What gives, BBC??

 

Dear Auntie Beeb, WTF is up with this??  Midweek 'Match of the Day' programmes almost never seem to be available on the iPlayer any more! Only (if we're lucky) bare highlights of individual games, with no team line-ups shown at the start, and no pundit analysis afterwards.

And no explanation is ever offered for this strange - and exasperating - omission; at least, not any very readily accessible one; at least,... not one that the ever-deteriorating Google can find. The only possibly relevant notices the Internet seems to have about the non-appearance of the full programme are generic and out-of-date FAQ answers which vaguely suggest it might be down to 'a rights issue', with no further elaboration. And sometimes the programme appears as normal; but sometimes it doesn't.  WHAT GIVES???

Now, some may object that I shouldn't really be watching the BBC iPlayer anyway, since I don't in fact live in the UK (and haven't for nearly a quarter of a century!). But come on, the BBC obviously don't really give a shit about that, because they must realise that at least two-thirds of their streaming viewership is accessing the service from other countries via VPNs (it would be easy to stop, if they wanted to; and they have, occasionally).

And, as a sometime lawyer, I don't really get this argument about 'rights issues' in other territories. Where cable and satellite services - to say nothing of the dear old Internet - are now so widely available cross-border, there can be no effective exclusivity of broadcast rights within any particular geography. And the nominal 'exclusivity' for its rebroadcast rights that the EPL sells can only meaningfully apply against rival providers in the same medium (terrestrial TV, or cable, or satellite, or streaming) as well as the same territory,... and only for the same type of content (presented for the local audience, with commentary and discussion in the native language). It is utter nonsense to suggest that anyone shouldn't have access to BBC programming in English because a TV station in a nearby country might be offering coverage of the same event in a different language.

But good grief, BBC, if you are going to randomly withold some of your programmes from the Internet - without any obvious logic or consistency - you should at least give us a NOTICE OF EXPLANATION, easily available, every single time. It's not that hard to do.

The distant laughter of the Fantasy Gods....

 

On Saturday - when half the world had bet their precious Triple Captain chip on him - the great Erling Haaland played like a man who'd been heavily on the lash on Friday night....

But just three days later, he comes up with a goal and 2 assists, for what would have been a very decent return on the TC chip!!!

The pagan gods who preside over the realm of FPL are not just cruel and capricious, but fond of mockery; it is not enough for them to smash our hopes, they must then taunt us in the midst of our despair.

But really, backing Haaland against Leeds was the 'right' choice, Fulham are a way better team than Leeds, and this match was on their home ground: it was not nearly so favourable a prospect for a big haul from the lanky Viking. (But then, neither were the Bournemouth or Everton games; or even Burnley or Wolves.....! It's impossible to predict with any confidence when the big hauls are going to happen.)

TOO SOON!!!

Christmas has become strangely popular in East Asia over the last few decades - especially in China; but really, everywhere across the region.

The seasonal decorations started going up in my sleepy little hometown last weekend (and they'll probably stay up till around March!). And I got Whammed! for the first time on Sunday afternoon last week in a local supermarket. Come on, people, we're not even out of November yet!  Cruel and unusual punishment indeed!

I see the official challenge doesn't actually start until tomorrow, so I suppose I'm still in with a chance of survival. But the omens are not good....

Early wake-up

It is, somehow, an Iron Law of the Universe that, if you live in Asia, you are never more than about 150 metres away from some sort of construction project.

There is an unfortunate corollary to this Law - that if it's 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning, you are probably within 50 metres of someone using an angle-grinder....

Feeling THANKFUL?

I've long had a peculiar fondness for the American holiday of Thanksgiving - largely because I've so often been able to celebrate the occasion with American and/or Americophile friends, and a few times even in America.

This year, alas, I shall probably be making do with a turkey sandwich on my own. And maybe I'll make myself a pumpkin cheesecake for a sweet treat tonight...

Anyhow, a Happy Thanksgiving to any American readers who may stumble upon this obscure corner of the Internet (probably looking for content about the Fantasy version of their own gridiron game - the one that rather conspicuously involves very little playing of the ball with the foot....).

[And apologies to any Canadian readers who feel overlooked. But you're probably used to it! I am well aware that your version of this holiday falls much earlier, on the 2nd Monday in October, as I lived in Toronto for a year-and-a-half in my youth. However, that holiday never embedded itself in my psyche, even when I was a resident in the country. You Canucks are not so, um, culturally assertive as your American cousins, I suppose.]

For some reason, Linus's pitiful obsession with The Great Pumpkin - an autumn-themed deity of his own invention - was always one of the things that most resonated with me in the classic 'Peanuts' cartoons. This superstition of his was actually associated with Halloween, but it is Thanksgiving, with its own emphasis on pumpkins, that always recalls it to my mind. 

Linus, of course, was convinced that The Great Pumpkin would appear only to him, if he created a pumpkin-patch that was worthy of the demi-god's attendance; and he'd wait patiently every year, full of expectation - but it never happened.  In much the same way, we FPL managers convince ourselves that, if we only take enough care over our selections, one day The Great Gameweek or The Great Chip Play will manifest itself only for us.  Like I said, pitiful.

Again with the metaphors, Mr Wade?

To pod, or not to pod....?

I have a little bit of a 'following' (dread word!) on some of the FPL forums where I comment most frequently, a small coterie of discerning readers who actually appreciate and enjoy my observerations (on football and on life, as much as FPL). And a few of these have even exhorted me once or twice - perhaps only in jest?! - to launch a podcast,...  to provide a more 'readily digestible' version of some of the more useful content from this blog (where I know that, in pursuit of clarity and thoroughness, I usually end up being too long-winded for modern tastes). I have been considering it.

In fact, I had thought that last week would be an especially opportune moment to drop an initial episode: I should have had a bit more time to prepare material over the international break; and it was looking like a particularly intriguing gameweek, with a wide open field of possibiliies for the captaincy (I had quipped online that there were probably "at least 20 more promising options than Haaland this week"; and indeed, 17 players did better than the 8 or 9 points which I think would have been the Viking's best reasonable expectation for the gameweek, and another 20-odd did about the same; but since he actually blanked, 99 players outscored him!!); and there are many intriguing problems approaching (the midwinter fixture logjam, the extra transfers being doled out for AFCON, many managers still having all or most of this year's extra chips to get rid of, and so on....). Gosh, yes - it was an unusually rich week for FPL discussion.

