A little bit of Zen (119)

“You have to stick within your circle of competence. You have to know what you understand and what you don’t understand. It’s not terribly important how big the circle is. But it is terribly important that you know where the perimeter is.”

Charlie Munger

Munger, long-time friend and business partner of the legendary investor Warren Buffett, died a few years ago, just shy of his 100th birthday. Although he kept a rather lower public profile than his illustrious peer, he did become well-known in business circles for his pithy wisdom, such as the above. He produced a particularly useful breakdown of the 25 most common and dangerous human cognitive biases, originally a lecture which later became formalised into an essay he titled The Psychology of Human Misjudgement.  (If you read one thing this year to help you with your FPL endeavours, it should be this!)

He also collated his witty insights into a book, Poor Charlie's Almanack, which is a cracking read.

Have a go!

Conor McAinsh's Football Meta channel did this interesting piece last week on the increasing trend for taking shots from outside the box. (He concentrates particularly on the strong upward blip in the numbers in the early part of this season, but it feels to me like we were starting to see it last season as well, and certainly in the World Cup. [He does mention that the percentage of the tournament's goals coming from long-distance shots was twice as high this summer as in the Qatar tournament.])

He suggests that it appears to be essentially a response to the increasing prevalence of the low-block (shooting from outside the box may be the only way to pierce a compact defence) and also probably a consequence of ever more vigorous high pressing (high turnovers may briefly encounter enticing gaps to take a shot, and/or to shoot through, as players back-pedal to recover their defensive formation after losing the ball in their own back third).

He also notes that the phenomenon is not quite universal (a few leading teams actually seem to be seeing a downturn in their long-range shooting: Arsenal are currently finding it difficult to manufacture scoring chances in any area of the pitch, and Manchester City, naturally enough, prefer to concentrate on trying to create chances in the box for Haaland), and there's also a high variance in the success rate different teams have been achieving with the tactic (some teams seem to have been shooting from distance in desperation, and have not been getting anything out of it [Manchester United and Spurs come to mind!], while others [notably Brighton and Villa] have been making a successful speciality out of it so far). It's also worth keeping in mind that the total number of successful shots-from-distance is still relatively small, and we're still very early in the season - so, the current figures might well be distorted by statistical anomaly.

Although Conor doesn't touch on this, I suspect that there's a potential for strong secondary opportunities from long-range shots, which may ultimately produce more goals than the shots directly. Fiercely hit shots from a long way out are difficult for the goalkeeper to hold or may quite often come back off the woodwork - hence potentially creating moments of chaos in the penalty box when the ball rebounds unpredictably in a dangerous area. This, however, is the kind of thing that stats often fail to track (or that you have to dig very deep to find any useful data on...).

I think this issue also raises a problem with xG statistics. It seems probable that because of the greater focus on attempting shots from outside the box now, all teams will ultimately get better at them (and the most effective teams in this approach are better at them already), and their success rate will improve substantially. And I'm not convinced that shots from distance have ever deserved the niggardly xG ratings of between 0.1 and 0.01 that they have typically been assigned. But... does this mean that xG algorithms will be adjusted, to take account of this shifting reality? And if so, when? It's a bit of a Catch-22 for the stats companies, because their data needs to have a consistency of methodology behind it to give it cross-compatibility with previous seasons; but changes surely have to be made from time to time, otherwise metrics like 'expected goals' could become wildly untethered from the real world, and suffer from a diminishing reliability or relevance. It's a metric I've always felt is of very dubious 'accuracy'; but there is a danger that its usefulness could be further undermined by changes in shooting habits and finishing efficiency in the game.

Another way of looking at it...

 

I always say that the only 'experts' I would look to for assistance with my Fantasy squad decisions are tactical analysts who talk about the real-world game of football, rather than just the nuances of FPL. And I compiled a list of my favourites last year.

I recently discovered another young analyst on Youtube, Lucas Sutherland, who looks as though he has some very worthwhile content. He approaches match analysis from a coaching perspective, and this latest video of his suggests a series of different lenses through which to approach trying to break down and understand key game incidents.

He has a website where you can also view all of his past videos, and sign up for a newsletter, and get a match analysis template.

A couple of his earliest videos provide a very nice basic introduction to developing some useful habits for closer in-game analysis, here and here (the second, longer one has some particularly interesting insights on how Chelsea managed to get the better of Manchester City in the 2021 Champions League Final).

