KingsX

I just completed this quiz. My Score 30/100 My Time 112 seconds  

Some on there were a bit salty when Maddison spurned their offer to join us. Wouldn't mind a bit if he showed them exactly how much they missed out on

It’s not a sickness. It’s simply a world that changed at the end of the last millennium and is not changing back. In today’s game sustained revenue is lifeblood. No club can leave it on the table and expect to reach its full potential. Especially an ambitious smaller club. Filbert Street exists only in memory. The current ground has never had a name but Walkers or KP. The name on it isn’t as important as the football played in it! You can reach a happy medium. Our ballpark is no longer “Cleveland Stadium”. But the concourse is full of murals, retired numbers and past titles are displayed, and there’s a circle of monuments. Meanwhile the outer walls, scoreboard and entrances tout the sponsors that help our small-market club compete with the New York Yankees.

Even in this megabucks football era, the character and intention of club owners are still as important as the money they bring. Points from a new article about Stan Kroenke’s takeover of Arsenal: Kroenke’s KSE sports empire is entirely debt-financed. The only assets are those of the clubs. Some shareholders (notably the Arsenal Supporters Trust) don’t want to sell, but will be compelled to, at a below-market price. Kroenke will have absolute control. Arsenal had begun to outspend profits even before missing out on Champions League football last year. The wage bill has ballooned past 60 percent of turnover. They are trying to unload high-earning players, even at significant loss. Bottom line: AFC will need CL payouts and near-zero interest rates to keep spending. If they don’t get both, assets may have to be sold to cover Kroenke’s debt. Their conclusion: It could mean an extended period of financial frugality, while others in England who are unconstrained by the limits of a self-sustaining model, such as Everton, Wolves or Leicester, perhaps, burst past them. Kroenke is a self-declared "investor," for whom football is a financial, not emotional activity. Most investors have an eye for a return, a yield in the form of dividends, and Kroenke is no different. A full takeover means there are no other shareholders to vote against that happening. Kroenke has demonstrated from his debt-geared share purchases that he has no taste for spending his own money. His acquisition of Arsenal has been conducted through loans raised in a zero-interest-rate world. That paradigm is now changing, though, with interest rates rising. Kroenke out? He’s only just getting all the way in. #thearse http://www.espn.com/soccer/club/arsenal/359/blog/post/3599768/arsenal-spending-beyond-their-means-will-stan-kroenkes-takeover-help-or-hinder

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Quite apt in this case TBF.

They had a decent PL eleven and their net spend was healthy -- 50M or so. On guys like Bissouma and Jahanbakhsh who should improve them and provide needed depth.

Or between 4th and 5th place? As Hosey works his third-season magic on Man U.

If you find a cat toying with and disembowelling a crippled mouse entertaining, this is the match for you.

Each side missing its best midfield player. Which makes a difference to exactly one out of the two. Hudders will struggle to notch 10% possession. This is such a waste of time. Meanwhile Burnley and Watford at 1-1 after 6'. NBC should switch at the half. I hope so.

an adjustment fivethirtyeight.com uses as part of determining the strength of a club's performance. I don't think it means much on its own ... Adjusted goals takes into account that not all goals are created equal: A team’s final score is reduced if a goal comes late in a game that it’s leading or when the opponent is a man down. (Meanwhile, goals that are scored in regular situations are adjusted upward to balance out the total number of goals across a league.)

You happen to be correct. Shot-based expected goals (xG) is an estimate of how many goals a team could have scored given the location of its shots and the players who took them. Non-shot expected goals is an estimate of how many goals a team could have scored given their nonshooting actions in and around their opponent’s penalty area.

Edited for you... When I started following this (not many years ago) they had one of the strongest identities of any club in the League. Nowadays you only think of their crap stadium, odious owners, and galling subsidies. Would love to see them drop.