Away Sweet Away from Home

At the cost of sounding the whiny-ass-b**ch that I'm trying not to be after Barca's mournful exit to blue pig dogs, I'm going to have to exhume the dessicated corpse of UEFA's Away Goals system. First the facts, let not Chelsea fans kid themselves that they won 3-2 on aggregate, the game was won 2-2 on Away goals, the Torres goal was for all practical purposes after the game was over, one of those keeper-comes-up-for-last-try counter-goals that are more a final whistle than the "knockout punch" a winning goal might otherwise have been. So now that we've established game was won on away goals, time to do some exhuming. The objective is to incentivize away teams to attack, make the game more exciting, and bottom line : reward teams that played better overall i.e in harder conditions (away). I'd argue what it's really done is make the home team in the 1st leg become more defensive, I'd much rather take a 0-0 at home into the return leg than a 2-1 or maybe even 3-1 victory. All 3 objectives therefore mega fail at very first hurdle, and I venture this is so because of 3 main flawed assumptions. 1) Home is inherently a huge advantage, for all teams 2) Easier to score at home and (therefore) concede away. 3) Goals scored under harder circumstances are the best proxy for "better team" overall.

The graph above shows how great a home advantage is just within each league, I find the results even more stark when I consider cross-league encounters like UCL, and Europa (but given these are flavored by having to play under the rule being analysed, it seemed a biased sample.) - for eg: Valencia have lost 24% of their Home games, and 29% of their away games so I've taken their net home advantage as 5%, Averaging this out for all of La Liga gives 23% while for Serie A it's 21%. My point is not only EPL at 14%, but also the league wise differences in number of teams that are actually better away than home - both showing the inherent assumption of Home being advantageous to not be true universally and more a function of football philosophy/style. Notable names in the right hand graph? The 3 league leaders Real Madrid, Juventus (who haven't lost any games so...), Manchester United - and before some smartass says "hey, that proves the best teams do better away hence Away goals is logical", that's a tautology of "The team that played better away, is the better team..because.... better teams play better away.." we're talking about the rule emanating from an assumption that Home teams are at an advantage. Clearly not, in some places more than others. like with Blue english pig dogs. Oh did I mention, EPL is also the only league (of these 3) where teams 11-20 travel better than 1-10 (something I would have found intuitive for all leagues)

2) Scoring and Conceding. I'm taking this separately and not a duh-sequitor from the "Home teams Win" assumption, since the rules prefer a team that loses 2-3 away and wins 1-0 at home. The graph on the left : Blue is Avg Home Goals / Game minus Avg Away Goals / game, red is similar for conceding though. My reading, especially since now overall goals scored / game bias gets removed, Liga teams score .6 goals less away than home, and concede .6 goals more away than home, compared to EPL at .4 - again saying the popular wisdom that teams score more at home, and concede more away is less a factor in EPL than Liga. Serie A is a really nice median column in almost every graph we see, testament to its simultaneously technical yet pragmatic style, but more on that some other time.

3) Away goals for the "Better Team" - Before quite advertantly (whose red squiggle informs me shockingly that it isn't really a word) opening the Pandora's box of mother of all existentialist footballism questions "How do you define a better team", whether in terms of possession, passes, chances etc - all of which are way beyond the intellectual capabilities of someone writing a blog post from office (does that explain all the extensive excel work by the way.... imagine how many points I've racked up by staring at a complicated work sheet of sizeable data tables all day...). But I started my rant saying Away Goals were presumably to incentivize previously defensive away teams to attack more, or in general make the game more exciting. The fact that it's done just the opposite might just render this assumption superfluous, but in the interest of argument, assuming an exciting game is what they were going for - I hardly think goals presuppose excitement. Ironically enough, if excitement was priority 1, why devise a method to eliminate extra time and penalties, I doubt spectators find the excitement of an attacking away team (which never happens anyway) more appealing than extra time and shootouts. So excitement is out. We're back to effectiveness, result orientation and all those nice words that were invented to describe EPL one day, so I'll straight away throw out any hopeful suggestions of draws being decided by possession stats, number of passes, or derivatives thereof. 