He's also done an interesting review of what AI video analysis is now capable of.

The rise of 'the idiocracy' (again)

Around this time last year, I shared this video from the Philosophy Coded Youtube channel, on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's analysis of 'wilful ignorance' as a mass phenomenon (Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, famously martyred for his opposition to the Nazis; so, he was probably thinking particularly of the Germans' complacency in accepting Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s).

The other week I discovered another interesting discussion of Bonhoeffer's ideas on this topic from Jonny Thompson of the Big Think channel in the video above. (Apparently there's an extended version of this talk, although I haven't yet had the chance to watch that to see what more it adds.)  Thompson observes that there was a similar concept - 'amathia' (ἀμαθία, the rejection of learning or understanding) - in Ancient Greek philosophy. Unfortunately, we do see rather a lot of this 'sticking one's head in the sand' in the realm of FPL; managers cling to their superstitions and prejudices in defiance of reason, they follow the promptings of supposed 'experts' or just fall in with the herd - rather than taking the trouble to think for themselves. Like the gadfly Socrates, I am always trying to goad people into original thought - and it makes me very unpopular on many of the forums!

And if that hasn't got you depressed enough about humanity,.... Philosophy Coded has a follow-up video on Bonhoeffer's ideas.

What then can we do?

I said again this morning that early drafting is worse than a waste-of-time.

What, then, can the FPL enthusiast do to 'prepare' during the last couple of weeks or so before the Big Kick-Off?

Well, it's usually a good idea to watch a fair bit of the pre-season friendlies (highlights only, of course!) - especially the later ones, and those involving the Premier League's better teams matching themselves against some top European sides. 

However, we always have to keep in mind that such games rarely tell us very much about likely form in the opening games of the domestic season. Particularly in a World Cup year, so many key players are returning late to training, and have figured little or not at all as yet. And these matches - even the occasionally more 'competitive' ones - are generally played at a fairly gentle pace, and feature unlimited substitutions. They can be quite useful for giving some insight into new tactical ideas being tried out for the season ahead, and for showcasing promising youngsters who might have a chance of breaking into the first team at some point this year (though probably not straight away...), but they mostly tell us next-to-nothing about likely team or individual form or probable lineups on the opening Premier League weekend.

The Premier League's website has a list of the pre-season fixtures played, usually with links to brief match reports. And there's also this - very brief - roundup of minutes played and attacking contributions registered by leading players.

Unfortunately, most of the main FPL help sites like Fantasy Football Scout seem to have firewalled all of their content about the pre-season games this year, so there's very little useful information that you can access for free (the Fantasy Premier League site itself is predictably useless on this).

It's also a good idea, of course, to try to stay on top of the transfer news. (Though I'd resist getting bogged down in the endless flurry of groundless rumours that we suffer in this 'social media' era. Arsenal fans somehow managed to convince themselves that Vinicius Jnr was going to join them - though that was obvious nonsense. And their acquisition of Bruno Guimaraes unfolded at a glacial pace over an agonising three weeks or so, with some new pointless bit of 'progress' announced almost every day during that! It is just painful...)

At least Fantasy Football Scout's list of the new signings is stil free-to-view (though not many of them have been given 'scout reports' yet). The Transfermarkt transfers page has links to its profiles of the players (although that website continues to look horrible; and it is now awash with gambling ads...). The TNT Sports website actually seems to have the best-looking - and possibly also most helpful... - transfer summary this year.

Also, of course, we should keep an eye out for possible injuries. We seem - touch wood! - to have been remarkably fortunate so far this year. But usually we get a slew of players breaking down in training during the last couple of weeks - or even in the last few days - before the new season gets under way again. Again, Fantasy Football Scout usually has a good injury list, but I find Premier League Injuries is occasionally a little more up-to-date.

Naturally, it's worth having a look over the fixture schedule for the early part of the season (although the game's own 'Fixture Difficulty Rating' guide here is usually laughably inaccurate, and needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt).

