blaaklint

wilf playing backheels, he's a changed man!

I agree that he looks better further forward (also where he played for Anderlecht) but afaik he spent most of his time at Sampdoria in a deeper-lying role, so you'd think he must be somewhat capable

wout this season has won 0 out of 3 aerial duels. jannik is 5 from 8. vestergaard also has a better record than faes over the last five seasons. wout is definitely faster tho

I'd completely forgotten about that tbh. I think that goal was really awful decision-making from Martinez, if he stays deeper then its a far harder chance. Maybe technically a 1v1 but a very different kind of chance.

It wouldn't surprise me if that's the first time in his career he's ever been put through truly 1-on-1 with the keeper. I think the problem was more his first touch, he needed to push it further ahead of himself. I think he should have probably also hit it to the keepers over side. Having said all that, he should learn from this. I think for the most part, he had a decent game. Sometimes gets bullied a little bit but his off the ball movement is exemplary.

Left-footers are massively overrepresented in professional football. Instead of 12% of the population, roughly 23% of professionals are left-footed. Doesn't change your point, but just kinda cool to know.

i find the arrogance claim odd tbh. he hit it down the middle, which is a very standard and widely-accepted tactic for penalties. the goalkeeper moves 97% of the time, so penalties down the middle are . i suspect he meant to hit it higher, but at worst its an okay penalty which he slightly mishit. if he'd gone for a panenka then maybe i could buy an adgument for arrogance.

i might be wrong but i think markstats' xg model isn't supposed to be very good. opta or statsbomb for instance are more widely used by professional clubs - although i would imagine some clubs have built their own proprietary models

tbf i think vestergaard had a pretty decent game bar the yellow card

can only assume there will be chants of "our danny ward is worse than yours" reverberating around the stadium

Problem is never the top speed, its the acceleration. CBs basically never get to top speed unless they're running back from a corner.

Average goal celebrations in the PL last year were above 60 seconds for every team. We were at nearly 90

If you take a look at fbref, Souttar completes fewer passes, less progressively, and goes long far morr often than JV. A lot of that will be team/coach-specific ofc but there's not a lot of evidence that Harry's any better than OK on the ball. If you throw in that last season, Souttar was in the bottom percentage of CBs in top 5 leagues for tackling dribbling players, that doesnt sit favourably for him either. I will concede that he is exceptionally good in the air, but I just don't think that's going to be as important to our general play tbh.

Whisper it quietly but Faes might be the best CB the championship's ever seen* *citation needed

It's amazing how much lower the intensity is than in the Prem

a little bit of column a, a little bit of column b

tbf enzo isn't gonna turn around in a press conference and go "yknow what, i just think harry's crvp at football"

He's mint at free kicks but very average from open play?

Romeo has pretty good ballwinning numbers but isn't any good on the ball. JWP is a decent player but his numbers are vastly infkated by how good he is from free kicks and corners. From open play, he's very meh. There's a reason that Southanpton were even worse than us last season, and its not because any of their players are great.

31:16

i'm somewhat skeptical of the MRI testing, given that the initial study did not include anybody of sub-saharan background. its only really applicable within the populations which they conducted the study on. a later study using players from ghana found there was little correlation between age and growth plate fusion. also, top level professional footballers are not normal and so are likely to deviate somewhat from the general population, or even football adolescents which didnt go on to a professional career.

Don't see how this has been Americanised at all. The changes are about getting more time with the ball in play.

Heat/humidity are both beneficial for training for up to a month afterwards. Dehydration is the main issue but as long as the staff manage it sensibly, it shouldn't be a problem.

Its not just PR (although that will be a significant part of it), but there's also a pretty strong basis that training in hot conditions can improve athletic performance for around a month, even when returned to colder climes.

I'm more concerned with the fact that we've discovered how to clone players and the only person we've done is Arlo Doherty