Ultimately, perhaps, there was rather too dauntingly much in the way of possible topics to choose from. And I didn't have much free time (friends visiting, job opportunities to chase, another big writing assignment to take care of....). Heck, I haven't even got very far with the first item on my Preparatory Checklist, which was shopping around to find a good, FREE online hosting platform. Then I realised there's an awful lot of background noise in my house (I've learned to tune most of it out, after so long of living in Asia; but I'm right by an intermittently busy road, there's a house under construction just a stone's-throw away, and my neighbours' kids are often quite exuberant... It's A LOT.); so, I probably can't muddle by with the onboard microphone on my decrepit old laptop, I'd have to shell out for a semi-decent mike & headphones set.

So, I think, if this ever happens, it won't be until after the holidays - sometime in January, at the very earliest. And quite possibly never.

And I'm really not sure I want to do it anyway. I am an intensely private person, and I don't like to reveal anything much of my true self online (the name I use here is only an alias; the many names that I use online are all aliases, always). I certainly wouldn't ever want anyone to know what I look like; and knowing what my voice sounds like is only a very small step away from that - to me, it feels similarly invasive, similarly compromising. And I am avowedly anti-narcissistic: I have absolutely no expectation that anyone should enjoy the sound of my voice, nor any desire for people to pay attention to me. (I do this blog and the forum comments primarily because I really enjoy writing [I've often made my living from it], not with any ambitions of becoming a large-scale 'influencer'.) 

I am intrigued by the challenge of trying to get to grips with a new medium of communication. But I confess that it is one about which I know next-to-nothing - which will doubtless be something of a handicap to my early endeavours!

Any advice, encouragement, or discouragement on this plan would be gratefully received! 

And the Lord taketh away...

For the last several years, my beer of choice among the local brews in my part of the world has been this tasty IPA-style offering from the Lao Brewery. (At least, when I'm in the Lao P.D.R. Although this beer can occasionaly be found in the neighbouring countries, it's still only manufactured in relatively small quantities, and doesn't seem to have any established export trade, even within the region.)

One of my biggest frustrations as a fan of Lao IPA has been the fact that it is only available in bottles, which militates against it as an option for home consumption (glass is heavy to carry, a hassle to dispose of 'responsibly', and carries that constant threat of breakage).

But look at this! A few weeks ago, I found some Lao IPA at my local supermarket in cans. Oh, frabjous day!!!

Alas, they appear to have had only ONE CASE of them; and when I'd bought all of those, they didn't replenish their fridge again. The appearance of the long-awaited Lao IPA cans in my life was naught but a taunting phantom, a tantalising glimpose of happiness witheld.  [I could craft an FPL metaphor out of this incident if I wanted to; but, for once, I shall restrain myself.]

I feel sorry for Archie Gemmill

I have a soft spot for Scotland and the Scots. Edinburgh is my favourite city on Earth, and I dream of retiring there one day.

I've always rather liked their national football team too. In my early childhood, England had an unfortunate habit of failing to qualify for the World Cup, so Scotland were the only 'home country' to root for in the tournament. And by the time England did manage to qualify again, in '82, I'd got rather used to following the Scots, and was actually inclined to root for them harder than 'my own team'. It probably also helped that Scotttish football was going through a 'golden age' in the '70s and '80s (the number of 'foreign players' at English clubs was strictly capped, but that rule didn't apply to the 'home countries', so there was a ready conduit for the best Scottish talent to move quickly to top English sides), and so their leading players were all familiar and beloved stars in the English First Division.

Also, my best drinking buddy from college, and one of my principal antagonists in FPL, is a proud Scot, so I always share in his joy, as well as feeling some of my own, when the Scotland football team does well.

And crikey, did they do well at Hampden on Tuesday night - securing a thrilling victory against a technically superior Danish side, to qualify them for the World Cup Finals for the first time in 28 years!! It was one of the most ecstatic football moments I've witnessed in many years. And I was very, very happy for my old friend - and for all other Scottish fans around the world.

But... it has bothered me rather that in so much of the subsequent commentary on the occasion, and in particular on the three remarkable goals which clinched the victory, people have been dubbing this result, or one of the three spectacular goals... The Greatest Moment in Scottish Football History.

Er, NO. Not unless you're a Very Young Person. It was a very great 'moment', certainly; ONE of 'The Greatest of All Time'.

But not The Greatest. Sorry, that's ALWAYS going to be this.,,,  Stocky, diminutive, prematurely middle-aged-looking midfielder Archie Gemmill suddenly channels his inner Brazilian to improvise a swerving run from the edge of the box that leaves three Dutch defenders flat on their arses, and then hammers an exuberant finish into the roof of the net..... to put Scotland 3-1 up against The Netherlands at the World Cup (and they - the Dutch, that is - were the best team in that tournament, the best team in the world at that point; should, by rights, have won the Cup that year!).

That was the single most sublime moment in my football-watching life. And I don't think it will ever be topped.

Dear old Archie (still with us; now 78 years old) is not getting the respect and remembrance he deserves.

People have such short memories today!

[By the by, of the three wondergoals Scotland conjured last Tuesday, I like Kieran Tierney's the best. Overhead kicks and lobs from the half-way line are spectacular rarities, but they're essentially a bit hit-and-hope - they require a substantial element of luck. Tierney looked like he knew his shot was going in three or four paces out from hitting it!]

Another little breather....

 

Yet another international break is upon us. We should really be grateful for a little bit of a rest from the relentless grind of the FPL season,.... and yet, and yet we do tend to fret at the sudden absence of our usual preoccupations and anxieties at the end of the week.

'Withdrawal symptoms'!!

Unlucky Alf revisited

Last week, I noticed one of my regular antagonists had been having a hard time of it in FPL lately, and had suffered a particularly abysmal Gameweek 10. I commented that there didn't actually seem to be anything amiss with his squad, and I hoped that he would have the fortitude to stick by his selections and not rush into a lot of panicky changes.

And look at this - he put out the same team in Gameweek 11, and enjoyed markedly different fortune. That's the way this game goes: some weeks, you're lucky, some weeks, you're not.

 

This time out, despite having again picked the 'wrong' captain, and getting disappointing returns from Calafiori and Szoboszlai (with perfect foresight, he could have had a few more points off his bench),.... he managed nearly twice the global average; that lifted him into the top 22,000 for the week, and probably put him top of most of his mini-leagues. 

That was nearly 11.5 million places higher than his miserable GW10 ranking - surely one of the biggest week-to-week swings ever recorded.