And it's probably worth taking a look at what the promoted clubs played like last season, and what transfer moves they've been looking to make over the summer (few of them these days have any realistic chance of staying up, but every once in a while, one of them can give us a surprise - I fancy Frank Lampard's Coventry to have a decent chance this year; and even the obvious punchbag teams may still have one or two tempting budget player options). Adam Clery's 'Mini-Me' - his chirpy young editor, Archie Corbett, who's been very ably deputising for Adam on some of the excellent ACFC channel's recent videos - produced a good summary of this year's trio last week.

Finally, AllAboutFPL recently had this article of basic FPL tips by a supposed 'top manager' (I'm always a bit sceptical as to whether these guys are really that good, or if they've just enjoyed a few years of exceptional luck...). They are all fairly simple and generic points, but is is a very sound introduction to the game for newbies - actually, much the same kind of thing I'm usually saying on this blog and elsewhere online; so, worth checking out, I'd say.

I'll be posting some summaries of my past advice on selecting the initial squad, and weighing up this season's selection dilemmas next week - after the Community Shield game has been played.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

France's secret weapon

 

A classic piece of silliness from Noughties UK skit show Harry and Paul....

The national anthems are usually a bit of a chore to sit through at a big sporting event like this - often, I fear, even for citizens of their own country. And our own, the dirge-like 'God Save The King', is, I'm sorry to say, one of the worst. There's hardly an Englishman alive who wouldn't far rather have 'Land of Hope and Glory' or 'Rule, Britannia!' as our anthem - both, alas, tainted with the bombast of colonial ambition, but at least rather more rousing tunes. 

Being confined to a military band rendition is half the problem, I think. A small string section would add so much more emotional texture to the sound. Or, gosh, what about a bit of swoony saxophone or clarinet? Alas, no; we're always stuck with tinny brass and snare-drums. The mode of performance seems to have influenced the choice of songs as well, since we almost always seem to get pieces with the plodding tempo of a slow march. Some of the more exotic ones at least offer the diversion of eccentric structure, with something like a 'symphonic' form with distinct 'movements', wildly different in style and tempo, rather than just a metronomic verse-chorus repetition. I always thought the Italian one was rather fun, even though - or perhaps because - it sounds as though it was composed for the hurdy-gurdy; but of course we're not getting to hear that one this time.

The USA has a surprisingly potent one: a bit slow and po-faced, certainly, but undoubtedly very emotive.

But France wins hands-down. It is, I think, the only national anthem in the world that other countries like to listen to - and might even, occastionally, get tempted to sing along with.

It is because it's such a bloody good tune? Or.... is it all just down to Casablanca??

And France are getting to play their semi-final on their National Day. That's not nothing - it might give them just that little extra emotional lift (as if they needed it!!).

Adam Clery, my favourite of the Youtube tactical analysts, a couple of weeks ago identified another significant advantage the French team may be enjoying - something that has gone largely unnoticed by other pundits. Because Luis Enrique likes to rotate his big players at PSG to keep them fresh for the Champions League, and because a number of them have had spells out with injury this season, a lot of France's top creative talents have played less than 3,000 minutes over the past season, some not much more than 2,000 minutes. (Half of England's starting eleven have clocked well over 4,000 minutes. It's small wonder that Declan Rice looks so constantly knackered, after being asked to play almost every single minute of Arsenal's long and gruelling season.) France's key players still have relatively fresh legs - compared to just about all the other major European teams.

English bookies are apparently still pricing France at around 11/5. That might be partly because patriotic optimists are now backing England heavily. France really ought to be odds-on. Backing them at that price looks very much like free money to me!  [Once again, I find myself with cause to be relieved that my online betting account is inaccessible to me at the moment! France didn't get the expected additional lift from playing on their National Day; in fact, they produced one of their flattest performances in years. Spain certainly knocked them out of their usual comfortable rhythm. And Deschamp made some questionable selection decisions again. But really, France just didn't show up for this one; every single player had an off day...] 

A Happy 'Bastille Day' to any French readers who may happen past.... (Though I don't think it's commonly called that in your country, is it?)  And best of luck for tonight's game!!

Best of the analysts

I've often said on here before that it's very valuable to watch some good quality analysis of football games, to improve your understanding of what's gonig on - of why teams are performing as they are, well or badly, and thus how they're likely to do in an important upcoming game.

