot of the games he faces in the league run-in period could suddenly be a lot more challenging than he'd anticipated.

Or perhaps...., well, perhaps Pep's major concern was not with any of this, but purely with the potential psychological impact of achieving such a dominant win over his arch-rival two months from the end of the season. Even if the manner of this victory is probably going to be unrepeatable, for City or anyone else, it will have spooked the shit out of Arsenal - and maybe that's enough. They had been starting to look dauntingly self-confident; that self-belief has now been dented.

We've always known that Pep is on a higher plane than most in his perception of the game, and his ability to mould revisions in tactics for particular games, particular opponents. But does that mental acuity also extend to the longer term, to being able to plan out a succession of matches, the course of an entire league campaign??  We may be about to find out.

Most people these days use the terms 'tactics' and 'strategy' completely interchangeably; but in the military context, there is a clear and important distinction. I recall an old college buddy of mine, who rose to quite a senior rank in the British Army, once summed it up like this: "Tactics is how you lose a battle. Strategy is how you lose a war."

Has our Pep just revealed himself to be not merely a tactical genius but a strategic one also?? And if this grand ploy truly is strategic - will it end in failure or success? Time will tell. There's still a fair bit of life in this title race.

A LONG 'vacation'

 

Good gracious, what is this??

Thanks to the odd scheduling quirk that we have an international break this week, followed by the Quarter-Finals of the FA Cup on the first weekend of April, we're now faced with nearly three weeks without any Premier League football!

Since the quarter-finals of the European competitions don't kick off until 7th/9th April (and only 5 of our 9 participating clubs are still involved there, after a disastrous 'Round of 16' in the Champions League), I imagine the 14 Premier League sides no longer in the FA Cup will be taking a nice warm weather break somewhere around the Mediterranean as soon as everyone's back from the internationals. (Spurs and Newcastle, out of Europe and the Cup, can take a proper holiday....)

I can't recall such a long interruption to the League schedule ever happening before. It's really a bit too long of a break, I fear - too disruptive of regular fitness and tactical preparation routines, likely to lead to some odd hiccups in form when the League resumes. But... time enough to worry about all of that next month!

After the relentless FPL onslaught of the last few months - often two games a week since early December, and endless injury problems as a result - it will be NICE to have a little bit of a rest from it all.

I feel like a song to celebrate this welcome 'time off'. Here's an old favourite from my childhood, Bing Crosby and the cast performing 'Busy Doing Nothing' from the charming 1949 film adaptation of 'A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court'. This upload to Youtube has combined the song with a montage of clips from classic comedy duo Laurel & Hardy.

That's better. I feel quite jolly now!

And, darn it, that chorus punchline might be the most Zen thing I've ever posted on here:

We'd like to be unhappy,

But we simply don't have the time.

Keeping oneself occupied is the secret to a contented and fulfilled life. That might be just that little bit harder for the next two-and-a-half weeks...

TOO MUCH of a bad thing?

 

My favourite Geordie football analyst, Adam Clery, dropped a new video last week, examining whether and why the Premier League is proving a very dull watch this year. (Yes, it is, but....)

Although he highlights a number of problems - injuries, fatigue, and the increased use of rotations and substitutions to try to deal with this; and widespread stalemate in the tactical landscape at the moment - he also offers the useful corrective observation that... this is not completely new. Our football has always had a lot of shit elements: 'dark arts' in running down the clock, stifling defensive tactics, dour tactical struggles resulting in sterile, low-scoring games - these have always been with us. Adam reminds us that Arsenal's last title-winning side. the celebrated 'Invincibles' of 22 years ago, while they pulled off a few thrilling wins, sometimes against their biggest rivals, well, they also ground out an awful lot of bore-draws in that long unbeaten run.

This video suggests that, although this is indeed a rather disappointing season in many ways, there's also a major issue of perspective at play - making it seem much worse than it is. These days, it's possible to see every Premier League game in full - if you have the time and the financial resources available to you. It's certainly become quite accessible for big fans to watch every minute of every one of their club's matches - an experience that in the not-too-distant past was available only to the relatively small numbers of supporters who were able to attend every single match, home and away, in person. There's also a lot more discussion and punditry available now, not only on the initial satellite and terrestrial TV coverage, but on the many analytical Youtube shows like Adam's. And then, of course, there's our modern digital environment, where reactions to matches are instantly - and endlessly - shared through social media platforms; and, alas, it is very much the essence of this media environment to fixate upon the negative more than the positive.