This example is a powerful illustration of the point I always try to stress about Fantasy Football: you have to avoid being too reactive, to resist being swayed by your emotions. When you have a bad week, you have to try to calmly analyse why it's gone badly for you - before you decide to make any changes. Often, there's nothing wrong with your selections at all; you just had a week where everything broke against you.

Even in a pretty good week, you usually have at least 3 or 4 of your starting eleven who will 'blank'; quite often, there may be 5 or 6 who fail to bring you a return. And - Statistics being the Cruel Mistress that she is - that means that you're occasionally going to have a week where almost everyone fails to produce any worthwhile points. It doesn't mean they're bad selections; you just had an unlucky week. Hang tough - and next week will probably be better; maybe a lot better!

Fireworks and baked potatoes....

It is one of the peculiar perversities of the English national character that we choose to 'celebrate' a terrorist who tried to blow up the King and the government (um.... and to overlook the unfortunate fact that the origins of this dark festival were rooted in anti-Catholic paranoia....), but so it is. 

For people who grew up in England, November 5th - Guy Fawkes Day - is probably second only to Christmas in the emotional resonances it conjures from childhood. It is the only day of the year on which we let off fireworks, one of the few in which we may have a barbecue,... and probably the only occasion on which we'll have large outdoor parties at night and build BIG bonfires. The fact that it happens just as the days are getting short and the nights are getting chill, as autumn starts to transition into winter, adds to the special mystique of the event. I haven't actually been to a Bonfire Party for years, but the recollection of them still brings on a swoon of nostalgia.

I think I will try to buy myself some nice big potatoes for baking today, and cook up a pot of chilli con carne to pour over them. I might even brew up some mulled wine...

It is hard to celebrate the traditional holidays of home on the opposite side of globe. But these occasions are mostly about the emotions, the memories - a few little prompts like the smell of baking potatoes are all that's needed to bring on the feeling...

And if there is a Fantasy Football tie-in here, it's probably this: I do like to see myself as a constructive anarchist, an irreverent upsetter of apple-carts, a swashbuckling 'freedom fighter' - striving to blow up the corrupt edifice of FPL fetishism and superstition. Yes, I can find a metaphor anywhere!

Cruel Fate!

As I mentioned yesterday, it's been an exceptionally low-scoring season so far - with Gameweek 10 just past being one of the only ones so far to produce a decent 'Global Average' (remarkably, 4 gameweeks so far have produced average scores in the low 40s!).

It's also been just a particularly weird season - with none of the usually most fancied players (apart from Haaland) among the forwards or attacking midfielders yet producing very much, and an unusually large number of huge hauls from complete randoms almost every week, with defenders and defensive midfielders strangely being among the most regular goalscorers so far. And on top of that, few teams have yet produced any consistent form: title hopefuls Liverpool and Manchester City have been quite poor so far, leaving Arsenal starting to look set to win the crown only by default - possibly smashing all known records for the number of clean sheets, but perhaps not scoring that many goals either.

It is, in fact the oddest season in FPL that I can remember - utterly, maddeningly unpredictable.

Amid so many bizarre and unusual events, the impact of LUCK is probably even greater than usual. And this latest - reasonably 'good' for most people - gameweek is a prime example of that.

People who bet the captaincy on Haaland this past week were richly rewarded (some even hazarded their Triple Captaincy on it, though that really wasn't 'smart'); anyone who didn't was harshly penalised. But really, why would you fancy Haaland to have an especially big game against Bournemouth, one of the best defences in the league?? Fancying other options - particularly one of the 'forward-in-disguise' midfielders like Saka or Mbeumo, or perhaps Newcastle's recently sharp-looking Jacob Murphy - with this week's fixtures made perfect sense. Similarly, it was perfectly reasonable to choose Woltemade rather than Mateta on recent form (though the Palace forward has started banging in some nice goals lately, his chance-conversion rate is still shockingly poor); but the big German was oddly out-of-sorts this week (possibly struggling with injury or illness?) and was withdrawn at half-time, while Mateta did again come up with a goal. And it's perfectly reasonable to have taken another Arsenal defender instead of Gabriel (Timber and Calafiori regularly look more likely to pick up goals or assists; it just hasn't quite been happening for them in recent games...); but the big Brazilian continued his absurdly hot streak (surely unsustainable much longer???) by coming up with yet another assist.... on the one occasion when Burnley forgot how to defend a corner.

Here's a guy I found in one of my mini-leagues - a pretty smart player, I think: usually runs me fairly close,... sometimes beats me! He's having a particularly rotten time of it just lately. And in this Gameweek - oh, my good lord, the poor chap somehow found himself down in the bottom 10% for the week??!! Yet there really isn't that much wrong with this team; it was just one of those weeks where almost everyone - especially his captain choice - somehow failed to come through for him. It can happen to any of us!

Unlucky Alf - one of the week's worst performances

Kudus has been disappointing for a while; but perhaps there have been other priorities to fix in the team in recent weeks. And it might be 'bold' to stick with any Liverpool players through their recent rough patch; but Szoboszlai has actually looked the best of them. Tarkowski has regularly been a monster on the 'defensive contributions', and until recently was earning a fair few clean sheets as well. If you'd gone for Calafiori (or Timber) early in the season, it would be reasonable enough to stick with them, rather than joining the late rush for Gabriel (who isn't likely to maintain his recent ridiculously high rate of returns for an extended spell). Thiago and/or Woltemade might prove to be better picks than Mateta over the coming weeks. He's got a pretty decent bench too.

I hope he stays strong, and doesn't get panicked into making a lot of changes (as most FPL managers do, when they have a really awful week like this). It really was just rank bad luck for him this week. The team, the squad is basically pretty sound. There is a strong - almost overwhelming - case for getting Gabriel in as a second Arsenal defender (though he's getting rather expensive now; and should be about due for a 'slump' in productivity!). Kudus and maybe Szoboszlai probably need to go; perhaps Saka too, if he doesn't start producing soon. But this is actually a very solid squad: it didn't 'deserve' to take such a battering from the Fantasy Gods this week! It is, alas, a notoriously cruel game; a cruel, cruel, cruel game.

[Sure enough, the following week he completely turned things around, achieving a weekly rank near the top 20,000. This is actually a really good squad. But even a really good squad can sometimes have a really awful week. The important thing, when something like that happens, is to take the misfortune calmly - and not let yourself be rushed into panicky, unnecessary changes.]