The standard of punditry on the mainstream TV channels inevitably tends to be somewhat superficial. And, with so much football to get through at the moment, I just don't have the appetite for sitting through the pre- and post-match and half-time discussions as well as the actual play (I'm having to watch most of the games in 'as live' re-runs the following morning, since the kick-offs are in the middle of the night in my timezone!). But I have been enjoying some of the Youtube content from my favourite online football analysts. Here are some of the best videos I've enjoyed in the last few weeks.

Conor McAinsh of Football Meta recently produced this excellent breakdown on how defensive discipline has been enabling some of the 'smaller' teams to embarrass the big boys of the game in this tournament. (He's just added another specifically on how Germany were undone by this.)

The Purist Football has also been putting out some great coverage of the competition (just before it started he had an interesting series of short videos assessing the prospects of each of the favourites to win the competition). This is a particularly good breakdown of why Morocco have looked so formidable so far far.

Football Made Simple has also put out some good videos on the tournament, particularly this recent one on Brazil's success in their knockout win over Japan.

And my pal Adam Clery of ACFC, a huge Scotland fan, just did a sombre post mortem on their disappointing tournament (ultimately pretty savage on Steve Clarke, but deservedly so). He also had a very good assessnent of Brazil last week.

Do give these a look. Analyses like these can be very helpful to your Fantasy endeavours.

The End of Civlization

Another Youtube channel I'm rather fond of, again with a heavily philosophical leaning, is Aperture - run by a Toronto-based digital media company called Underknown. 

This recent video explores the importance of the Hierarchy of Cognition developed by American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom, a taxonomy of 'levels of thinking' intended as a framework for the planning of more effective teaching.

While the opening sections about the 'dumbing down' and the increasing tribalism of modern society under the adverse influence of digital media saturation are pretty depressing stuff, the film does ultimately take a more optimistic track, explaining how we can try to break free of these negative influences and continually advance our thinking towards the upper strata of Bloom's pyramid.

And it is absolutely chock-full of ideas I've been talking about in relation to FPL for the past few years...

"Analysis requires emotional distance. Evaluation requires neutrality. Creation requires clarity."

“Thinking begins where impulsivity ends. When you slow your mind, you create the space necessary for thought to grow.”

It is a fantastic video, brimful of thought-provoking quotes. Go and watch the whole thing. And then try to apply its lessons.

Happy thoughts

Here are a couple of videos I've particularly enjoyed in the last week or so....

I have occasionally found James Allcott a bit irritatingly full of himself (although I may be biased by an element of jealousy of his youthful good looks...), and his content is often a little self-indulgently over-long. But he seems a likeable chap, and he usually has some worthwhile things to say. I especially liked this recent shorter piece from him in celebration of Rayan Cherki.

And long-time favourite of mine, The Purist Football, is now posting rather more regularly, and on some shorter, more specfic topics. His latest is this rather fun appreciation of the thrilling tactics of humble NEC Nijmegen (currently on track for European football next year, as they sit in 4th place in the Eredivisie - actually just ahead of Ajax, who are having a difficult season). They seem to have become the embodiment of an 'Attack, attack, attack!' mentality - and we must hope that more teams around the Continent start to emulate this.

The games we choose to play

 

Over the past few years I've become a big fan of Robert Pantano's thoughtful Youtube channel on philosophy and psychology, Pursuit of Wonder.

One of the things that most disturbs me about a game like Fantasy Premier League is its fiercely addictive qualities, the fact that it is in essence a form of gambling - where we stake our self-esteem on our ability to predict the outcome of unpredictable events better than our fellow FPL managers.

So, I was particularly struck by this latest video of Robert's, in which he starts off from considering the parable of The Gambler from Pascal's Pensées (a man who finds he cannot renounce his vice, even when offered a huge amount of money to do so), and goes on to consider why such obsessive distractions are proliferating in the modern world. The only consolation he can offer at the end of his brief audio-essay is this, a suggestion that these activities may not invariably be all bad, and that we can still maintain some measure of self-awareness and control over our engagement with them:  "It is not winning, it is not losing; it is the hope and uncertainty we experience in the games we choose to play. And so, what seems to matter is this: wisely choosing what games we play, and how we play them. Each of us have a choice in whether we keep playing games or not, and each of us have a choice in what kind of games we play, and the bets we place."

For me, the 'answer' in engaging with FPL is to not care about the results. You can strive for better results (which is mentally improving and spiritually ennobling) without actually letting yourself be bothered whether you achieve them (which is something outside of your control, ever at the mercy of random factors in the external world). 