Barca clearly outclassed the crap out of Chelsea 83% possession and Xavi completing 66 more passes than the entire Chelsea team, the arguments that they deserved to crash out anyway were of meaningless possession, horrible finishing, and ruthless chance conversion by Chelsea, only the latter two of which I agree with even remotely. But at 2-1 up, and 2-2 on aggregate, agreeing that Away goals are fundamentally flawed, and also agreeing that maybe all draws going to extra-time/penalties are good for spectators but bad/unfair for teams, if we had to agree to decide the game based on the balance of the fixture (that doesn't mean possession due to above mentioned "wasteful possession" accusation, and that it incentivizes teams to randomly pass among back 4, though quite how that makes sense when both teams are trying the same doesn't really strike me...) - I suggest not just "chances created" since Barca are not just horrible finishers in this game, but all the time. I suggest goal extrapolation basis chance creation and conversion ratio statistics.... Barca, in all Liga games so far, have 563 Shots, 258 Shots on Goal, and 93 goals. That's a conversion ratio of 17% goals from shots, and 36% goals from shots on goal. Against Chelsea in the second leg, they had 23 Shots and 6 Shots on goal - using either metric it is 3.8 or 2.2 goals respectively. This gets added to Barca so they're at aggregate (taking lower metric of 2.2) of 4.2. Chelsea have 517 shots, 175 shots on goal, and 48 goals. A conversion ratio of 9% and 27% resp'ly, and given their 7 shots, 3 on target against Barca - have notional goal count of .65 or .82 - I'm taking the higher one meaning their overall aggregate is 3.82. Barca wins. Fvck you english blue pig dogs. 

Did I mention Bilbao and Valencia tonight need to hope for an away goals progression haha. I'm going for Bilbao through 3-2 on aggregate, Valencia through 4-4 on aggregate, only because I friggin need something to cheer after these last 2 weeks. Away goals FTW!

The Tragic Hero

That cartoon panel's a true story.... You can't make this sh*t up really. Just when you think life's not all bad, that we're in control of destiny, and that things will generally work out in the end if we keep the faith. Just when you think we are all protected by some cosmic justice that rights wrongs and sees good win out eventually, just when you start to believe - your trust in the universe gets shattered by Chelsea and Madrid kicking Barca's nuts (haha that was too tempting.... and yea that was the last time I'll trivialize Morosini's tragedy... but c'mon his parents did name him Morose-ini... you don't see too many Piermario Ecstasini's with sob stories that just...wont....quit....I don't suppose his parents and brother were named Pessimiatti, Gloomiano, and Mopetta, while his sister is probably called like....Daniela... coz y'know it's a popular Italian name....). In all seriousness, given the gravity of the situation, and seeing as how this para is now anyway too big to start the real post-material, may as well pay due respects to a footballer who died in tragic circumstances. George Best, you will be missed. R.I.P

It's been a tragic week, even suspiciously silver clouds had their dark linings to temper any sunshine that might have peeked through. Barca lost to Chelsea. Valencia are all but out of the Europa, and Bilbao not only lost their corresponding semi, but lost to a Portuguese team.... Then Barca went on to gift wrap the Liga and hand it to CRonaldo on a plate. The two silver clouds of Valencia cementing 3rd, and Juve cementing 1st each with a 4-0 thumping, were both condensed out of the uncelebratable vaporized corpses of attractive free-flowing Betis pretty much relegated, and adjective-less Roma pretty much out of the European places. So you can imagine after all I've been through this past week, I'm not going to be too sympathetic about ONE random Serie B heart attack casualty (apparently, 1 out of 3 deaths worldwide are cardiovascular, where's your bleeding heart for them... I'm not saying we should raise awareness for heart disease, I'm saying it's only fair we try and balance the playing field by introducing similar odds in football, how much more exciting would football be if 1 in 3 players died of heart attack in any given match. Yes, I'm talking Jason Statham chemical fix in Crank, for the footballers who are in bottom 30 percentile of distance run in a game, exception to the safe-list being if your name is Ramires...)