So,.... maybe modern football wouldn't seem so bad if we watched a bit less of it??

I'm not convinced about that. But we'll have a little chance to put that proposition to the test during the three-week hiatus in the Premier League schedule that now yawns before us.

This time, IT MATTERS

 

My scorn for the League Cup knows no bounds. 

I have always - always; ever since I was a child - felt that a second domestic cup competition is otiose, and ridiculous. I am rarely even aware of the earlier rounds being played, and I seldom bother to watch the Final (except in that one glorious year, back in the 1980s, when second-tier Oxford United managed to win it - one of the great small-club triumphs in English football history; just a pity it wasn't in the proper cup...). 

The tournament's flimsy credibility hasn't been helped by having a succession of unlikely sponsors insist on splashing their name on the trophy - a somewhat contemptible one in the gambling company Littlewoods, along with simply ludicrous ones like its current backer - the energy drink that isn't Red Bull; and, back in the day, the Milk Marketing Board supported it for a long while: calling it the 'Milk Cup' made it sound like some sort of confectionary...). 

My feeling is that the competition could become more useful and relevant - and less of a strain on an already dangerously overstuffed top-flight schedule - if it were restricted to clubs outside the Premier League.

However, we do have an unusually significant match-up in this Sunday's Final: Arsenal and Manchester City, the two teams vying for this year's Premier League title. And the game happens to come at a particularly crucial moment in that title race, as City's challenge seems to be evaporating after they tamely dropped points in their last two games - to allow the leaders to pull out a rather daunting 9-point gap.

I have an inkling, therefore, that this year's League Cup might actually decide the League title as well. City, I think, really, really, really need to win this game - to lay down a marker that they're not giving up the challenge yet, to try to put a bit of a dent in Arsenal's growing self-confidence. They still have a game in hand over their rivals, and they are slated to play them at home in Gameweek 33. If they could win both of those, Arsenal would be facing a very nervy run-in.

But if Arsenal can beat them on Sunday, they'll go to The Etihad in a month's time with no fear - and they'll probably win again there. City NEED to win this game - not for the worthless 'consolation prize' trophy, but to keep the title-chase alive.

So,... I might actually watch the game this year!  [Well, I'll try. Since the UK coverage is on the dreaded ITVX, I very much doubt if I'll be able to get a viable stream.]

[Well, what do you know? ITV seems to have upped its game - at last. It has been so notorious for so long for not having sufficient server capacity to maintain a stable stream on popular live events that I've largely given up even bothering to try it over the last few years. But it worked a treat last night! (Maybe only because comparatively few people are interested in watching the League Cup Final, even when it is between the two best teams in the country??)

I confess, I am pleased to see Arsenal 'wobble' a bit, and City re-energise their title challenge. Arsenal fans should probably be a little worried by the manner of the defeat: their team was completely dominated in the second-half, and had no response. It was a performance so lacking that it suggests they might struggle in a number of the remaining games, not just the crunch match at The Etihad. It is uncertain, though, whether the long wait before they play in the league again will amplify or diminish the psychological impact of this result.

Of course, my man Adam Clery has already put out an excellent video examining how City were able to control the game so emphatically.]

Going with the flow

Here's a funny thing: although I have a great fondness for the late Shane MacGowan and his songwriting,.... most of my favourite Pogues songs are in fact written by other members of the band. This one, a rather beautiful love song by banjo-player Jem Finer, is actually from their later era in the '90s, after the band had finally been worn out by Shane's looney escapades and had to sack him.

The Pogues have a special place in my heart because they rose to prominence - indeed they were, somehow, one of the biggest bands in the world for a while back then! - during the 1980s, the period when I was transitioning from high school to university, and then from university to 'the world of work' (ha!), that age when we tend to listen to music most, and be most affected by it.