For me, it must be all about the process, not the outcome; and about measuring my 'success' or 'progress' against my own internal yardstick, not against the greater or lesser 'success' of anyone else.

These thoughts on gambling suddenly reminded me of this excellent Al Pacino speech in D.J. Caruso's 2005 sports gambling picture Two For The Money (a severely underrated film; unfortunately, Pacino's co-star, Matthew McConnaughey, was still in his 'career slump', more box-office poison than box-office catnip at this point), in which he dismays a Gamblers Anonymous meeting by confronting the attendees with the uncomfortable fact that most 'problem gamblers' have a more serious underlying issue, a masochistic, self-destructive impulse: they are addicted to losing, not winning - because that intense misery and despair is an insidiously heightened state of being, a rush that's come to dominate their lives.

It does bother me, often, that the almost inevitable, relentless 'failure' involved in FPL might be the dangerous key to its irresisible appeal... It is something I continually try to address, and to skirt away from.

If you like Mr Pantano's style in this video, you should check out his recently published book, The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness.

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.

One of the biggest BLIND SPOTS for statisticians

 

I've been a fan of The Purist Football on Youtube for quite a while. He used to produce rather dense video essays, which would only drop very irregularly, perhaps only two or three times a year; but this season he has moved into more frequent positing: still a bit irregular, but usually something - something worthwhile - every few weeks or so.

His latest piece called attention to another of the shortcomings of statistical analysis. This is a topic I've been meaning to do a substantial post of my own on for some time, but I confess I am a bit daunted by the scope of the challenge: there are so many things to be said, few of them good. 

And I confess I hadn't really taken note before of the point The Purist makes here: Most football statistics focus only on 'active contributions', on touches of the ball; they completely overlook the substantial elements of the game which are merely 'passive contributions', off-the-ball work.

Blocking, marking, recovering defensive shape, making decoy runs - these are all vital parts of the game... which stats compilers fail to capture.

This video highlights the particularly pertinent example of Barcelona's Dani Olmo, who is an absolute maestro of the dummy. - an attribute that no conventional statistic even records, let alone attempts to evaulate the potential game impact of. (Often, a great dummy ought to count as an 'assist' - but, of course, it doesn't, because the dummying player avoids making contact with the ball.)

My general attitude to using statistics for FPL purposes is that it should only be done in moderation, and only if you always manage to remain duly mindful of what the statistics are not showing you.

Very few FPL managers, alas, are capable of this. For the majority, it would probably be better to steer clear of statistics altogether.

Are we starting to 'enjoy' VAR?!

I just came across this very funny little skit from the English comedy writer/performer, Michael Spicer, which effectively skewers so many of the exasperating failings with the 'Video Assistant Review' process which now mars our enjoyment of the beautiful game in the EPL every single week. [I have written about the failings of this system often on this blog - most notably here, where I try to suggest some 'fixes' for them.]

Spicer is best known for an occasional series on his Youtube channel called 'The Room Next Door' - in which he depicts the travails of a backstage 'political advisor' trying to coach some bumbling public figure (remotely, via an earpiece) through a major speech. He recently did an extended one on The Dumpster's senile ramblings at Davos, which is particularly devastating. (The phrase "a laundry-bag of fascist farts" will stay with you...)

Where do we go from here...?

Yes, I've been having a fair old tactics binge on Youtube over the past few weeks. After last week's pair of recommendations of videos on recent tactical evolutions in the game, I find myself doing a rapid follow-up with a couple more.