I'll keep the Valencia, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Roma tragedy for another day, today we mourn the Barca mammoth fail. I guess most people have had their say on this, haters have gleefully bashed their meaningless possession fetish and helplessness in absence of referee bias, fans have sullenly pointed to possession stats and their anti- anti-football thesis, while mature neutrals have been quite nice by not being quick to start trashing the system that they till last week slobbered over. On some level of greater-good-utilitarianism, I suppose I'm not completely unhappy that one team (that isn't Valencia may I add) doesn't attain godlike invincibility, although it could be argued neither Chelsea nor Madrid have really defeated Barca at "Football" or our popular understanding of that word at least. The irony of these 2 really important Barca defeats : Chelsea punked a dominant Valencia side earlier in the UCL, and Madrid sucker punched a dominant Valencia at Mestalla earlier in Liga with a best-in-class Counter attack goal - WTF is the difference between Barca and Valencia then?? apart from the small matter of 26 points I mean.... Ridiculously deluded rhetoric aside, I conclude Barca are either tired or scared. 

Not much tactical analysis to add to this flawless ZM piece, except that I think if you were to plot the number of 1-2's we've seen from Barca, the graph spectacularly nose dives over the length of this season - Barca goals gradually depending less on dynamic MF's with their intelligent runs, rapid passing and assists, and more on Get out of Jail free Messi. It's always been easy to blame this on Iniesta being pushed up wide, like against Chelsea, but against Madrid he played in MF with no width responsibilities since Tello started and no defending responsibilities since Busquets and Thiago both dropped really deep. Watching him mazily running, and exchanging passes to burst beyond the defensive line, is a wonder of football, and the solution to this having dried up doesn't lie in pushing him up further forward. I imagine tomorrow's Chelsea return fixture might eventually just depend on Messi scoring, but realistically or at least in the interest of sustainability - Iniesta making more runs from deep, and exchanging more 1-2's with Xavi/Messi/Alves should be the key. However, the eternal Pessimiatti that I am, I have no real reason to believe they can win this game, neither team is going to play even slightly different from the first leg. Head : 0-0 and Chelsea through. Heart : 3:1 and Barca through. Not playing a fit Pique against Drogba in the 1st leg was surely the tactical fail of the decade (knowing how irony works in mysterious ways, he'll probably play the second leg, give a penalty and get sent off....although if the sending off is for viciously grinding Drogba's ugly face into the ground after one of his dives, then I'll Ecstasini-ly take the redcard, throw in a red for Cesc too just for kicks)

Manchester Reloaded

It's entirely conceivable that the Manchester is a world that's been pulled over our eyes to hide us from the truth that they suck, at least looking at the ManU zombies patrolling the world. I've mentioned before how much fun it was to hate ManU back when they had Nistelrooys, Ronaldos, and Beckhams, now it's just sad. Looking at the anonymity of their side, and odd stale weak spate of negativity at Giggs, Scholes, and Rooney - all hate has really boiled down to residual and proxy hate aimed at their utterly contemptible fan base. Nani and Anderson arrived at ManU to much glee from me, 2 ugly mugs from Portugal, could I need any more high octane hydrocarbon for my hate furnace! Nani kept up his end of the bargain and made for many a fun filled moment of enjoyable expletive throwing and mutilative imagery, but Anderson has let me down completely. When ManU were running out of things for me to hate, when I needed him the most, he gave injury plagued seasons, and sometimes the sheer audacity to actually have a vaguely goodish game here and there (think no further than 8-2 Arsenal haha, my ManU hate was at its all time record nadir that night). But all that aside, nothing exemplifies his treachery more than giving up his place to a bunch of absolute nobodies like Cleverley.