Although this song was released on their penultimate album, Waiting For Herb, in the mid-90s, I always associate it with a rather earlier moment in my life (funny how the mind works!). Back at the end of the '80s, I was doing a teacher-training course in the north of England, and was attempting a long-distance relationship for the first time, with a devastatingly beautiful young woman I'd just met who was at art college in London. (I always seem to fall for creative types: actresses, dancers, writers, musicians...) And although she never stood me up at a bus station, as in the scenario of the song, there were a number of  times when hoped-for visits were cancelled, or when we had awkward conversations from a payphone at a bus station (one of the most readily available to me at the time, since I was living in a small village some way outside of my university town, and having to take a bus home almost every evening). Because of these associations, several years later, this became for me, retroactively, 'our song'.

The song is notable musically for being an instance of the use of 'Infinite Guitar' - a feedback effect that allows a note to be sustained indefinitely at constant volume, here producing a melancholy and haunting background. The device was apparently invented by a Canadian guitarist called Michael Brook in the 1980s, but it is most associated with his countryman, Daniel Lanois, who did a lot to develop, or at least 'popularise' the innovation. Also a talented musician and songwriter, Lanois became best-known as a producer, particularly for his work on a number of U2's most successful albums. He introduced the 'infinite guitar' gizmo to The Edge, who was quite besotted with it for a while, and used it most memorably on the hit single With Or Without You - which probably creates some additional resonance with this song. (I'd never been much of a fan of U2 or The Edge, but I got to meet him and hear him perform at a private music biz party in the '90s, and found myself very impressed: he is a rather cool dude, and a much better player than I'd realised.)

I particularly like the opening lines, repeated as chorus:

Listen to me, baby: Once upon a time....

My heart, it was an ocean,

But you swam against the tide.

It's a song about acceptance, about moving on - without enmity or regret. How many of those are there?? It might be unique.

It's a good lesson, for life - and for FPL. Sometimes - often, most of the time - things don't work out the way we want them to. We have to try to understand how these setbacks happen, without apportioning blame - to ourselves or others. And we have to learn to bear these disappointments with good grace - and summon the will to keep moving forward.

And yet, of course, I can't escape the conviction on occasions that the girl was wrong, that life is often wrong; that the tide of my feelings was 'right', and that the girl - and the world - would have done better to have gone along with my flow, rather than opposing it.

Yes, EVERYTHING can become a metaphor for me.  Life is a metaphor for FPL, FPL is a metaphor for life.... Life is FPL....

Forgive these idle musings. I am making rapid progress into a bottle of Tullamore Dew this slow Tuesday evening....

A little bit of Zen (85)

“May you get all your wishes but one, so you always have something to strive for.”

Irish blessing

"And may the head on your Guinness be tight and creamy..."

GW  (Though he probably won't be expressing himself that coherently over the coming few days, what with being a Plastic Paddy and all....)

One can't help a little snigger

 

I am English; and thus I inevitably feel a certain sentimental attachment towards English football clubs, and hope for them to do well in the continental competitions. But that's all it is: a weak impulse of sentiment. I have absolutely no time for blind nationalism, and in fact tend to react against any suggestion of it. Ultimately, I love good football more than anything else, and will always celebrate a deserved victory, even when it goes against the team I was at least somewhat rooting for. I won't be obstinately braying for English success at any price in the World Cup this summer; I'll quite happily accept it if - when - we get eliminated by a better team; and, ultimately, I'll probably be investing as much or more hope in the team playing the most attractive game during the tournament, and that's quite likely to be Spain or France or Brazil.

And hence.... while many of my countrymen are dismayed and despondent at this week's results in the First Leg ties of the Chamipions League 'Round of 16', I can't resist a little chortle. The 'junior' European competitions have been so diluted as to become a bit of joke, really - easily dominated even by bottom-of-the-table Premier League sides. But this year, the Champions League has seemed to be going the same way, with the usually major European powers mostly looking well below their best (only Bayern still giving cause for concern...) in the league phase. Even misfiring Liverpool had been able to look fairly dominant in Europe so far; even stuttering Newcastle and increasingy abysmal Spurs had qualified through the first phase with relative ease. It was starting to feel as though we'd surely be guaranteed two or three of the semi-final berths. But, oh boy, did things just change quickly!!