Following up closely on the topic of the first of last week's videos, this one from Football Made Simple looks particularly at how the rapid collapse over the past season or so of the 'positional play' approach developed by Pep Guardiola (due to the mass adoption of man-marking rather than zonal systems) has led to both Pep and Mikel Arteta having to radically modify their approaches to the game. This has involved developing far more versatility in the players (so that they can feel comfortable and be effective in just about any area of the pitch) and far more fluidity of rotation (so that they're tiring and discombobulating their markers by dragging them all over the pitch, shifting them miles away from where they're used to being). Despite some success for this new approach, the increasing impenetrability of the dense low-blocks employed against them for long periods by almost all their opponents is still starving them of scoring chances. One answer to that issue has been to look for players with more mercurial improvisatory talents, players with the close control and the imagination to carve an opening where none seems possible (such as Cherki and Doku now at City). An alternate approach - apparently more favoured by Snr Arteta, who has been presciently basing his squad-building around it for some years already now - is to assemble a corps of brick shithouses who can, when called upon, use their superior physicality to just power their way past, or through, defending players. Not that these options are at all mutually exclusive: Arsenal, after all, have acquired Eze to potentially amp up the guile supplied by Odegaard and Saka, while Haaland and Gvardiol and Semenyo are built like tanks quite as much as Gabriel and Timber and Rice and Havertz and Gyokeres. However, it still seems doubtful if either of these astute coaches has yet found anything like a complete answer to the new set of challenges being posed.

By coincidence, the same day I first saw that video I also happened upon a new post from The Different Knock reviewing Arsenal's tactics this season. (I have, in fact, been avoiding Alex Moneypenny's channel for the past few months, because he's such a diehard Arsenal fan, I had feared he might be getting a bit triumphalistic about their title-leading performance this season. To be fair, though, he does try to be very moderate and even-handed in his assessments, and resists getting too carried away....) It seems he's actually feeling a bit glum and anxious at the moment, recognising that Arsenal have once again been suffering one of their notorious 'midwinter wobbles', and that there is some foundation to the common criticisms currently being made of them: their predictability in attack (always down the right...), their excessive risk-aversion, their over-dependence on set-piece routines, and their woeful lack of threat from open play. [I've been saying all season - and was still sticking to the view, despite the first dawning of some doubts, when I did my second set of final position predictions around the beginning of December - that I just didn't feel they were quite good enough all-round to deserve the title this year, and could only win it by default, if all of the main challengers turned out to have poor seasons (which has been the case so far).]

And then, of course, my favourite video analyst, Adam Clery, just added a video about Arsenal's problems - a useful practical footnote to the above more abstract dissertations.

More TACTICS!

 

The informative tactical analyst and football historian DK Falcon doesn't seem to have been posting that much on Youtube lately (not that I've noticed, anyway....), but this interesting piece popped up last weekend. 

In it he outlines the recent major evolutions in top-level football tactics, explaining how the aggressive high press (the 'Gegenpress' developed in Germany in the early 2010s, and brought to England by Jurgen Klopp) was in part a dialectic response to the refined style of controlled possession inspired by Barcelona's 'tiki-taka'; and then in turn the 'press-baiting' approach (being prepared to play the ball around across the back indefinitely, ostentatiously putting your foot on the ball to defy the opposition to try to take it off you, and keeping your back line ultra-deep, sometimes even playing to and fro practically on the goal-line itself - to try to draw the first line of pressure high into the penalty area and expose an inviting gap behind it) and new ways of playing through the high press pioneered by Roberto de Zerbi were a response to this; and now the rapid growth of 'hybrid pressing' (combining elements of zonal marking and man-marking to produce greater flexibility, and enabling rapid transition from high press to mid-block modes) is a reponse to that.

And what's next after that?? Well, maybe something radically different - not just another counter-measure to the prevailing norms, but a new tactical idea that truly breaks the mould. By coincidence, Conor McAinsh's Football Meta published this video at about the same time, breaking down the innovative style of José Alberto's Racing Santander - currently top of the heap in La Segunda in Spain.

Alberto's approach is a kind of extreme 'relationism', largely shunning conventional structures and demanding a great deal of flexibility from his players to constantly rotate positions with each other and improvise their way out of difficulties. The essence of it is to mob the opponent on the ball, closing off all his passing options as quickly as possible; this typically involves concentrating most of the outfield players in a fairly small area, and often putting the entire team in the same half of the pitch. The advantage of this is that it does put the opponent under enormous pressure, with a huge numerical advantage around the ball; and if a turnover is achieved, the wide open spaces left elsewhere on the pitch can be exploited for a swift counter-attack. However, it is necessarily a tactic of high reward/high risk: if the opponent manages to elude this press, he usually has one or more unmarked players in acres of space, especially on the opposite flank, and is even better placed to launch a devastating fast attack. [Fernando Diniz enjoyed some success for a while with a similar system at Fluminense in Brazil a few years ago. The Purist Football did a good video on this back then.]

