The Premier League's new slogan -- Good 'til the last drop?
It's been absolutely stunning how many late winners/equalizers have been scored during the 2008-09 season.
A couple weeks ago I brought up the idea of sabremetrical compared to soccer. I'm still not sure if statistical analysis will yield a secret formula to win games. It would be nice if there were more stats readily available.
If you go to the official Premier League site, the stats are pretty limited.
Today I'd love to go somewhere and pull down a menu and sort how many goals have been scored in the 90th+ minute. Perhaps this place exists and I'm too lazy to find it.
Anyway, on back-to-back days we saw the title see-saw back-and-forth between Liverpool and Manchester United behind extra time winners, one more improbable than the next.
Liverpool's 1-0 win over Fulham via Yossi Benayoun's late winner was well-deserved. The Reds hit the post, what, five times?
That euphoria lasted less than 24 hours, thanks to one of the more surprising final 10 minutes I've seen in quite some time in Manchcester United's rousing 3-2 win over Aston Villa.
Once again, Manchester United (without Vidic, Ferdinand, Rooney and Berbatov) looked completely toothless. The Red Devils basically slept walk through the matches, with both Aston Villa goals seeming to come at half speed.
Ronaldo at least saved United a draw with a sneaky strike that somehow curled inside the far post. To keep it that low to the ground with that much power, well folks, that's why he's worth the GDP of Chad to Real Madrid.
But that goal was nothing compared to Federico Macheda -- yes, the Federico Macheda -- wonderstrike in the 90th minute.
I made a quickee post about this yesterday and even time doesn't dull the shock value.
It's amazing that a 17-year-old Italian with no previous PL experience has scored the most important goal of the season to date.
Looking at the table, Manchester United's win is more of a serious blow to Chelsea than Liverpool -- which has to keep winning anyway. Chelsea are four back, plus United still have that game in hand. Liverpool are one, but it's a big one.
Oh right, these two play each other on Wedensday in the Champions League.
Even with the big win Sunday, Manchester United still don't look right. The Red Devils' air of invincibility appears to have vanished. Granted, a win like Sunday does a lot toward restoring a team's mojo.
A lot of weekends I've walked away from watching PL games with a 'meh' feeling -- not this one. These last two months are going to be great.
A thought on Newcastle -- The other big story this weekend was Alan Shearer at Newcastle, which are three points from safety. A manager isn't exactly going to save the Magpies, a couple quality defenders would though.
For whatever the reason, the plight of Newcastle United struck me as similar to the crisis around General Motors and perhaps the worst case scenario would actually be the best thing for both entities. In Newcastle's case, relegation and GM's bankruptcy.
Both bad situations would at least allow the entities to regroup, restructure and generally get their acts together, because as currently constituted neither is working.
Yes, there's always the chance they can never recover, but if they can they'll each be better for it.
Around the league Your big relegation-o-rama winners: Blackburn and Stoke. The losers: Sunderland and Middlesbrough. ... Emmanuel Adebayor scored a pair of nice goals in Arsenal's 2-0 win over Man City. Too bad the Togolese striker doesn't bring it each weekend. If I were Arsene Wenger, I'd sell high on him. ... Yes, I'm beating a dead horse, but does any other player other than Frank Lampard score that deflection-off-the-bar against Newcastle? I guess the reverse of this is that he's got great awareness since he's in the right place at the right time. ... Aston Villa's Carlos Cuellar doesn't use jelly. He doesn't use cheese. He uses Vaseline. Christ, he looked like an extra from 'Ghostbusters.' Gross.
Fantasy Team 'O the Week -- Huge points this week and only a 30 point gap at the top. This week's top honor goes to Nicholas Mulch's Prussians & Pistols which got 89 points from Ronaldo, Lampard and Matty Taylor.
It's been absolutely stunning how many late winners/equalizers have been scored during the 2008-09 season.
A couple weeks ago I brought up the idea of sabremetrical compared to soccer. I'm still not sure if statistical analysis will yield a secret formula to win games. It would be nice if there were more stats readily available.
If you go to the official Premier League site, the stats are pretty limited.
Today I'd love to go somewhere and pull down a menu and sort how many goals have been scored in the 90th+ minute. Perhaps this place exists and I'm too lazy to find it.