The Central MF is the first person I really look for in a side, I can't really call a side good without a good Central MF, sides are made or brade by the quality of their Central MF's (hint : so I guess it's clear what position I play......... Leftback haha). I know Anderson keeled over with a seriousy knee injury last year, but I assume he's back but just down the pecking order, behind all of Carrick, Giggs, Scholes, and Cleverley. That's just depressing, much like the first two episodes of Game of Thrones season 2, coz all the non-annoying characters are the ones you know eventually.... said too much? Not that Nigel de Jong or Gareth Barry are much better in the non-anonymity and talent categories, but at least there's Yaya and theoretically Pizarro. I wish I knew enough about EPL to continue this post analyzing how ManU have pulled off (pretty much) the league with quite possibly the least talented team of the top 7-8 teams. Frankly, (I don't give a damn, but also.. - ) I'm surprised none of our usual google reader football feeds have ever cast a contemptuous eye on ManU's upward class mobility this season, leading me to believe the rest of EPL is just as talentless and anonymous (not that I didn't hold that belief anyway). Off for debauchery, need to wash off this dirty feeling of EPL talk with river of sin. Meanwhile Madrid tonight to condemn Gijon further, and Barca to help Valencia extend their gap over Levante.

Footballenstein

Barca MF has come a long way since Cocu, Xavi, Deco eras. Xavi Iniesta playing together in their first season revelled in the space between opposing sides' 2 banks of 4 (MF, DF) having to find their passes through the final 4. Now, teams facing them have so compacted their 2 lines that space only exists in front of and behind a sea of 8, meaning their through passes to say Messi/Alexis still leave one line of 4 to beat. The other option is of course break clean through beyond even the last 4, like Cesc, but that's obviously off the ball and never really with an intent to dictate play. At the cost of being just an annoying echo of the recent entropy article, Pep's main aim of a 3-man D and 4-man MF might be to leave one player free to do what Xavi/Iniesta could do before teams compressed their 2 lines of 4 - break through to penultimate layer and find a pass. Cuenca providing width on the right (although neither as much nor as effectively and often, as Alves whom - presumably - he replaced) and Pedro on the left, was the nicest thing to happen to Xavi and especially Iniesta who's too often been saddled with width burden this season. Dominated play, frequently found themselves with only a back 4 to beat, and found dangerous passes with consummate ease. Truly Messien performance from Iniesta this game. Contrast with Roma over in Italy who comprehensively beat Udinese playing possibly their most freakish formation this season - with Jose Angel being the only player in the back 4 playing his natural position. Main strength over the formation in their Lecce loss was Totti coming in behind Lamela and Osvaldo to completely overrun Udinese. Enrique still persists with Gago and Marquinho who despite being really sub par at CMF, have had their inadequacies masked by DeRossi's hybrid role of bringing the ball out of defense and starting moves.

Meanwhile, Valencia and Atletico play scarily identical formations in their respective matches and get identical scorelines, but opposite results. Valencia thump Rayo 4-1 (were awarded a ghost penalty, but then also had a perfectly legal goal disallowed, so net 4-1 anyway) while Atletico got thumped (though an unfair description) by the real Madrid. Che dropped all strikers and went with Jonas up front on paper, though Pablo and Alba were almost always feeding the ball into him and then rushing past him for the swift return. Atletico started with Falcao up but similarly, Arda and Adriano fed it into him and raced past, all in all a fascinating preview of what the Valencia Atletico Europa Semi might entail. On Atletico's expected implosion the past 2 months, it's almost like they play well once they forget what Simeone had told them to do, with the first 15-20 minutes of each half being horrendously disjointed and then the natural talent of players kicking in while Simeone's words echo out, to make for a strong 2nd half of each half. Not his biggest fan obviously. Also, not the biggest fan of Tim Stannard's article making Luis Perea out to be useless! But big fan of Juve's inevitable plodding towards the title, the same as ever formation, except maybe Pepe got pushed up much further, and Vucinic dropped little deeper, a stable as hell formation probably helped by their low injury stats, like this nice article points out.