Some ('non-Zen') WISE WORDS on our Internet culture

 

"If you need every story in your feed to be 'My team wins' and 'Here's why my side is the good one', you're WEAK - and deliberately keeping yourself ignorant."

Bill Maher

Veteran comedian/satirist/social commentator Bill Maher's Friday night political discussion show on HBO, Real Time, is one of my most regular Youtube fixes - particularly his 'New Rule' segment, the more 'serious' monologue with which he regularly concludes the show. 

He's often now decried by elements of 'The Left' in America as a 'sell-out' - because he's willing to engage with right-wing figureheads and talking-points on the show, and to crticise some of the grosser excesses of 'woke-ism' & co. But humour is essentially apolitical: it makes fun of whatever is most ripe to be made fun of. In essence, he is still very obviously the same anarchic hippie pot-lover he's always been. (So, yes, very largely a man after my own heart....)

His most recent 'New Rule' featured the devastating comment above on the 'bubble' mentality that online life now seems to create and perpetuate (and went on to suggest some ways in which we might seek to confound The Almighty Algorithm and break out of our 'bubbles' a little; the link embedded above should take you to the mid-point of his homily, where the key quotation I've copied here occurs; the whole piece is worth a watch).

I feel this is a point which has particular relevance to the realm of Fantasy Premier League. I am  widely reviled on most of the online forums about our Fantasy game that I contribute to - purely because I insist on repeatedly making points that many people find uncomfortable. - relentlessly questioning usually unquestioned 'truths'.  You know, things like: bonus chips do not automatically work better in Double Gameweeks;... a midfielder is usually a better captain/Triple Captain pick than a forward....; and 'effective ownership' has nothing to do with differential points advantage. That kind of thing.

Try to get used to this, people: DISCOMFORT is good for you, DISCOMFORT is an evolutionary stimulus.

You might disagree with me; you might not understand me; I might be wrong - but being willing to engage with ideas that you find challenging helps to grow your brain!

[I know my weekly 'A Little Bit of Zen' bon mots are often not very Buddhist in nature at all (mostly more Stoic or Daoist, or just sad-truth-wrapped-in-a-joke...); but I felt these observations really fell rather outside even the very loose parameters of that series.]

Takin' it easy.....

These international breaks may seem irritating to some, interrupting what soon become cosy, familar routines in our FPL life. But we should rather be luxuriating in the rare joy of TIME OFF.

Here's one of my favourite-ever celebrations of goofing off, Louis Armstrong and Gary Crosby (a son of the great Bing, with a very similar vocal style) in a 1950s recording of the Johnny Mercer/Hoagy Carmichael song Lazy Bones.

What's DIFFERENT this year?

 Or..... The Rise of the Defenders!!

Yes, the most striking oddity of this season so far in FPL is the predominance of defenders at the top of the player rankings at the moment.

Apart from Haaland, way out in front, Joao Pedro is the only other forward just barely scraping into the Top 15, while the rest of that list is filled out at the lower end by 3 defensive midfielders and a couple of goalkeepers (which is also very odd). And we find 6 of the first 9 spots are filled by defenders, who've all managed to average 6 points per game or better.

Folks on the FPL forums are getting tempted to say that it must be down to the new 'defensive points' this season. But in fact, those high-performing defenders have mostly not done exceptionally well on this new metric (no better than a lot of others, anyway); clean sheets, bonus points, and attacking contributions are still what's really making the difference. Most of the top-ranked defenders are conspicuous for having scored a goal (or 2!) already.

[There's a similar thing going on with the defensive midfielders. People say 'defensive points' are what's elevating them to such unaccustomed heights. But they've all been scoring goals as well this year! Yes, we know there are a few, like Enzo Fernandez, Bruno Guimaraes, John McGinn, and Declan Rice, who like to get forward occasionally and do often pick up 4 or 5 goals or so over a season.... But this year, we have Ryan Gravenberch already having claimed a couple, Martin Zubimendi getting a brace in one game, and Moises Caicedo now having racked up 3 goals - a strike-rate a forward would be pretty happy with, so early in the season. These are players who are very infrequent goalscorers, not usually more than 1 or 2 per season. So, this certainly looks like a very weird statistical blip.

Aha - a few days later my man Adam Clery produced a short video on this. He thinks it's probably a deliberate policy to try to exploit the fact that central defensive midfield players are usually somewhat overlooked in marking systems and can thus sometimes push forward without anyone picking them up. That does seem very plausible; although you'd think that should be a relatively easy tactical problem to fix - and thus these goals from central midfielders should be only a transient phenomenon, as defences adapt to snuff it out.]

Is there any particular reason why we've seen so many defenders (20 of them!) scoring goals this season?

Well, I suspect that more and more teams are now following Arsenal's example, and prioritising set-piece plays to try to gain the advantage in tight games. (Heck, we've even seen the long overdue reappearance of the long throw!! welcome back - we've missed you!!)

However, an awful lot of these goals have come from open play. So, perhaps there is also an element of pushing defenders up into the attack more often, when sides are enjoying sustained possession in the final third. Pep seems to have kicked off a fashion for playing one or other (or occasionally even both) of the full-backs in an advanced role - but now supporting, or even joining the front-line in more central areas, rather than hugging the touchline and overlapping the wide attacker in the more traditional fashion.

But it is still very early in the season, so this goals-from-defenders 'trend' might not be significant at all - just a fleeting statistical aberration. We'll need another month or so at least before we can really start to form a clear opinion on this. And I suspect that over that time, the strength of this new phenomenon will at least diminish somewhat.

Also, it should be noted that this unusually strong performance from a lot of defenders is only so conspicuous because there have not so far been any big contributions from any other positions (only the inevitable Erling Haaland among the forwards, only Antoine Semenyo and Jaidon Anthony among the attacking midfielders). With DeBruyne, Son, and Luis Diaz transferring overseas this year, Bowen reclassified as a forward (and struggling in a disastrous West Ham team anyway), Salah marginalized in a Liverpool going through an awkward reinvention phase, Maddison ruled out for the season, Saka and Palmer also having injury problems early on (Marmoush and Cherki and Foden too), and Wirtz, Eze, Mbeumo and Cunha still finding their feet at their new clubs,.... the 'usual suspects' among the attacking midfielders have been ABSENT so far this season. But that will change - soon.

There has, so far, often been a good case for starting 4 - or occasionally, perhaps, even 5! - defenders. But that is a freakish circumstance. And that too will surely soon change.

