We don't have an EPL thread?

The Game Room
61

Yeah, I agree. I don’t like Mourinho much, but the “He only wins with a big budget” argument is silly.

Possibly more than any other major sport in the world, European football is all about big budgets. With no salary caps, no draft, limited revenue sharing, and the ability to simply buy and sell players, European football has incredibly high correlations between spending and winning. Basically all of the big domestic leagues are dominated by a small number of high-budget teams, and those teams also dominate in the continent-wide competitions like the Champions League. By comparison, the North American major sports (baseball, hockey, football, and basketball) are models of parity.

In the 27 seasons of the English Premier League, it’s been won 25 times by four teams, with Man U winning 13 times. Blackburn managed to win in the third season, and then Leicester had their improbable 5000-1 winning run, but it’s basically been one of the big 4. Apart from Leceister, no EPL winner for the last 15 years has had a budget lower than #3 in the league.

In the last 20 years of the Bundesliga, Bayern Munich has won 14 times. In Spain’s La Liga, Barcelona has won 10 of the last 15, and there have been a total of four teams winning over the past two decades. In Portugal, it’s Benfica and Porto trading championships over two decades. In Italy, it’s Juventus for the last 8, then Milan for 1, and then Inter for 5 in a row. And in France, the last 20 years is basically PSG and Lyon, with a short break from 2008-2012, when four different teams had one win each.

And in the last 20 years, the Champions League has been won in every year except two by one of the dominant, domestic-league-winning teams. In fact, the only Champions League winner in the last 20 years that has not also managed to win its domestic competition on at least one occasion during the past two decades is Liverpool, and they might correct that this season.

I’ve been in the United States for 20 professional sports seasons now. During that time, 13 teams have won the baseball World Series, and no team has won it more than 4 times (Boston). In that same time period, 11 teams have won the NFL Superbowl, although the Patriots have had a sustained two decades of success, going to 9 Superbowls and winning 6. The NBA has had 9 winners in 20 years, and the NHL has had 12 (out of 19, with a cancelled season).

Part of this variety, of course, is the fact that North American sports have a playoff system, while European domestic champions are decided simply by who has the most points at the end of the season. For this reason, the European system is more likely to be won by the actual best week-to-week team. By contrast, the playoff system makes it possible for a team to win despite having been the fourth or sixth or tenth or even sixteenth-best (NBA, NHL) team over the course of the regular season.

But there’s no denying that spending and winning are massively correlated in European football, precisely for that reason. If you spend a bunch of money on an amazing squad, then it’s pretty likely that you’ll win a lot of games, and in Europe you can’t have your big-spending regular-season victories undermined in the last four weeks by a playoff system that rests, at least partly, on luck and/or a single outstanding performance by an inferior side.

62

Everton hired Steve Walsh from Leicester into a Director of Football role a few years ago. Walsh was the Scout who was directly responsible for signing Mahrez, Vardy, Kante plus others for nominal transfer fees, ie he built their title winning team. He was also the assistant manager at one time.

His appointment was a colossal, unmitigated disaster that literally set us back years. Lumbered us with a squad of comedians on stratospheric wages that are hanging off our teat to this day.

Intensive post mortem discussion in the fanbase on how this happened, whether he was actually good but in the wrong role and dealing with a horrible manager (Koeman) (minority viewpoint), or is a fraud who caught lightning in a bottle with Leicester (majority opinion). Very hard to get a clear picture of things because football clubs operate behind closed doors and you rarely get a legit inside view on the decision processes.

Walsh actually made some comments in the Athletic magazine recently on the whole debacle and didn’t come across well IMO - very self-serving.

63

Not only that but winning reaps massive prize money whereas in baseball say…the benefits of winning are miniscule compared to soccer.

And if a hard-brexit is established…the gulf between haves and have-nots will be even greater. in EPL that is…

64

In case you haven’t seen it, here some football insanity for you guys from the Spurs match today. Been watching this highlight all day long.
https://streamja.com/XNGX

65

Wow. Son is amazing. I think that’s the longest solo run and score that I’ve ever seen.

66

Liverpool’s game against Everton in mid-week was an odd affair.

On the one hand, Liverpool was clearly superior, and probably could have scored even more goals. On the other hand, Everton should have had a penalty, and Van Dijk should have been sent off in the first half for a clear foul inside the box. Liverpool were up 2-1 at the time, and the sending off and penalty might have changed the whole game.

67

I went to Goodison on Sat to see Everton play Chelsea - took my young lad with me so was a good game to pick, as the place was bouncing. Great result, players bled for the shirt. We still needed some luck as Chelsea were superior going forward but they were poor at the back and made some costly mistakes.

As good as it was, what does this tell you about some of the absolute frauds we have in the Royal Blue Jersey? New manager arrives with technical masterpiece of a gameplan - to get the players to try.