High five: Arsenal vs Man City

Once again it is that time of the month (no, not that time of the month) when I ought to post on the blog if only to keep my place in the first page that the readers see when they come in their hordes for their regular football fix after growing tired of the scientific mumbojumbo that is ZM and pseudcentre that is runofplay. Three narzy articles about ex-epl leagues complete with acres of space occupying cartoons pushing my concise yet punchy posts down the page - it's time I wrote some drivel hard-hitting analysis to retain any sort of claim to be a co-author on this blog.

Well, well. It was a game Wenger described as "want-win" rather than a "must-win"  and only he knows what he meant, but looks like whatever he wanted to convey, he conveyed properly to the team. Right from kickoff it looked like there was only one team on the field that wanted to win, and it did. Manu's win against QPR only added to the pressure that City were already under and they duly collapsed. Arsenal dominated throughout the game but for a small spell after the second half, were completely on top both in terms of possession and chances created (man city 0 shots on target) and thoroughly deserved the victory. The score, the goals, the lineup and what actually happened during the game can be easily looked up from anywhere else on the web. Instead  you will be now treated to some choice observations that originated in my brain and happen to be five in number (thus giving me the idea for a new series that will be abandoned midway):

1. Szcz needs to improve his distribution. His shot blocking is good, his command over corners is good, his quickness to come off his line is cautiously bold but his distribution is godwaful. He has started to try these Valdesesque (that's a tough name to esqueify - a word made of two suffixes!) playing out from the back short passes to Verm/Kos but they are so misdirected and/or lacking in weight that they are easily intercepted by the opponent's striker. Once or twice Szcz's passes went straight to Aguero - thankfully game reader Kos was around to clean up.

2. Sagna's superb ability to win headers is something that the team has been missing when he was out. I am liking the good use that has been put to in the new routine of goalkick to Sagna if only to keep possession of the ball when it is our goalkick. More often than not, Sagna is able to flick it in the path of Walcott who can immediately create a good attacking chance with his run behind the back four. But that would mean not first-touching it  right out of play.

3. I bemoaned Song's inefficient something-good-comes-out-of-it to spectacular-over-the-defence-chips ratio in his QPR game, but he compensated for his wasteful flamboyance against QPR with his measured passing against Man City. His over the top ball, when it came, was perfect and went straight to RVP who directed it towards goal with a header that beat Joe Hart but couldn't beat the woodwork. This is what Song has to do more often. Move up into space against teams whose midfield back away and defence don't press up and make opportunistic passes with a greater chance of something good coming out of it, not blindly gamble away sitting in the centre of the park.

4. With Gibbs out for at least a couple of games due to groin-fatigue (not making this up), the left back duties fall to Santos at a crucial time. Santos is by nature a more attacking player than Gibbs and is often quick to get into very high-up positions. While his touch is good and he has a good presence on the ball, his defensive abilities leave a lot to be desired. The first thing he did after coming on against City was to be caught slow footed by Balotelli, hauling him down blatantly conceding a free kick on the edge of the D. He is far slower than Gibbs, but what he lacks in pace he should more than compensate by his sense of positioning and attacking contribution. It remains to be seen how he will cope against the wingers of Wolves and Wigan.

5. The merits of taking the occasional shot from outside D was in ample display when Arteta sweetly struck the ball into the net after Pizzaro boy failed to deliver for Man City (see what I did there?). It is all nice and cute to say you will pass the ball into the goal but when the rubber hits the road and push comes to shove and cliche comes to cliche it is better to let loose a rasping shot to see what it might create. Especially when there is less than ten minutes on the clock and you bloody well want to win the game. It's a want-win game, remember?

Right, this should keep me going for another three posts at least, unless Narz's next post is a graphic novella eating up hectares of precious blogspace.