The next 8 or 10 games, I'm fairly sure, will see The Return of the Midfielders!

A little bit of Zen (61)

 

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Albert Einstein

I'm inclined to think that the great man's playful epigram here is founded on somewhat of a false distinction. The intuitive mind is perfectly rational: it's just supercharged - by not having the ego constantly stomping all over it.

This is why the notion of trusting your gut is not mere idle superstition; it's almost invariably far superior to pondersously over-thinking a problem.

Time for the CRYSTAL BALL...

 

I usually refrain from making firm predictions (because you look foolish if they turn out to be wrong!). And I'm particularly wary of venturing any opinions about the likely course of the League season when it's barely begun. We won't really have a firm idea of anyone's form for the early part of the season - team, or individual - for at least a few more weeks yet. Some of the big new signings may take a good while to find their feet. Nottingham Forest are reeling from an abrupt change of manager; and a few other clubs might be facing similar disruption soon (though, hopefully, that should be a positive for them, after the awkward transition phase). 

However, if you delay too long in entering into these traditional early-season prognostications, people accuse you of being too cautious, or of making things easier for yourself by waiting on everyone's early performances. Guessing everyone's league position come the end of the season is a bit of a mug's game; but I'll give it a go.

The title looks to me like a three-way race between Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea. Sorry, Pep; I think City's problems are too systemic for you to find a reliable cure; although you have so many top-class players that you're bound to be able to hang on in the upper reaches of the table, and might often challenge the top three - nevertheless, I don't think you'll quite be there at season's end. The one person who might cause me to revise that estimation is Phil Foden - if he were to have another season like that of two years ago. But I fear that Pep has broken him, and we might never see such a sustained run of brilliance, or even a sustained run of starts from him again.

An Arsenal fan on a Facebook forum a week or two back was crowing about the club's current squad, and was rash enough to ask, "Who can stop us this season?"  I immediately replied, "Arteta." While he is very tactically astute in many ways, he strikes me as excessively cautious in his general approach - and that tends to stifle some of the creativity out of a lot of his best players, and makes the side often somewhat predictable in its attacking play. Yes, they've got a decent forward now; but I don't think he's anywhere near as good as Isak or Joao Pedro - and Arsenal's problems run deeper than that anyway. I fancy them to do no better than 3rd (and possibly even a place or two lower).

However, I'm not entirely convinced about this transitional Liverpool team either: so far, they're looking a lot more vulnerable at the back, and a lot less fluent in attack. They have so many good players - and such a daunting habit of clawing out results late on in the game, even when they haven't played all that well - that I think they'll certainly be fairly dominant again; but maybe not quite as formidable as last year; there might be just enough of a vulnerability to allow someone else to slip ahead of them. So, I'll put Liverpool in 2nd place.

Now, I admit this is highly speculative - perhaps hopeful (I'd like to see a changing-of-the-guard: the top of the table has been monopolised by City and Liverpool for too long now) - of me, and I'm not very confident in this prediction; but I fancy Chelsea to sneak the title this year. I've always felt that a robust central midfield is a necessary foundation for any great team, and while Gravenberch and Zubimendi are outstanding players (and Rodri too, of course), I feel that Caicedo is next-level as a combative pivot player; and he's got some exceptionally strong back-up in Andrey Santos and Romeo Lavia. I think Cole Palmer could be a crucial difference-maker this year as well; again, for me, a much more dangerous playmaker than Wirtz, Szoboszlai or Odegaard. And Joao Pedro is shaping up to be at least nearly as dangerous in attack as Isak or Salah, and probably far better than Gyokeres. The Brazilian wunderkind Estevao is also showing hints that he might be able to have a very big impact this season. Now, I have reservations about some other aspects of the Chelsea team, and their overall squad depth (paradoxical, perhaps, as they have been so often mocked for carrying such a bloated player roster in the last few years; but they've had to let a lot of their better back-ups go now, and, outside of their ideal starting eleven, I'm not sure that they have that much strength in depth: Palmer and Joao Pedro, anyway, are irreplaceable). They've also been worryingly erratic in their form over the past year. If they can rediscover and sustain the kind of fluency and self-belief that carried them to an imperious success in the Club World Cup this summer, they can beat anyone. But will they??  Well, I'm hoping so...

I think Thomas Frank's rejuvenated Spurs and - I hope - Newcastle (another team I have a soft spot for; although Isak's departure is obviously a body-blow, and lack of squad depth could become a big issue for them with the additional challenge of Champions League football again this year) could be vying with Manchester City as the best of the rest. I would like to think that they might be capable of scrabbling above City, and perhaps even dislodging Arsenal from 3rd - but, realistically, 5th and 6th is probably the best they can do.

Next up, the teams that should have the quality and resilience to finish fairly comfortably top half, but can probably only reach the fringes of European qualification: Bournemouth, Everton, Forest, and Crystal Palace - in that order. Palace have one of the best defences in the League, but don't have a lot of squad depth, and I fear they may struggle to produce much attacking threat now that they've lost Eze. Everton, similarly, should thrive because of the strength of their defence, but also lack squad depth; and although Grealish and Ndiaye are so far looking like they could be two of the players of the season, I think they'd need a bit more quality up front to do any better than 7th or 8th (and they only have a chance of getting that high because so many other clubs look likely to suffer a bit of a drop-off this season). Bournemouth look the strongest of these mid-level teams to me at the moment, because they have a wealth of attacking options as well as a decent defence, and Andoni Iraola impresses me as one of the shrewdest and most effective of the league's coaches. It pains me to put Forest so low; and the reason I do so is that I worry they didn't strengthen their squad quite enough over the summer, rather than that I think Postecoglou will repeat his Spurs disaster with them. There is a lot of uncertainty about how well they'll fare, after the loss of an inspirational manager who'd brought them so much success, and having to undergo a transition to a very different tactical system (with some players, like Milenkovic and Wood, two of their biggest stars last season, likely to have to be sacrificed to that system); but ultimately they have a very strong defence and keeper, an excellent central pivot pair, and some outstanding creativity from Gibbs-White, Hudson-Odoi, and Ndoye - so, I don't see them finishing too much lower than last year.