The window opens....

In addition to the escalating vagaries of form, the horrible winter weather and the sudden accumulation of injuries and suspensions in December, and the insane domestic fixture congestion we suffer at this time of year (when just about every other league in Europe is sensibly enjoying an extended break), we now have an additional layer of disruption due to the mid-season transfer window opening.

It began for the Premier League (and most of the other leagues worldwide) on 1st January, and - because the month ends on a weekend this year - the final deadline is 7pm, UK time, on Monday, 2nd February. A few of the European leagues have a little bit longer; Switzerland has a whopping two extra weeks. Clubs playing in European competitions have a few further days - up until midnight on Thursday 7th February - to submit any squad revisions to UEFA. 

At the moment, the best summary of all the details of how this works appears to be on Chelsea's website.

Fantasy Football Scout usually runs the best regular update page on all the moves; but of course, there's nothing confirmed yet.

It will be interesting to see if any Premier League clubs can radically shift their form and fortune with some handy acquisitions this month. Villa did some good business this time last year, getting Asensio, Malen, and Rashford in on loan for the second half of the season. Given how thin their squad now looks, after an absence of any major transfer activity in the summer, they could really do with some more of that this time. Burnley might also be looking to bring in a few new players to try to salvage their hopes of survival - although I feel a new manager is more needful for them. Palace, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Manchester United, and of course Forest and West Ham are also in conspicuous need of some strengthening.

For some clubs, though, the impacts of this window are going to be mainly negative - key players lured away from them. I really hope Antoine Semenyo will see out the season at Bournemouth; it would be a huge loss for them if he leaves. (And it will ruin his value in FPL for the rest of us, if he goes to City or Liverpool or Arsenal, to sit on the bench most of the time...)

Another holiday treat from ACFC

 

The always marvellous Adam Clery Football Channel has dropped another 'holiday special' video, this time on the remarkable Leicester City Premier League title win ten years ago. Is it really that long ago now? Seems like only yesterday....

This was a triumph so improbable that lifelong fan of the club, Gary Lineker, promised half-way through the season that he'd present the year's final 'Match of the Day' programme on the BBC in his underwear if his team achieved it.

A lot of people didn't think he'd go through with it - but he's a game lad. We're missing him this year, now that he's finally retired from the show.

A Christmas treat from ACFC

The excellent Adam Clery Football Channel (the best analysis show on Youtube; only founded at the tail-end of last season, but immediately indispensable) yesterday posted a 'Christmas Special' - a great little breakdown on The Greatest Moment Ever In English Sport, our majestic defeat of West Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley. [And he's promised another 'historical' anaysis for the holidays soon, an examination of Leicester's extraordinary title-winning season.]

If you feel like watching the full match (it is a hell of a game), here it is:

I could have sworn I'd once been able to watch a colour version of the full match (shot on film for FIFA, where I assume this must be videotape of the BBC black-and-white TV coverage), but it doesn't seem to be available on Youtube at the moment; there are highlights only in colour. 

The Wembley crowd's singing of the National Anthem after the presentation of the trophy is the only time I have ever heard it sounding happy.

Yes, HISTORY can be fun!

 

The excellent DK Falcon doesn't post all that often (about once a month, at best) and tends to cover broader football topics rather than just recent matches or current shifts in tactics. But I always find his videos a good watch, and this latest one is particularly entertaining: a rundown of the more obscure labels for particular player styles/positions - many of which derive from countries other than England, and/or from more distant football eras, but are nevertheless still occasionally part of the current lexicon.

If you ever have nightmares about the possibility of being stumped at your next pub trivia quiz when challenged to explain the meaning of enganche, trequartista, ramdeuter, carillero, volante - then this is a must-watch for you!

The ONES you should be watching

 

Not players you should be watching out for (still far too early to be giving much thought to that!)... Rather, the online 'experts' I think are most worth giving your attention to.

As I've said a few times before (most notably here), the self-styled FPL 'gurus' are mostly moronic charlatans (and even the handful of 'good' ones aren't really all that brilliant or insightful) and are best avoided. The people I look to for help in understanding the game are online tactical analysts. And these, I believe, are the best of them.