Anyway, on back-to-back days we saw the title see-saw back-and-forth between Liverpool and Manchester United behind extra time winners, one more improbable than the next.
Liverpool's 1-0 win over Fulham via Yossi Benayoun's late winner was well-deserved. The Reds hit the post, what, five times?
That euphoria lasted less than 24 hours, thanks to one of the more surprising final 10 minutes I've seen in quite some time in Manchcester United's rousing 3-2 win over Aston Villa.
Once again, Manchester United (without Vidic, Ferdinand, Rooney and Berbatov) looked completely toothless. The Red Devils basically slept walk through the matches, with both Aston Villa goals seeming to come at half speed.
Ronaldo at least saved United a draw with a sneaky strike that somehow curled inside the far post. To keep it that low to the ground with that much power, well folks, that's why he's worth the GDP of Chad to Real Madrid.
But that goal was nothing compared to Federico Macheda -- yes, the Federico Macheda -- wonderstrike in the 90th minute.
I made a quickee post about this yesterday and even time doesn't dull the shock value.
It's amazing that a 17-year-old Italian with no previous PL experience has scored the most important goal of the season to date.
Looking at the table, Manchester United's win is more of a serious blow to Chelsea than Liverpool -- which has to keep winning anyway. Chelsea are four back, plus United still have that game in hand. Liverpool are one, but it's a big one.
Oh right, these two play each other on Wedensday in the Champions League.
Even with the big win Sunday, Manchester United still don't look right. The Red Devils' air of invincibility appears to have vanished. Granted, a win like Sunday does a lot toward restoring a team's mojo.
A lot of weekends I've walked away from watching PL games with a 'meh' feeling -- not this one. These last two months are going to be great.
A thought on Newcastle -- The other big story this weekend was Alan Shearer at Newcastle, which are three points from safety. A manager isn't exactly going to save the Magpies, a couple quality defenders would though.
For whatever the reason, the plight of Newcastle United struck me as similar to the crisis around General Motors and perhaps the worst case scenario would actually be the best thing for both entities. In Newcastle's case, relegation and GM's bankruptcy.
Both bad situations would at least allow the entities to regroup, restructure and generally get their acts together, because as currently constituted neither is working.
Yes, there's always the chance they can never recover, but if they can they'll each be better for it.
Around the league Your big relegation-o-rama winners: Blackburn and Stoke. The losers: Sunderland and Middlesbrough. ... Emmanuel Adebayor scored a pair of nice goals in Arsenal's 2-0 win over Man City. Too bad the Togolese striker doesn't bring it each weekend. If I were Arsene Wenger, I'd sell high on him. ... Yes, I'm beating a dead horse, but does any other player other than Frank Lampard score that deflection-off-the-bar against Newcastle? I guess the reverse of this is that he's got great awareness since he's in the right place at the right time. ... Aston Villa's Carlos Cuellar doesn't use jelly. He doesn't use cheese. He uses Vaseline. Christ, he looked like an extra from 'Ghostbusters.' Gross.
Fantasy Team 'O the Week -- Huge points this week and only a 30 point gap at the top. This week's top honor goes to Nicholas Mulch's Prussians & Pistols which got 89 points from Ronaldo, Lampard and Matty Taylor.
Labels: Liverpool, manchester United, Monday recaps, Premier League, Soccer
Imagine if the top 3-4 leagues around the world one day decided to stop all transfer/loan payments for players they acquired on loan from other, lower-tier teams. Most of those smaller squads would fold, immediately.
Here's why bankruptcy is not an option:
If an automaker files bk, what happens? The judge says "OK, GM, you only have to pay your creditors 10 cents on the dollar."
Well those creditors are the suppliers, who are also struggling. If you wipe out GM's debt, you are wiping out the suppliers' accounts receivables. They ALL immediately become insolvent, then bankrupt.
So then you have a 'reorganized GM' and no one to supply parts, and hundreds of new commercial bankruptcies, and a million more unemployed and a million more homes into foreclosure.
The govt has seen, correctly, that it's better to prop up one company and keep the whole supply chain alive.
Ask Leeds Utd how bankruptcy worked out for them. They went bk 6 years ago, btw and where are they?