Then we have a litle cluster who are probably too good to be in any serious danger of relegation, but too inconsistent to get into a very competitive top half. And, at the moment, I'd put Manchester United in that group - and probably at the bottom of it. I think the lack of balance in the squad (and still a lack of depth: they have a fair bit of cover at the back, but no obvious stand-ins for the likes of Sesko, Mbeumo, or Fernandes) and the complete absence of a worthwhile central midfield unit, dooms them to another difficult season, even if they should soon ditch the obviously floundering Ruben Amorim. A prompt and strong change of manager could possibly drag them back up into European contention, and certainly to around mid-table; but I fear that if they persist with Amorim, they could have another season just as grim as last time and often be hovering dangerously near the relegation zone.

I'd put Wolves as the best of this upper bottom-half group - somewhat bold, perhaps, given what a dismal sttart they've had; but I have faith in Vitor Pereira as a manager, and I think they've got a lot of good players (I fancy Jhon Arias to catch fire soon), and a good overall balance in their squad. Also, they've got a very encouraging run of fixtures coming up, and so could get themselves well out of trouble within the next month or so. How long they're without star striker Jorgen Strand Larsen could be a critical factor, though, in how their season will develop. Brentford and Brighton, I think, will continue to be sides that cause problems for a lot of opponents with their strong attacking play, but will leak too many goals to push for the top half of the table.

Our three promoted sides have started quite brightly, and look a lot less awful than their predecessors in the last few seasons. But I fear they still don't have the overall quality to stay up - unless one or more of the established clubs does them a favour by having a really serious meltdown; and while there are a few candidates for such a disaster in the opening month of the season, I imagine most if not all will be able to turn things around to some extent. Leeds, I think, look much the weakest of the trio (relying on Calvert-Lewin for goals - not good), and can probably be written off fairly soon. There's not much to choose between Burnley and Sunderland, but Sunderland have impressed me as having a balance of strengths throughout the team; and again, the solidity that their classy veteran Granit Xhaka brings to central midfield might ultimately be decisive in their favour; they, I think, will be the one new club to stay up... if anyone does.

The clubs who, at the moment, look like they might make way for a promoted survivor are Fulham and Aston Villa - who have both punched massively above their weight in recent seasons, but now seem to have run badly out of steam. Villa in particular have had one of the worst starts to a season I can remember from any established club in a long ime;  they don't have the financial resources to attract many new players, and have lost a number who were very valuable to them (Douglas Luiz, Jhon Duran, Leon Bailey); and opponents seem to have sussed out Emery's style of play and found ways to neutralize it. They would currently be my favourites to allow Sunderland (or Burnley) to stay up,... were it not for West Ham. And West Ham have probably the weakest squad of any of the established teams (if you took away Bowen, Wilson, and Paqueta, you wouldn't fancy them to do very well in the Championship), as well as a deeply inadequate coach. As with Amorim at United, I think there could be a dramatic upturn in their performances if they change the manager promptly. But will that happen? If it doesn't, I might have an early bet on them being relegated.

So, my expected end-of-season running-order (for now, at least; nobody's going to be able to make many calls correctly this early in the season - I reserve the right to revise most of these views!) looks like this:

A few bold and quirky choices in there, I admit.

How many of these predicted rankings will prove to be somewhere near accurate?? I'll check back in May to review my results.

[Well, damn - I regret some of these calls already, after the Gameweek 5 matches! Chelsea have a potentially disastrous weakness between the sticks (and I don't think their current back-up keeper Jorgensen is good enough to deputise for any length of time), and don't have the resilience to bounce back from major set-backs; and, without Palmer, they are toothless. If Palmer -  and Joao Pedro - can stay fit and in-form all season, and Sanchez doesn't suffer too many more aberrations, they could still get themselves sort of in the the title scrap. But that's now looking doubtful; and I fear they've squandered too many points already to be likely winners. City, on the other hand, are starting to impress me as maybe being capable of pushing Liverpool. Arsenal still don't.... And if Liverpool keep scraping wins that they don't really deserve, they might prove to be unstoppable.

Wolves falling down at Leeds was the biggest shock of the weekend for me. I had expected them to get at least a draw, and probably win comfortably. This was a bit of a freak result, and it hasn't done anything to shift my opinion that Leeds are probably the weakest of this year's promoted sides. But Wolves are now so far adrift at the bottom of the table that simply fighting their way out of the relegation battle is a huge challenge, and a mid-table finish is already starting to look all but impossible. A rather fortuitous win for Manchester United hasn't moved the needle in their favour; possibly the reverse, as it might buy Amorim some more time - which I'm sure will ultimately be detrimental. Brentford are looking worryingly rocky in defence, and there's still no sign of a revival from Villa. The beneficiary of all of that doom-and-gloom will probably be Fulham, who look like they could do a fair bit better than I initially suggested.

I'll try to review this selection perhaps every three months or so, to see how things are changing as the season progresses.]

A helpful trick for picking your Captain

A further, playful follow-up to this morning's post about the dreaded Captaincy conundrum...

As I noted there, you should usually have at least 5 or 6 decent Captaincy candidates to choose from (if your squad's any good!), and - Fate and Luck being what they are - you'll probably quite rarely land on the best one. And you can wear a lot of years off your life fretting about a choice that is essentially impossible.

So, I quite often say to people online that if you're really finding it hard to choose, you should try writing the names of your candidates on Post-It notes, sticking them on a dartboard, and then throwing darts with your eyes closed until you hit one of them. It works as well as anything else.

Now, true, I usually say this somewhat flippantly. But there is a certain magic in this technique. And it is this: it puts you in touch with your intuition, it reveals to you a decision, a preference that had already formed in your subconscious mind, but which you hadn't been aware of (or were fearful to acknowledge).

Much as with a coin-flip, where if the coin lands on the choice you don't really want, you suddenly find yourself saying, "Well, I should do best-of-three on this....!", so too with this expanded 'random decision-making process', you'll immediately recognise if you don't fancy the selection your wayward dart has made for you.... and that will lead you towards recognising the choice that your 'gut' wants you to make.

And for things like this, the 'intuition' is usually much better at evaluating the mutliple variables and making a shrewd selection than the conscious mind is - at least if your intuition is well trained by a lifetime of close watching of football. (See Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink' for some interesting case studies on the power of 'spontaneous decision-making'.)

But one final WARNING:  If you ever think your Captaincy Conundrum is down to a binary choice (as many, many folks on the forums often seem to do) - you're almost certainly wrong. (Or you have a very, very poor team!)

