mancunianfox

xG is misused as an expected score statistic which it wasn't designed for. TV coverage using this as an indicator for team performance is very stupid. It is supposed to be a more reliable way of assessing creative players than assists by recording the chance created rather than If they result in a goal. If you put in a really good through ball for jamie vardy that is likely to get recorded as an assist. If you put the exact same through ball to Bobby de cordova Reid the shot will likely hit the goalkeeper. Assists are only going to record the first one which isn't the player creating the chances fault. The ball played in and the chance created are the same but assists dont record those chances accurately. This helps identify players who are.making stuff happen but play in teams that dont have goalscorers to convert them.

To be fair Fatawu, mavididi, hermanson, doyle were decent additions and showed signs of reversing that trend. Only Cesare was a bit of a bust iirc. Last few seasons we have been weirdly obsessed with adding experience even though the model that works is clearly obvious.

Awful if we lose both him and Monga this Summer https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c5y4qpjqd7qo

I watch quite a bit of Stockport County, a 35 year old Ollie Norwood can look like Pirlo in this division and Louie Barry was definitely too good for the division last year. The league isn't great and I'm not sure the physicality is that much different to the Championship. You've got a lot more teams trying to dominate the ball which is trickling down the divisions but not a lot who are actually good at it and a team good at pressing should be able to win the ball back easily from defenders and keepers who are not good with their feet. Quick or technical players do stand out but the latter need to be tougher as they will get fouled a lot - I'd like to see a bit more pace in our side but then teams are going to play very deep against us because I don't think they will have the ball all that much.

Belgium and Portugal both gave Spain more of a game, French looked absolutely when out of posession. I think this was just a nightmare matchup for France and they would have faired much better against both England or Argentina. Glad France are out as they still worry me more as a potential England matchup even after getting completely nullified by the Spanish.

Assuming they go back to two progressing it adds 24 extra games over the current format, but compared to what we had before both are extremely bloated. This year there were more 9 more group games than total matches in the old format. 64 teams would be double what was played before... 32 teams, 8 groups played 48 group games and 15 knockout games - 63 games 48 teams, 12 groups play 72 group games and 31 knockout games - 103 games 64 teams, 16 groups play 96 group games and 31 knockout games - 127 games. 16th group would also be Group P. I can't get my head around that.

Yes I have built many. It's not quite the best time to build a PC as memory prices are still inflated but they are slowly coming down. I would advise against buying a really cheap off-brand case (cooling will be easier but quite often much easier to build in) and power supply in particular even though it is tempting to save there - it is one of the best advantages of building your own PC vs a lower end pre-built too. There is a rating system called 80 Plus for power supplies - there are some ok Bronze ones although they are a bit hit and miss - ideally you would want a Gold one. For specs, it depends on what you want to play really and what resolution your monitor is and then work back from there. For most uses a 6 or 8 core Ryzen CPU is fine - the graphics card is where it starts to get more complicated (and expensive). For reference the PS5 pro is somewhere around an RTX 5060 ti or RX 9060 XT so you could start from there and add/lower performance depending on your budget. There are loads of good youtube videos on sensible combinations of hardware for games and performance levels. Good luck, it's a really good way of learning about computers!

Taken from Joshua emerging at world level in 2017 I was intrigued by how many chances there was to realistically make this fight with the narrative of a decade in the making. Looking at the timelines I think there is only really one good chance in Summer 2021 to make the fight. Other than that AJ's tendancy to lose at the worst possible time, ruining his bargaining position plus Usyk's emergence and both fighters thinking they could beat him easily and get the upper hand in negotiations are huge spanners in the works. Are there any opportunities I am missing here? April 2017 - Joshua beats Klitschko, Tyson Fury is really fat and not competing. I can't really recall discussion about AJ vs Fury until after his comeback against Wilder which was the correct path to choose to get a belt. December 2018 - Fury v Wilder 1 - Bizarre result guarantees a second fight. June 2019 - AJ shock loss to Anthony Ruiz. Rebuild required to repair image. Feb 2020 - Fury v Wilder 2. Fury wins title. Rest of 2020 - COVID, enough said. Window in Summer 2021. Fury contractually tied to a third Wilder fight. Prob could get out of that if he wants. AJ has avenged loss. This is definitely when the fight should have happened instead of AJ/Usyk 1 which Joshua pursues while Fury is still messing around with a third Wilder fight. September 2021 - AJ loses a second time, the first of his two losses to Usyk. October 2021 - Fury finishes pointless Wilder trilogy. August 2022 - AJ second loss to Usyk. Fury gets wins against Whyte and Chisora due to the only two world level fighters worthwhile being tied together. Window in Summer 2023 but honestly not realistic with AJ coming off the two losses. Fury doing naff all during this year and Joshua trying to rebuild. Fury vs Usyk was the much more inticing matchup at this point with both undefeated. I don't recall why the usyk fight didn't happen until 2024, was Dubois a mandatory or was it war related? May and December 2024 - Fury has two losses to Usyk. A rematch was always likely if either man lost. September 2024 - Another shock loss for AJ, this time to Dubois. Window in 2025/2026- Both fighters struggling to rebuild after losses. Fury inactive. By this point the combined four Usyk losses really take the shine off but as a result it is probably the first time neither can claim an upper hand in the negotiations so will probably happen. Also worth pointing out AJ's car accident and loss of two friends which could still prevent this happening.