Admittedly, only Newcastle were playing at home in this first batch of games. And our boys did get the rough end of the draw, with opponents of the status of Real, Barca, PSG, and Atleti being pitched against us so early in the knockout phase. (Though at least we were spared Bayern! And, frankly, on these performances, I'm not sure any of our teams would have fared that much better against Bodø/Glimt, Sporting, or Atalanta...)  But three of our six contenders were not just beaten but absolutely spanked, while Liverpool went down to the not-that-daunting Galatasaray, and even the mighty Arsenal barely scraped a draw against Leverkusen (and that only because they were the late beneficiaries of probably the worst penalty decision we've seen in the competition this season!). That is surely one of the worst nights for English football in Europe ever!!

But I am accepting this dreadful set of results calmly, stoically. I actually welcome them as a deserved corrective, a useful rebuke to incipient hubris. It can really do no harm to our clubs, or to the national game, or to English football fans in general.... to be brought back down to earth, to be shocked out of the arrogance and complacency that were starting to grow in us in regard to the European competitions.

And all is not yet lost. I'd still fancy Liverpool and Arsenal, and perhaps Newastle too to be able to pull off a win over two legs. And if anyone can pull back back a three-goal deficit against a team as big as Real Madrid,.... it's probably Pep's City.

It ain't over, as they say, until the Fat Lady sings....

Not AS BAD as all that....?

I analysed last week why this FPL season seems to have been even more random than usual. And, although I have a few gripes about tinkering with the scoring system by introducing the maddeningly opaque new 'defensive points', most of the reasons for this lie outside the Fantasy game, in the real world of football: VAR decisions getting even worse (largely because the backroom team are now too timid about questioning their on-pitch colleague's original call), the SAOT system foisting more and more hair's-breadth - and increasingly unconvincing - offside calls on us, new defensive systems stifling a lot of creative attacking play, and the new paramountcy of set-piece scoring opportunities leading to all this unseemly wrestling in the penalty area.

And while these shifts have clearly been to the detriment of the game of football, I would say that they haven't necessarily spoiled the game of Fantasy Premier League.

The game has always been vexing, frustrating because of the huge amount of randomness and unpredictability in it. But we have to base our gameplay on identifying the areas where there is some reliable predictability.

Even though there seems to be even more randomness than usual this year, we can still strive to find the rare shoals of predictability occasionally visible amid this sea of chaos.

That has always been the challenge of Fantasy Football. This season... the game just became even more challenging. We should do our best to enjoy that.

Even more of A LOTTERY than usual?

 

As I have frequently observed in my regular 'Luck-o-Meter' gameweek reviews, this season is shaping up to be one of the lowest-scoring - perhaps even the lowest-scoring - in Fantasy Premier League's 24-year history.

It is also seeing unusually large points spreads within a single gameweek rather often: a significant number of managers being able to attain very high scores despite there being a very low global average.

And it is seeing some remarkable reversals in fortune from week to week (more than in a 'typical' season? it's impossible to check data on that, but it feels as though it might be so...), with many people following a huge high-score with a dismal low.... or vice versa.

All of this is making the game feel MORE RANDOM than usual this year, even more than usual determined by PURE LUCK.

And, for many people, this is making the game seem less satisfying, less FUN this year.

But is this really so??

Well, YES, I rather fear that it is.   [Though I observed a little later that while I fear Premier League football has become rather less attractive this year, these shifts in the game can - to an extent - be seen as intriguing new challenges for FPL managers.]

But what are the factors contributing to this phenomenon?

1)  The opacity of the new 'defensive points'

While there have been a few players who've established an impressive reputation for earning these new points almost every week (far more often, in fact, than we would have thought possible, based on the limited sample data FPL had released on the new metrics from last season), for most players, their 'defensive contributions' tally yo-yo's wildly from one week to the next. It is effectively impossible for the casual watcher to try to check these tallies (since we haven't even been given any detailed definitions or examples of how the various eligible game actions are recognised); and I, for one, have very little confidence in the accuracy or consistency of how this is being done by the official stats-provider. While there are a few dependable 'high defcon' players, and we may be surprised/disappointed when Anderson or Garner or Gabriel or Tarkowski don't return defensive points, for the great majority of players, it is entirely unpredictable whether they will earn - or whether they have earned! - these additional points in any given gameweek. As I pointed out in my criticisms of this unnecessary rule-change at the start of the season, it suffers from the same problems as the vexed Bonus Points System - its allocations are impossible to verify independently, and the results will often seem erratic or unfair; it is essentially just another randomizing element in the game (and we'd like fewer of those, not more).