The rise of THE IDIOCRACY

 

I came upon this fascinating audio-essay the other week, from a Youtube channel called Philosophical Effect. (The narration sounds worryingly as though it might be AI-generated - just rather flat and generic in tone, although at least missing the worst of the usual giveaways like clunking pauses, misplaced emphases, and bizarre mispronunciations.  And I think the text is too sophisticated for even the latest LLM's best effort. Also,.... I don't think AI would want to be warning us about this....!) [Unfortunately, this video seems to have been pulled after a few months. I can't see that there were any likely copyright claims against it; but I fear it might have been a bit too confrontational, and its author might have become disheartened at often vitriolic responses to it - I hope not. Then again, maybe it was just an AI experiment....  I am keeping an eye out for it to reappear one day.]

Like most of the world these days, I spend far too much of my time online (though at least I refuse to succumb to the supposed allure of the 'smartphone'). And that is an increasingly depressing environment. In particular, the FPL forums where I loaf about in many of my off hours are often aggressively narrow-minded, positively belligerent and spiteful towards anyone who dares to challenge any of the generally accepted unwisdoms surrounding the game (yes, that would be me: I found Socrates's gadfly metaphor dangerously inspiring in my childhood).

The above examination of why people naturally find critical thinking so difficult and unpleasant reminded me of this video I found some years ago on the excellent science education channel, Veritasium, about the concept of 'cognitive ease' - how we quickly come to feel such comfort in the familiar that we fiercely resent anything that threatens to disturb this comfort, anything that challenges our preconceived notions, our habitual channels of thought.

As presenter Derek Muller observes at the end here (and isn't this the problem with the FPL forums, and with the online world in general?!): "The more often you hear something, the more it feels like it's true."

That is certainly a prevalent phenomenon in the world of the FPL forums. We see on these webpages so many examples of precepts that are passionately and unquestioningly adopted by FPL managers in their masses, treated as items of Holy Writ: that you always get a better return for your Triple Captain chip in a Double Gameweek, that certain super-premium players like Haaland or Salah are inescapable 'must-have' picks, and that it is impossible to have a successful team without the highest-scoring individual players, that you don't need to spend any money on your Bench, that forwards always make the best captaincy choice, and that it's usually better to play a third forward than a fifth midfielder, or that playing your Bench Boost chip in the opening Gameweek is a worthwhile strategy. All of these propositions are, of course, utterly preposterous, if you give them a moment's thought. But people just refuse to do that; and are furiously resentful of anyone who does.

Which leads me, finally, to this, from the channel Philosophy Coded (yes, I do listen to and read a lot of philosophy; it was an area of study of mine in my younger life, and I have maintained an interest in it ever since), The celebrated German writer and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred at the end of WWII for his resistance to the Nazis, elaborated a devastating thesis on the power and the danger of wilful mass ignorance, noting despondently that: "Against stupidity, we are defenceless."

As this video says: "When someone shares misinformation that supports their worldview, they are participating in a system that rewards intellectual shortcuts over careful analysis. The algorithm feeds them more of the same, creating 'echo chambers' that act like intellectual quicksand."

And:  "In a world that rewards confident ignorance over humble uncertainty, admitting gaps in your knowledge becomes a radical act."

Maybe I should stay away from those forums....  You can't open a closed mind. But hanging out too long among closed minds may tend to close your own as well....

'Buying success' is the end of football...

The phenomenon in the modern game that saddens me most is the increasing tendency from just about all managers nowadays to seek to solve problems and improve their team's performances simply by buying new players, to 'spend their way out of trouble'.

Partly, of course, this has been happening because, since the advent of pay-per-view television, the game has become awash with more money than it knows what to do with. And also, in the past couple of decades, statistical analysis has been given more and more weight, so that managers now get tempted to think that the 'numbers' reveal very slight and subtle benefits that might be derived from one player rather than another. And hence, for example, if you're worried that you're conceding a few too many goals because your left full-back occasionally gets done by a pacey winger, you could 'fix' that flaw by dropping 50 million euros on a quicker full-back, or one who's a bit better against someone taking him on one-to-one.

But of course, there are other things you could do. You could give your vulnerable full-back some specific coaching on dealing better with these dangerous one-on-ones; or you could remember to hold him in a deeper position when he's up against a quick opponent, and/or assign another player to give him back-up on that marking assignment. There is an immediate tactical or coaching 'solution' to the issue, and it might work out better than buying an expensive new player for the role.

When the supposed 'statistical advantage' is so slight, and based on such a flimsy sample size - perhaps just a handful of incidents in a handful of games, each of which may have been in some way untypical, anyway - it may easily prove to be illusory. Trying to deal wtih the problem now, with your available resources, surely makes more sense than taking a punt on trying to fit a completely new peg into this awkwardly shaped tactical hole. Your new boy might indeed be a speed-demon and adept at nicking the ball off a crafty dribbler - but what about his crossing, his tackling, his positional sense, his workrate, his professionalism, his mental toughness, his competitive mentality? Some of the things that are going to make the biggest difference to your team dynamic are essentially 'intangibles' - matters of personality and character rather than just skill and athleticism - and the stats aren't going to be of any help to you there. Also, of course, it's going to take a while for anyone new to get up to speed on your tactical approach and to bond with his new teammates. Even if he is - in theory - much, much better than the player he's displacing,... in all probability, he won't be for at least a couple of months.

But, for me, the risk of overestimating a new player, being misled by statistics as to his overall abilities or just not anticipating how he would fit into your team - or fail to - for other reasons beyond his core 'skill profile', is less important than the cost of constantly discarding players for some supposed minor shortcoming, even after they've made some outstanding contributions to your club, perhaps over a number of years. When you suddenly ditch players who've played well for you - to replace them with someone supposedly slightly better - you risk damaging the spirit in the dressing-room and the whole ethos of the club. All players start to feel less secure in their tenure - and hence less loyal to the manager and the club, and perhaps they might thus also become a little less sharp in their competitiveness. Fans, too, are often shocked and disappointed to see a popular player suddenly depart. And that adds unwelcome extra pressure on his successor to prove himself to a sceptical fanbase. 