Good drives by Antonelli, Bearman and Unc Hamilton today. The Ferrari fight for third was fun. Quali has sucked but two pretty watchable races so far. The reliability issues have been both good and bad - a bit more unpredictable than the past few years when they had stagnant engines but engine failures triggering vsc/safety car has nerfed the strategy in both races so far which is a shame with the second half of the race being just managing a very long hard tire stint. There will be convergence at some point when teams start using data from the tests and these two races but typical first year of a new ruleset so far. Building F1 cars is really hard.

Every time he has spoken to the media it seems like he has been trying to get the sack for about eleven months. Going to be well happy to get out of there with a nice payoff.

Would appear so. I kept waiting for Lawrence to throw a redzone interception and give the momentum away but it didn't happen. He seems to have finally cleaned them up. Jags have a lot of good weapons and Lawrence is spreading the ball around. Impressed with their offense.

The crowd can be cruel at ally pally and I can understand players getting annoyed by it as it is often completely unwarranted and unfair. Even so, I am not sure if this is the right environment for Menzies to be putting himself in.

It does happen more on artificial playing surfaces (metlife is notorious) but it can easily happen on perfect grass pitches too. Parsons was at Mile High which is a grass pitch which is replaced regularly. I don't think their pitches are anywhere near as sophisticated as our football pitches over here and it still happens. I wonder if it is a side effect of the rise of sports science and and as players get bigger/faster/stronger it puts more and more stress on ligaments.

Looks like an ACL for Parsons as well. Shame, he has been brilliant the past four weeks in particular. Some big injuries for the GB as they also lost Watson too and their offense tailed off once he got injured. Really enjoyed the games last night - probably the best non playoff Sunday for a few years. Lots of good quality teams playing each other. Both conferences currently have strong wild card teams too - this would be easily the strongest set of wildcards since switching to seven playoff teams. Wouldn't fancy playing any of these: AFC : Bills, Chargers, Texans NFC : Seahawks, 49ers, Packers

That Jacks wicket is one of the worst I have seen in some time, what was he thinking? Plays a horrendous shot at a wide ball and instead of learning from his mistake he falls for the most obvious trap of all time playing the exact same shot at the same delivery the very next ball.

Will be difficult. They are two games back from the jaguars for the 7 seed as well. Expecting some questionable flags in their next few games for sure.

That't not an inspiring bunch of expiring contracts for reclaiming any money in January. Begovic is needed, Ayew and Ricardo have pretty much no value (age/injury) and teams would look to pick up on a free. Winks maybe but I imagine he might fancy being a free agent in the Summer. Daka's value declines with every minute he doesn't score in the championship and Marcal hasn't really done much for clubs to take a look at. Of that crop, Soumare somehow is the only one I can see a spanish/french club giving us a small fee for. Any rebuilding will likely have to wait until the Summer.

I don't think Leicester are good for anyone's health right now so prob best he stays away. We should be looking at what Nige and his team did right during that era as a model to rebuild the club and get out of this three year rolling FFP hell. I think he did three things well: Signed players based on attitude. We have definitely moved away from this. I nearly put character but some signings like Danny Simpson don't fit this but he worked really hard, didn't cause any trouble here and was well respected and liked by his team mates. He'd also move on from players acting up as quickly as possible. Pragmatic with style of play and fit this around what he had. Tried to build a good culture and reward/emphasise hard workers. I do worry that a lot of the younger managers around don't really value many of these aspects so finding someone like this, at that stage of their career, will be very difficult. Seems to be very much get about getting a team to play a certain way in the hope of landing a job at a bigger club rather than putting down roots and building something. That ends with either one good season but little success afterwards or falling face first and getting the chop. With Nige at least we got progressively better each season during both of his spells.

Not really. Defense was tired and there is enough time on the clock for the jags to kick a field goal that would end the game, especially as the kicker had already pinged one from 68 yards. They would only need to get 20 yards to get in FG range. The offense had moved the ball really well on that drive and the only option to win the game is to go for 2. A draw doesn't do too much for the Raiders as they are already so far back behind the other AFC teams. If it is any consolation NFL head coaches don't really understand this stuff either! Horrid end of game clock management happens two times a week at least.

I found out from the video last night and have never wanted a title to be clickbait as much as that one. Danya was the best chess teacher on the internet and his commentary was brilliant too. Very sad news - he has really struggled since becoming an obsession of Kramnik and it is hard not to put two and two together. That is an even more awful situation to comprehend though so I hope the reason is something else.

I still have no idea how to process that Giants/Broncos game. Gave up on the Broncos about three times during the first three quarters but man, that fourth quarter was unreal. Even then it was a rollercoaster with the horrible DPI call, one of the worst of the year. There are things I still don't like about this team though. We give up way too many penalties and Nix is only ever good when Payton stops being so conservative in his play calling. He has a bizarre amount of passes batted down too which is weird for someone who is alledgedly 6ft2. Still nice to be 5-2 but do worry about how good the Chiefs are starting to look.

Only watched the extended highlights but Grandad bowl (great name) was somehow one of the best games of the season so far.

Brighton have coped by doing exactly what the rules are designed to do – don’t offer second contracts, sell all your players on to the bigger clubs and sacrifice any chance of success for your own club. They’re hardly a shining example of how these rules make smaller clubs competitive; they have won and will not win, naff all.

With the Chiefs racking up weird losses and Justin Herbert getting crushed every game by his turnstile o-line I am feeling a bit better about the Broncos chances. The end of that game last night was Trevor Lawrence in full flow. Throws (yet another) horrendous redzone interception only for it to be chalked off by a penalty and then falls over on the next play only to somehow to cross the goal line like a crazy drunk and score. On the subject of penalties - it seems like there is a lot of sloppy play from all of the teams this year.

Nice tribute to Mourinho that by Enzo