2) Defences being 'on top'

It is an especially unfortunate coincidence that at the same time as this major adjustment to the scoring system, we also happen to be seeing one of the biggest shifts in tactics in the Premier League in over a decade, with a new emphasis on man-marking proving remarkably successful at stifling most of the forms of attacking play that teams have most relied on in recent years. This has led to far fewer chances from open play for almost every team, and hence greatly reduced points from 'attacking contributions' in FPL. So, not only do we have new less predictable points to factor into our game calculations, we also have far fewer of the traditional, mostly rather more predictable points to balance against them.

3)  Set-piece roulette (or 'WrestleMania'....)

With the suffocating of open attacking play, more and more teams are being forced to follow Arsenal's example and place increasing emphasis on set-piece routines to try to nab crucial goals. While some of these set plays are impressively intricate and clever (and I'm actually quite pleased to see the return of the long-throw this year!), unfortunately, many of them rely excessively on grappling with opponents in the penalty area and trying to mob the keeper on his goal-line. Not only does this make our lovely game unbearably ugly, it adds to the sense of randomness and injustice in the game - both in real-world results and in the FPL points outcomes - because so much now depends on whether the referee and the VAR officials choose to take notice or not of egregious holding offences and other such 'personal fouls' within the penalty area at corners and free-kicks. [We just witnessed a particularly frustrating example this past weekend, when Chelsea should, by rights, have been awarded at least two penalties against Arsenal - but didn't get any.]

4)  The sad absence of many big attacking contributions from midfield

Kevin DeBruyne and Son Hueng-Min, two of the giants of FPL over the past decade, both transferred out of the Premier League at the end of last season. Diogo Jota tragically died at the start of the new season. James Maddison was eliminated by a season-long injury. Mo Salah has suddenly proven largely ineffectual at a painfully rebuilding Liverpool. Florian Wirtz, probably the most exciting of the season's new arrivals, took four months to start finding his form. Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha also had problems settling in at Amorim's floundering Manchester United. Ebere Eze didn't get regular starts after moving to Arsenal. And almost all the other usual top points producers in the midfield category - Palmer, Saka, Odegaard, Foden, Mitoma, Kluivert, Gakpo, Gordon - have missed big chunks of the season through injury and/or just haven't been able to reproduce their best form of recent years. Despite many midfielders being able to pick up substantial additional points for their 'defensive contributions', only Semenyo, Fernandes, Rice, and Wilson have got anywhere near the kind of points totals (70% of the way through the season) we'd usually be hoping to see from at least 6 or 8 players in most previous years. It is far more difficult to predict returns from players who are less consistent in their productivity - but that's what we've often been having to rely on this year.

5)  The sad absence of many big attacking contributions from full-backs

Again, as with midfielders, Trent Alexander-Arnold transferred out of the league, Ben White has mysteriously fallen out of favour at Arsenal, Josko Gvardiol switched back to being more of a central defender than an attacking full-back,... and then picked up a season-ending injury; Matty Cash and Diogo Dalot and Marc Cucurella have so far struggled to make as much of an impact as they did in the previous year or two; Daniel Munoz has also suffered a lengthy spell out, and three of the other most promising attacking full-backs of last year, Antonee Robinson, Rayan Ait-Nouri, and Ola Aina, have missed most of the season. Really, Matheus Nunes and Nico O'Reilly at City and Jurrien Timber at Arsenal (although his contributions have mostly been coming from involvement in set-piece melees rather than through wing play) are the only full-backs to have had much of an impact this year. A top attacking full-back might hope to pick up an 'assist' once in every 3 or 4 games; even an aerial monster like Gabriel isn't likely to nab a goal (or an 'assist') at a set-play more than once every 5 games - and it's much harder to anticipate when those contributions might occur, since they're often happening in messy goalmouth scrambles (where there may often be doubts about the attribution of both goals and assists, as the ball pings around between multiple players; Virgil Van Dijk, in particular, has been extraordinarily lucky to have 2 or 3 goals credited to him which looked more like own-goals off an opposing defender). The pre-eminence of aerially dominant central defenders in the FPL points returns this season (unique, in my memory of the game) again makes it slightly harder to anticipate when and where points are going to come from.