For younger players, this kind of snub can be especially dispiriting - and perhaps a fatal setback to their career development. And it may be particularly short-sighted of the clubs to mistreat their rising stars like this, because if they continue to give these players regular minutes, big game experience, show trust in them by giving them key responsibilities on the pitch, and perhaps by sticking with them through a spell of shakey form - they can become hugely better players, and so command a much higher transfer fee in a year or two's time. And if they've come up through your Academy system, or were purchased at a young age for a fairly low price, that's almost all pure profit; one or two nice deals like that can put your PSR worries to bed for a good long while. (Perhaps I have an unduly romantic notion of how much showing trust in a player can boost their confidence and ability? It is possible, I suppose, that I am a little too much influenced by a management sim I played a lot in the early Noughties, in which this was the big secret of the game: if you gave players a run of regular starts, in games where they'd mostly win, and including some high-profile fixtures,.... their self-belief apparently soared; and with that, their overall consistency and dependability as well as their ratings on key playing attributes would soar very quickly as well. Reserves or youth team players could grow into formidable assets within a couple of months, and become potential international stars within a year or two. The effect may not be quite so dramatic in real life - but I'm sure it exists.)

If a player has chosen to leave, or is obviously not adequate to his role at the top level, then fair enough: we accept the necessity of the change, and we're all eager to see how the new man will do. But most of the time these days, this does not seem to be the case; a player who was at least perfectly adequate, if not pretty good in his role, suddenly gets canned for a new signing - who is often not an obvious improvement. And a key thing that this hard-nosed approach to trying to buy marginal advantages (which sometimes fail to materialize anyway!) overlooks is that a football club is not just about football; it's about continuity and community, it's about the bond that develops between players, staff, and fans - over an extended period of time (even expanding over generations into the distant past; it'a about history). People want to see players grow and change over time, they want to see promising youngsters stay at their club and develop a mature career there. They don't really want to see a revolving door of 'big names' trotting through their club for a year - or two or three - before looking for a bigger move.

This might seem a quaintly 'old-fashioned' view now, I fear. Yes, I did grow up in the era of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor. And their distinctive genius lay in being able to take a bunch of apparent 'journeymen' players and find a balance in the team that tapped into unsuspected synergies. Individually, very few of their players looked like world-beaters, especially in the earlier days at Derby and Forest; but collectively their teams always managed to be far stronger than the sum of their component parts would suggest was possible. I worry that this knack - one of the great arts of football management - has now been largely lost. Most modern managers, rather than thinking, "How can I get the best out of these players?" seem to ask instead, "Which of these players can I change for someone else?" (Of course, Brian and Peter weren't spoiled by that 'luxury': in their day money was tight, and most clubs rarely made more than two or three transfers per year.)

Now, every season, we seem to see multiple examples of this change for change's sake, changes just because we can afford it. I am a huge fan of Cody Gakpo (he's been a mainstay of my international Fantasy teams in the last few tournaments); but was he really a necessary purchase for Liverpool? Is he really better than Luis Diaz? Well, it's invidious and futile to make direct comparisons between great players; they each have unique attributes, different strengths. But I think Diaz's tireless enthusiasm, his workrate in the press, and his willingness to hold the width when needed, rather than always look to drift into his preferred inside-forward space, meant that he was absolutely tailor-made for Klopp's Liverpool; and Slot's Liverpool have not so far been all that different in their style of attack. But they let Diaz go? I was very sad to see that. And now there's a danger that Gakpo himself might get forced back to the sidelines by the arrival of Ekitike and Isak...

I am a huge fan of Bryan Mbeumo and Mateus Cunha as well. But Manchester United really didn't need them. Amad Diallo and Bruno Fernandes are tailor-made for Ruben Amorim's 'joint 10s' roles, and had started to look very impressive in them last season. Admittedly, Mbeumo and Cunha could also play as a central forward - although neither of them really likes that, they both prefer to start out wide and drift into the inside-forward area (which is not really what the Amorim system is looking for....). Again, this seemed to be a case of just blindly throwing money at a 'problem', hoping that bringing in new super-talented players, glamorous big-name signings would be a magic cure-all for a broken tactical system.

Is Jeremie Frimpong a better right-back than Conor Bradley? NO - don't make me laugh. He's presumably been bought primarily for his attacking potential as a wing-back; but damn, Bradley isn't bad in the final third either. There might be some doubts about the young Irishman's experience or injury-proneness, but he looks plenty good enough to hold down the 'No. 1' spot in that position, and they could have looked for a back-up to him,... rather than relegating him to occasional-rotation limbo for however many more years.

Is Riccardo Calafiori better than Myles Lewis-Skelly? Well, maybe; but not by much. And surely the homegrown youngster deserves the chance to develop further, after making such an impressive debut last season? Admittedly, Calafiori was probably bought before Lewis-Skelly's potential was recognised, and when all their other left-backs seemed to be perpetually injured. But most Arsenal fans I know feel the start ought to be Myles's to lose, after last season, and that the Italian should be the back-up. Jakub Kiwior was quite hard done-by too; no, he's not a great player, but he had done a perfectly decent job of filling in whenever needed in both central defence and at left-back - he might not be stellar, but he was plenty good enough.

Is Rayan Ait-Nouri a better left-back than Nico O'Reilly? Well, yes - probably. But is he better enough to make a big difference? That I'm not so sure about. And like Lewis-Skelly, surely O'Reilly did well enough last season to deserve further opportunities in the role this year? I know a lot of City fans feel that way.

Is Gianluigi Donnarumma better than Stefan Ortega or Jamie Trafford? Well, yes, I suppose so - he's widely regarded as the best goalkeeper in the world. But is he so far their superior that he's bound to make a substantial difference to City's prospects in the Premier League? I don't think so. And it's the treatment of Stefan Ortega that really bothers me. The guy has waited patiently for his chance to be promoted to first choice for the last three years, and has been superb whenever he has been called upon. Now, when Ederson wants to leave, he suddenly suffers in rapid succession the double insult of first being replaced by a kid who still has a lot of rough edges on his game, and then by a 'big name' from the continent - who maybe isn't that much better than him. Loyalty matters. Loyalty matters ethically; but it also pays practical dividends. Fans want and expect to see loyalty to their club being recognised and rewarded. Players expect that too; and they respond very powerfully to it. If Ortega had been elevated to the starting place he deserved this season, he would have been the most emotionally engaged keeper in the league - super-passionate, super-revved-up for every single game. That additional level of motivation is worth far more than any slight marginal advantage in a few areas of the game that statistics may purport to reveal. And I wouldn't want to support a club or a manager who treated its players so direspectfully.

These days, it seems, everybody's playing 'Fantasy Football' - just splashing cash on the most eye-catching transfer options, the most glamorous names. But this 'Galacticos' approach rarely works out in practice. You don't need all the 'best' players to create a successful football team; you need the players who will work best together. And the stats still can't show you that.