Another way in which the football/auto analogy fails is this: If a team's budget gets whacked, they can always just field a youth squad, which is what Weymouth has done for the last 10 league games, all of which they have lost, scoring only once the entire time. (They lost 9-0 to R&D last month. Before the crisis they were in 6th place.)
But you can't just call up NAPA for 10,000 new car bumpers. It takes 18 weeks to create the tooling/fixtures/etc to make a single part. And the old equipment will be stuck in some now bankrupt auto supplier's factory, with a court-appointed security guard sitting outside.
Well said...my point is basically a year or two in the Championship to reorganize the club and get some sense of on-field identity wouldn't hurt the Magpies too much. All the makeovers on the fly haven't gotten them anywhere.
Plus you'd still think 50,000 would turn out at St. James to keep the revenue streams flowing.
But well, you pretty much owned me on the argument.
Thanks for the props. I grew up in MI. People don't realize that every little podunk town in the Midwest has at least one small company that produces something for the auto companies.
Re: St James' crowds. The unofficial word is that the former owners (pre-Ashley) signed a 10-year agreement with Northern Rock a few years ago, in which the club was paid the entire 10-year sponsorship fee in advance! And of course this money is gone now.
No amount of fans can make up for this loss of income. If NUFC go down, they'll be down for a decade. It's a travesty.
On a lighter note.... Sounders?!?!?
The Man U victory was probably a good thing for Chelsea. For Chelsea to take the title, they would need to win out and still have Man U drop 7 points minimum. I can not see that happening on the rest of their schedule:
@ Sunderland
v Portsmouth
v Sprs
@ Boro
v City
@ Wigan
v Arsenal
@ Hull
They might drop 3-5 points against relegation strugglers, but their toughest matches (Spurs, City, Arsenal) are all at home. At least one of those matches will be officiated by Mike Dean or Mark Halsey who will give a BS penalty or red card in favor of Man U.
Chelsea's title hopes were done after the Spurs loss, as was evidence by not starting Ballack and leaving Carvalho, Belletti, and Deco as unused subs. They are resting players already for the CL and FA Cup.
Liverpool need to win out, which means they can't afford to rest Blackburn, Chelsea can afford to rest players against Bolton. Man U still need to focus on three fronts that are all basically must-win from here on out.
Also, due to changes in the CL set-up for next year, finishing third in the PL still gets automatic qualification for the group stages, so they don't need to worry about two games against the third place French team or whatever.
Also, lay off Frank. He was Man of the Match that game and picked up a yellow he had no business getting. A wise man once said, "they don't ask how, they just ask how many."
Props to Brad for deconstructing that Newcastle/GM argument. Nothing better in the world than coming up with a hastily constructed idea and having someone show you why it's incredibly poorly reasoned. Happens to me all the time!
Macheda's winner was nasty indeed. And did you see that goal by Grafite at Wolfsburg? That backheel had no business actually going across goal, but the run and backheel attempt were pretty sick!
Nate over at Oh You Beauty (best Liverpool yank blogger out there) wrote a good post about Los Reds and late winners:
http://ohyoubeauty.blogspot.com/2009/04/late-winners-08-09.html
Liverpool have 12 winners after the 75th minute in 46 matches -- more than a quarter of their matches ended in a win late. Nine of 46 have ended with a win in the last 10 minutes. Cardiac Scouse, man.
8/16 Sunderland – Torres 1-0 83’
8/23 Boro – Gerrard 2-1 90+4’
8/27 Liege – Kuyt 1-0 118’
9/13 United – Babel 2-1 77’
10/5 City – Kuyt 3-2 90+2’
10/18 Wigan – Kuyt 3-2 85’
10/29 Pompey – Gerrard 1-0 (pen) 75’
12/6 Blackburn – Benayoun 2-0 79’
2/1 Chelsea – Torres 1-0 89’
2/7 Pompey – Torres 3-2 90+1’
2/25 Real – Benayoun 1-0 82’
4/4 Fulham – Benayoun 1-0 90+2’
Brad I think I just learned more about the auto industry on a footie blog then I have in 4 months watching the news...nice work.
An Ace, nice stat's, but here's hoping you soil your nut-hugging denim shorts this week when Chelsea beats your 'Cardiac Scouse'.