My Top Youtube Resources for helping with FPL

Chirpy Geordie Adam Clery remains my No. 1 favourite: amusing as well as informative - and he doesn't go on too long. He was doing regular tactical breakdowns for FourFourTwo's Youtube channel over the past couple of years, but a few months ago he launched his own Adam Clery Football Channel (ACFC), in partnership with the UK's The Independent newspaper.

A very close second is Cormac McAinsh of Football Meta.

I also rather like the style of DK Falcon, although his output is a bit more intermittent - and he puts out a lot of more 'broad topic' pieces reviewing, for instance, the evolution of Pep Guardiola's tactical ideas. He's done quite a fun one of the overall history of football tactics from the game's inception in the mid-1800s to the present.

I think Chris French's Football Made Simple is also very good - although he also tends to do more broad overview discussions than breakdowns of individual matches. Also, some of his videos run just a little long, and - for me - I find that he sometimes gabbles a bit, racing on just a little too fast in his delivery, without enough appropriate phrasing or pausing to give us time to fully grasp what he's saying (particularly as he swaps very quickly to and fro between talking about the attacking and defending sides in a match, and seems to assume that you will have memorised the entire lineup for both teams as thoroughly as he has!). So, yes, he can be just a little bit hard work at times - but worth it. [He's recently started running an online Introduction to Tactical Analysis course. Unfortunately, I can't currently spare the time or the money to give it a try myself, but it looks very interesting. He also puts out an occasional newsletter via Substack that you can sign up for.] [He's also now started doing a free introductory course.]

I really like the Tactical Football Fanatic too, although his posting has been very sparse over the last year.

Football Manager Insider also has some good stuff (a bit of a Liverpool bias lately; but that might be down to them being champions, favourites to retain the title, and hyper-acive in the transfer market this summer - rather than a personal affection!).

Zekko Football is also sometimes worth a look; although he's another presenter who tends to rush his delivery a bit, and his diction is so poor that I often find it impossible to follow him without cueing up the closed-caption subtitles! He is perhaps a bit over-prolific too; I don't find his content compelling enough to be worth checking in on two or three times a week. He does a lot of breakdowns of recent games - especially in the Premier League - which can be informative (perhaps particularly useful if it's a game you happened to miss!); but I find most of his pieces fairly superficial, describing what happened in some detail -  rather than teasing apart how and why it happened.

Finally, one of my more recent discoveries in this field that also shows a lot of promise is Tactics Dojo.

Alas, I find most of FourFourTwo's Youtube content these days very dull and obvious (though the print magazine is still very good), and The Athletic isn't much better (the weekly 'podcasts', in particular, usually hosted by Ayo Akinwolere, are just painfully over-long...), but their occasional tactics or squad-building episodes with J.J. Bull and Jon Mackenzie are still worth a look. (I wish J.J. would branch out on his own. I think he could give Geordie Adam a run for his money as the most entertaining and accessible content-creator of this kind.)

I have a strong affinity for The Purist Football as well, though this is more of a 'general interest' channel than one that's ever likely to be directly useful in the week-to-week trench warfare of FPL. He only puts out a video every month or two, at most, and they tend to be more philosophical essays on the state of the game than dissections of particular teams or players. For me, this video on the impact of Guardiola's ideas, good and bad, is essential viewing. [During the 25/26 season, he quickly transitioned into being more focused on tactics in particular games, and putting out content much more regularly - he's now a close runner-up to Adam and Conor as the most useful commentator on Youtube.]

I also have a soft spot for Alex Moneypenny's The Different Knock. He's an Arsenal uber-fan, so his channel is pretty much exclusively focused on The Gunners. But his breadth of knowledge and tactical acuity are very impressive; so, often the observations he has to offer on Arsenal will have direct or indirect relevance to other Premier League teams as well.

I thought The Football Analyst had looked very promising; but he soon seemed to give up on his Youtube platform, after posting some interesting stuff early last year. However, he's still posting some good pieces on his website. [I would particularly recommend an article of his from this time last year on Fabian Hurzeler's 'tactical identity', and this most recent one assessing the prospects of Benjamin Sesko.]

I also often enjoy The Athletic's Tifo sub-channel on Youtube, for more general observations on the game. They've recently started a fun little mini-series on The Entire History of Football.

I really think any of these channels - even frivolous little Tifo!! - will help your football understanding (and hence, your FPL prospects!) far more than following any so-called FPL 'experts'.