6)  A new overcautiousness in the VAR room

It seems to me that teams of VAR officials have become much more timid about overruling their on-pitch colleague this year - which has been resulting in more, not fewer, egregious errors being made over crucial decisions, and even more uncertainty about whether VAR will intervene and to what effect - a further randomizing factor in our game

7)  And a ton of injuries....

Now, I don't think this season has been worse than some recent ones (certainly not for me, personally; I suffered 55 major injuries in one season a few years back!). I just noted yesterday that, although there has been quite a high number of injuries overall, we had been spared - so far - suffering a cluster of injuries to leading players all within a week or two. But, yes, there have been a lot of injuries (and drop-offs in form) this season. It has been very difficult to keep a settled FPL squad for long, or to save up 'rolled' transfers for a tactical 'mini-Wildcard' rebuild.

So, yes, for this bizarre combination of reasons, it has been a particularly WEIRD FPL season.

I generally say that the game feels like about it's about 70%-80% down to 'luck'; but this year it has often seemed to be more like about 95% 'luck'!!

And that is a bit frustrating.

But we should play the game for engagement rather than 'success'. We should hope to find insight in it, but not justice.

A nomad once more....

I've just endured a rather unpleasantly fraught few weeks (in the real world, rather than the relatively benign realm of FPL), after my batty landlady decided she wasn't going to extend my lease after all (though, of course, one generally assumes that this should be a mere formality; and we did appear to have reached an agreement in principle to go ahead on much the same terms as the past year, back in the middle of January), but dawdled about telling me, and - really - didn't give me any proper notice at all.

Suddenly faced with unexpected homelessness in a little over two weeks, I have had to scramble rather to.... sort out the next phase of my life.

And, since I didn't feel I had enough time to both househunt and pack,... I took this unpleasant surprise as a cue to revamp my life rather dramatically. Instead of packing up my life into boxes and finding another house to rent, I have.... sold (or given away) everything I own, and laid plans to hit the road. As of tomorrow, I shall be a vagabond again.

If I have one greater love in my life than football, it is music. My parents had quite an extensive and diverse collection of records (though mostly rather middle-of-the-road), and a wonderful old 'gramophone' in a walnut chest with which to play them. During my early childhood, I would sit cross-legged on the floor in front of this marvellous device, in utter rapture, for hours at a time. And one of my great favourites from those early listening sessions was this mid-60s hit by the country singer Roger Miller: King of the Road, a defiant celebration of the hobo life - humorous, and oddly inspiring. I often wonder if my love for this song hasn't led me astray in life. Not only am I unafraid of having no fixed abode, no steady income, and few personal possessions; I actually tend to view such a situation as a desirable ideal.

Famous name, obscure origin

Although I have been a lifelong admirer of Pelé, I confess I don't think I had ever known where the celebrated monicker came from. Now we have an answer, in this little biographical summary from the almost always diverting Tifo (a sub-channel of The Athletic magazine's Youtube presence, but far more entertaining and worthwhile than the great majority of their regular content).

For me, those 'greatest of all time' debates never get off the ground. If you were lucky enough to see Pelé in his prime (or even past his prime: I recall some absolutely stunning moments from his time with the New York Cosmos team in the mid-70s), there is no debate: he did everything that the later greats did, but did it more consistently, with more zest, with more athleticism. Everyone since has been inspired by Pelé, everyone has tried to emulate him; a few have come very close, but no-one has surpassed him.