Actually been thinking what this means over the weekend - obv it’s not as simple as just going out there and running your bollox off as that is not actually all that difficult (although for wide players like Alex Iwobi or Theo Walcott it might actually be that simple - Iwobi legged it back to regain possession and the fans around me reacted like a unicorn had just wandered onto the pitch).
I think it’s more that for elite sport small differences in effort, like 95% versus 100% make big differences in outcome. Too many Everton players have lacked that I refuse to lose mentality and for whatever reason Silva wasn’t able to bring it out of them.

68

This year’s EPL is an interesting one from an expected goals perspective. Liverpool has won a ton of games that they weren’t much better than their opponents while Man City has dropped a ton of points where they created more/better chances. Based on at least one site (understat.com) Man City has been the best in the league so far.

It’ll be interesting if the analytics community decides that those figures aren’t as sophisticated as they thought, or, if this is just a bit a of a flukey season and it’ll work itself out in the long run.

69

I was actually wondering the same thing. If xg is so far off of has so much variation in the data that a single season is too small to get close to a gap like Liverpool /City then it isn’t really that good of a stat.

It’s one thing for it to be a little off, but it’s another for it to describe a reality that’s pretty different from what people are watching.

It’s also possible that Liverpool breaks xg. I feel like Leicester did the same the year of their title run. But again, the model should not be easily breakable.

70

I’m not sure that the goals scored and given up are too much different than the xG-for and xG-against (7 and 1 for Liverpool, 2 and 2 for Man City). It’s more that if you have 6 games where you created 0.5 xG more than your opponent, you’re expected to drop points even though you were better in each game.

I haven’t watched a ton of Liverpool, but I have watched a fair amount of Man City and Barcelona games and their xG numbers pass the eye test to me (under-performing and significantly over-performing, respectively). So while I’m not ready to say the concept needs overhauling I’m keeping my eye on what analytics type people say.

71

It’s not that the model is breakable, per se. Rather it’s that any model, however good, is still prone to outliers and statistical fluctuations and runs of luck.

Look at baseball stats like Expected W-L (X W-L), or Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). It’s possible for a team (XWL) or a player (BABIP) to have a whole 162-gamee season where they defy the expectations of the model. I’ve seen teams over- and under-perform their pythagorean run-based X W-L by ten or more games. And I’ve seen players over- or under-perform their BABIP expectations by 40 or 50 points in a season. But overall, both those models are still pretty good predictors of performance, despite the aberrations.

72

Non-prem:

BUURRRNNN…Gerard Pique’s shirt was totally tugged on in extra minutes in a Barca/Real Sociedad draw just now.

73

If anyone is into podcasts? If so this is a pretty good analytics based podcast, called the double pivot, that goes into all this here.

Gonna try to share directly from pocket casts. Let me know if this doesn’t link right.

74

The link works. Taking a listen now, interesting points about the Dortmund vs Leipzig game.

Gotta say though that these two guys have some of the least pleasant voices I’ve ever heard.

75

Yeah I agree, but you get used to it. It’s a pretty good analytic podcast on the whole.

76

So, got through it while attempting to do work. Doesn’t seem like they have much of a conclusion regarding Liverpool and their expected results discrepancy. Leaning towards them not being as good as their point total?

77

Yeah. I think their answer is “it’s complicated but the model basically works, and Liverpool will come back to earth eventually.”

I’m not sure I buy it, but I liked the discussion.

78

Man, Man City is so much better than Leicester. It’s crazy the table looks like it does.

79

Yesterday, absolutely. They looked fantastic. But Man City haven’t played like that for many of their games this year.

The stats might be right, and Man City might be better than their results suggest, but they still haven’t been at their best for the whole year, and yesterday’s game isn’t really reflective of their form over the course of the season so far. If they had played like that every game, they’d be within a few points of Liverpool.

On an unrelated matter:

I know that there’s been a lot of talk this year about VAR, and about the handball rule, but I think there’s something else that also needs fixing in the Premier League, and it would be easy to do, and would dramatically improve things. If I were in charge of the League, I would introduce and enforce rules against mobbing the officials. Every controversial decision, and some non-controversial ones, sees players from both teams storming the referee, standing over him, sometimes physically bumping him with their shoulders and bodies as they protest either against or in favor of his decision.

This is the behavior of petulant children, and it makes a hard job even more difficult for the officials. You never see shit like this in rugby, where the rules allow only the team captain to discuss officiating decisions with the referees. American football players sometimes blow up at the officials, but never with the sort of mobbing you see in soccer. They should start giving out yellow cards for this shit, and if you actually make physical contact with the officials in the process of protesting a decision, it should be a red.

80

I would back this 100%