Highway to the Danger Zonal

For anyone who cares, the answer was that Teachers cant marry their pupils, and by learning from her, he had become her pupil (which only proves my school English teacher either didn't read the Vikram Vethaal morality tales, or didn't care. I'll never forgive her. I'm just kidding don't worry....coz I forgive her). For the even less anyone who cares, this post is about the strange anomalies in Man-man defending lately, the anomaly being that they still exist somehow. School basketball usually teaches us quite early that Zone D is really cool to announce, and either useless or impossible to pull off, resultantly also teaching us quite early how to announce cool stuff and then actually do useless crappy versions of said stuff (kinda like this blog...), which is why we like Italian football - to watch nice technical Zone D. Which makes it a little hard to understand the number of 3 man D's this season in Serie A, quite a few articles towards the end of last year about all the Back-3 teams and how this makes tactical sense against a 2-man opposition attack leaving 1 extra defender to sweep, just add to the dissonance about why this even matters in a Zone D. Even Cannavaro, arguably the best Man-marker I've ever seen played more of zone D with Nesta/Cordoba/Thuram/Helguera for Italy/Inter/Juve/RMA and only seemed to play man-man with Materazzi (both Inter and Italy).

I'm bringing this up because of the Madrid-Valencia game last Sunday (a.k.a 2nd best game of this season behind Valencia-Barca at Mestalla, and I honestly believe this is probably public opinion too, not just a Valencia fan's) - where Topal man marking Cronaldo was the ostensible man-marking debut for Valencia in recent history. The most defensive of a Central MF trio usually remains laterally mobile, while the other two are laterally immobile but shuttle up and down, this makes sense universally, for eg: at Barca with Busquets, Roma with DeRossi, Juve with Pirlo, and until recently Valencia with Albelda. This game saw Tino and Parejo shuttling up the pitch, but not sideways (their actual strength), and on the other hand Topal man marking Cronaldo and hence stuck on the right of field, leaving a nice big hollow in the center for Ozil to pull strings from. Topal finally peeled away (or Cron got tired and gave him a break) midway through the first half, and Valencia dominated the game till the end of H1. 20 minutes of dropping Man-man yielded the only period of dominance for them in the game, the rest was one way traffic by Madrid in a brilliant game nonetheless, that should have ended 3-3 types.

Man-marking Cron is always going to be tempting, compared to Messi who floats around all over the pitch and who in any case needs men-marking in task forces of 4 to 5 (who saw his pass to Pedro through 4 defenders??? no goal, after Pedro instead tried setting up Cesc who had another one of those "even Tazim-cesc-loving-bigot had to agree he suckkss" games), but putting an MF on the job instead of RB Ricardo Costa was really strange, and neglected the fact that Ozil is really the danger man in this team (especially since Benzema got pwned all night by Jordi Alba). Unfortunately, it's eureka moments like these that make you realize this crap has been happening all season everywhere beneath notice. Roma play an attractive sounding 3-man D, but end up with DeRossi man-marking the attacking MF like in the disastrous loss to Lecce last week (where Lamela, Osvaldo, AND Krkic playing together made a mockery of the general perception that team compatibility is important. Sarcasm...before you head-scratch too much), and Milan's Defense plays tight zonal, but mutate to man-man when Ambrosini plays instead of Van Bommel (not that I'm complaining. Die Milan Die). Through that lens maybe Pirlo's had a much larger effect on Juve tactics than I've given him credit for, usually saving praise for Marchisio and Vidal instead - watching Chiellini Barzagli and Pirlo deal with Palermo last week was beautiful, and they're on their way to Les Invincibles Scudetto!

Barca Getafe tonight, Madrid derby tomorrow - in what should be the title decider round, since after this tricky fixture the rest of the season is quite straightforwardedly predictable in that Barca win all their matches, and Madrid win all except at Camp Nou hence ending 1 point ahead of Barca. Valencia meanwhile drop to 4th behind Malaga, and are in danger of dropping out the UCL places to ..gasp... friggin Levante!!! humiliating...