What he did in the 1970 World Cup - and I was a tiny boy at the time, watching on a grainy old black-and-white TV - was other-worldly. I can't think of any other player who has become so celebrated, so beloved for a goal he didn't score - let alone three of them: that magnificent downward header that was somehow spooned around the foot of the post in a 'Save of the Century' from Gordon Banks, the outrageous dummy around the Uruguayan keeper on the edge of the box, and the attempt to lob the Czech keeper from a few yards inside his own half (perfect length on the shot, but it drifted just inches wide of the post). And these were just the stupendous highlights. In every match, just about every time he got on the ball, you held your breath, expecting something magical, something impossible to happen - and very often it did. Watching these performances, I began to understand why he called football the beautiful game; it stopped being merely a sport and transformed into an art.

Ha-haa!

Arsenal get an 'early' double gameweek, against middling and weak opponents,... and get held to a draw by both,.... pissing away a two-goal lead against bottom-of-the-table Wolves!

The vaunted Arsenal defence returned very little in FPL from the double-fixture (apart from the unexpected Piero Hincapie, who wasn't even a shoo-in for a start, but ended up playing almost the whole of both games, and coming up with a goal against Wolves); the much transferred-in Martin Zubimendi and Viktor Gyokeres returned bugger-all.

Oh, schadenfreude, we do love you.

Is it SLOP??

 

I came upon this video the other day, and found it quite interesting. It reminded me of a post I wrote on here nearly a year ago in response to this video on The Athletic's Tifo sub-channel, discussing why football is such an exceptionally complex game (almost uniquely so), and why this imposes severe limits on the extent to which data analysis can be helpful in 'understanding' it. This new video is a far more superficial discussion of the topic than the earlier Tifo one, focusing mainly on why football ('soccer') is so much more 'unpredictable' than the major American team sports. Unsurprisingly, it's because it's a low-scoring game (so, a single error leading to a goal can more often have a decisive impact on the final result), and because a draw being included among the possible game outcomes heavily impacts both the game's tactics and the predictability of results. The one major piece of data analysis in the video suggests that from 2005-2025 barely half of Premier League games were actually won by the 'favourite' (although that begs the question of how the 'favourite' is assessed; many fixtures are so tight that there is no clear favourite - certainly not when other factors like recent form and home advantage are taken into consideration along with league standing and/or general 'status' of the two clubs; it also omits to consider how many of the 'upset' results were only draws rather than losses, which obstructs direct comparability with the American team sports).

While I quite liked this video, I do feel rather hesitant about sharing it. Youtube is awash with AI SLOP these days, and I'm not completely confident that this isn't another example. It does seem to be free of any of the usual tell-tales - the heavy-handed rhetorical antitheses, the frequent repetition of content, or occasional obvious glitches in the voiceover (AI-generated narration tends to have the odd clunking mispronunciation or bizarre bit of phrasing or intonation now and then, or sometimes just an obvious break in the continuity mid-line - which completely gives it away). And the content appears to be all accurate and true (I haven't checked that central statistical claim, though....). But it is a bit glib and shallow. And they are churning out an awful lot of content in a very short time: over two dozen videos in barely two months since the channel launched. Alas, I think I smell a rat. But I'll probably check out a few more of their videos to try to find some persuasive evidence for my hunch on this.

Happy East Asian New Year!!

 

Today is New Year's Eve for many people in my part of the world (so, neighbourhood karaoke parties and midnight fireworks will make an early night impossible....). It's commonly thought of as the Chinese New Year, but in fact the Vietnamese Tet and Korean Seollal holidays also celebrate this 'lunar new year', and there are similar events in Tibet and Mongolia as well, not to mention in all the extensive Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese diaspora communities elsewhere across South-East Asia - and around the world.

We have a particularly cool zodiac animal this year, The Horse (my nieces will be thrilled; both huge horse-lovers). And not just any old horse, but a 'Fire Horse'. (Each of the 12 Zodiac animals is also associated with one of the 五行, the 'Five Elements' - Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. The East Asian Zodiac rotates through each animal for each element, meaning that a full cycle takes 60 years.)

So, if this is a holiday for you - or if, like me, you just enjoy any excuse for a party and embrace everyone else's holidays too - a Happy New Year to you!!!

Or...  Chúc mừng năm mới!

새해 복 많이 받으세요!

Шинэ оны мэнд хүргэе!

ལོ་གསར་བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས།!

新年快乐!