Withering Heights

A comeback post cartoon that tries too hard, obviously points to the fact that I had to purposely dumb down the cartoon so the overall aptness of the post covering Valencia's recent try-too-hard-yet-comeback performance clicked (with the usual rider that only I'm allowed to say it tried too hard, the rest of you probably just didn't understand the intricacies behind the joke). Los Che 4-0 against Alkmaar seals a semifinal with Atletico (who themselves were quite bad, in summary - Bilbao looking magnificently superior in the Europa league for some reason) after a game not particularly well played by either team. Valencia had probably the least possession I've seen outside of Barca games (although after I check the stats, it says 50%) this season, and looked to be running 2 steps ahead of their feet, trying altogether too hard to lay siege on goal without bothering about build up. Didn't really manifest in route one EPL or even lightning wing crossenal gunnerism, but more of the gambling ball-0.2% success rate-Cescity that breaks down most of Barca's moves (although in Pep's defense, Cescity when inside the box i.e Cesc playing forward against A.C looked both dangerous and less irritating when the balls failed, unfortunately he tired within 15mins and dropped back in MF, where Cescity is more irritating than even the word Cescity, or the strategy of meaningfully nonsensifying words by adding ism, ity, or ify).

While I'm tempted to branch this post off into that wonderful AC-Barca game, made tempting both by the itching need to salivate over Iniesta, Nesta, and the simultaneous realization that I had nothing interesting to add to "Valencia comeback, but tried too hard...", I shall still show enough restraint and return to Valencian topic at hand, made necessary both by the hardness of try that went into the cartoon, and the simultaneous realization that I had nothing interesting to add to "Iniesta and Nesta....like wow....like really....wow". The Valencia XI for the AZ game was probably the tallest I've ever seen, only Costa and Alba made it at all necessary for me to change my neck angle. Giants at Goal and DF aside, Mathieu Topal Jonas Soldado make for an average attack height that would almost touch an NBA player's knee - that's friggin gigantic.... contrast with days of yore as white smurfs Villa, Silva, Mata, Pablo, Banega ran the show. Last year, Barca bulldozing their way to the UCL was pointedly ironic given they were the smallest team in the competition, arguably (not much argument according to me though..) their sudden bulldozerization (not meaning to expurgate Shakespearean works of passages considered vulgar) hinged around Villa taking over from fi-fy-fo-Ibra. Small players are purportedly faster, turnier, and more skillful, meaning Small teams are probably the same.

Valencia/Barca have traditionally had midget teams (right back from 2000), while Madrid seem to have much taller ones. Which makes tomorrows massive Valencia-Madrid game slightly weird. If Parejo replaces Tino, it will be by far the tallest Valencia team I've seen, against probably the tallest collection of skillful players in world football - Kaka, Ronaldo, Ozil, Benzema, Alonso, Higuain (if you thought Ozil was short, he's 181 cm...). Marcelo is the only midget in RM today, and he's not even 1st choice, 181cm Coentrao is. They might be rubbishing the train of thought that short stuff have low centers of gravity and are therefore generally more skillful, but their primary skill is the blinding and scary pace of a runaway train (never comin back...wrong way on a one-way trackkk...ok off to youtube). The Valencian giants have no pace, don't runaway, and supposedly don't train either, they're just taking up space that a short player could have occupied (volumetrically speaking, that 2 short players could have occupied). Need Piatti and Pablo H. in on this game to add some much needed height disadvantage, think Rio Ferdinand slowly ruminating on the ball looking up for team mates and then kicking air just to realize Pedro had stolen the ball and was scurrying away quickly into the nearest semi circular hole in the wall. Game prediction : Valencia go ahead, lose 2-1. Nice stat in some midweek article that if comebacks were theoretically not allowed in Liga, Valencia would currently top the league. yay......