EPL Rapture Revisited

Nothing quite reminds me as much of my previous posts as other insignificant unknown stuff I've done that nothing reminds me of either... and so on so forth till there's a rift in the wormhole that interpolates a timeline reminding me of last year's ambitious EPL Rapture series (although given it was a 4-part post, it's slightly less ambitious than suffixing "S01E01" on ill fated ventures like "Goal Maal" by Dr.P.Henry fellow writer) after Barca blew EPL kingpins ManU out of the sky. Firstly, let it not be said that I hadn't warned you about important games and post expectation bell curve meaning low probability of any word on the match itself although admittedly I did manage my 2 cents on the relegation battle which featured a lower probability on the curve than a meaningless Chelsea-Bayern final. On that note, you've probably seen the game yadayada I have nothing to add, except that we are all going to die... still want to waste precious moments reading a match review? Why not instead invest in a few moments going through our analysis of why we are all going to die .....knowledge is power, and the last thing you want after ascending the 8 circles of hell is to find the Merovingian between you and the pearly gates sipping wine and saying "and thees is ow you come to me? wisout why... wisout power???" Just to recap, we are all going to die.

To the grudging credit of most Chelsea fans, none of them are shameless enough to claim they won this game fair and square. They ground out an ugly grimy sludge concocted with the oozing bubbling congealed mass of their blood, sweat, phlegm, and opponent voodoo extracted from the lone hair on Robben's head. Not the prettiest sludge you could picture (yes there do exist pretty sludge picturizations, I for one maintain the saliva of Cameron Diaz brewed with the vitreous humor of Charlize Theron to be quite a heady mixture...), and perhaps also a slight exaggeration of real events (Robben has 2-3 hairs at least...) but the point is no one's really debating who played the better football that night, and that's a big step forward at least. Now we can get past arguing about defining "better" football, and smoothly transition to the heart warming conclusion that good football finishes last so to stop wasting time dribbling balls around orange cones and instead start pounding the gym and making appointments with bionic alloy implant surgeons (Chelsea is one step ahead, no more implants in calves, thighs or feet for power muscle performance...that is so 20th century. Instead remove the brain and replace it with a block of alloy that then slowly distributes alloy to all parts of the body, especially to the part that doesn't question why distribution happens from the skull and not the heart....). So while Chelsea fans wont be writing blogs about how they destroyed Bayern and brought about Bundesliga Rapture (coz I'd sue them for plagiarism...), let's not kid ourselves into thinking the Rapture isn't upon us. If Mourinho winning Liga, and Simeone beating Valencia and Bilbao to the Europa were the first few broken seals no one really paid attention to, Chelsea beating Barca and Bayern (although with small picture in mind, I do hate Bayern quite a bit...) to the UCL is the penultimate seal. I'm still waiting for England, France, or Portugal to beat Spain and Italy to the Euro next month - before I formally pronounce apocalypse, give away all my ....some of my... sell at reasonable rates all my stuff and head for the Himalayas.

Unfortunately, from many failed attempts I've come to realize it's hard to convince people the apocalypse is upon them without hard proof (although what more proof I needed last year than the fact that I'd been focused and productive at work for 2 days straight, I'll never know...). It's almost as if people are unwilling to accept that their world is going to end in a fiery ball of flames, geez big deal there's always the option of divorce later y'know.... and swinging... but back to flame balls, I figured just saying "they play ugly non-football" wasn't much better than growing a beard and walking the street with that double sided board saying repent repent end is nigh, although I personally find those street doomsayers quite terrifying and convincing enough make me reevaluate my priorities.... I now brush twice a day, sometimes.. So I pulled the stats on the past 10 years UCL winners, and instead of "ugly non-football" I'm using the convenient proxy of Chelsea not even being very good at the ugly non-footballness betrayed by their 6th place finish in the ugly non-football league (which is understandable given they're up against the champions of ugly non-football like ManU and Arsenal). The UCL winners of the last 4 years had all topped their respective country's leagues. The worrying thing is that the first half of the decade didn't have such an obvious correlation - starting off with Madrid (5th in Liga) beating Valencia to the 2000 title. Compare in this 1st graph, the 4 UCL teams of 2000 with 2008 and tell me which makes more sense...

Obviously some leagues are more competitive, it's purportedly harder to come 3rd in EPL than in Liga (why this is hogwash is for another day) so check the 2nd graph on points, since average points of all leagues (except the eastern european ones of course) are very comparable - meaning competitiveness of a league eventually evens out as we take in lower percentiles of team positions. First half of the decade, UCL winners consistently score less points than the runner up and semi finalists, 2nd half of the decade reverses and the team good enough to win the UCL is obviously good enough to win its league and score more points on average than the other UCL top 4. 2012 reversal might just be the Liverpool 2005 or AC 2007 one shot fluke, but in a radical twist to the entire tale - to be honest I kinda really liked the UCL of the first half of the decade when Attack v/s Defense nemesis contests were always Liga v/s Serie A, like the brilliant Juve 2003 campaign where they beat Barca in the quarters and then Madrid in the semis (before losing out to ugly AC in the finals, also the year where Inter defended like in an LOTR last stand scene and beat a completely marauding and dominant Valencia...probably the last truly world-class Valencia team). But Italian defending was a pleasure to watch, technically sound, positionally impressive, and wonderfully calm on the ball under pressure in dangerous positions.. Now Attack vs Defense is Liga v/s EPL and its a stain on football, and not the nice flavored stain that you want to finger and lick when noone's watching, think more oil spill killing all supply of oxygen and causing asphyxiated death (as in I want to choke myself to death just to stop watching them...). So anyway...that's kinda it... if you were looking for a key takeaway, how about the image of Cameron Diaz saliva and Charlize theron eye-goo....

Stress-Traumatic Post Disorder

It's strangely popular practice for some reason, to measure the success of our intellect by educational degrees, work achievements, research papers, and the ability to win Settlers of Catan with a gap of 6 points (popularity of said practice is still being evaluated, although now it strikes me that the popularity and its status as practice are probably inversely proportional) - I measure the intellect's successful plunge across another sewer flooded week by the number of times I feel like Lucky Eddie from Hagar, 0 : Sped across sewer in James Cameron's Mariana trench probe. 2-3 : Swam across sewer with snorkel on back of a turtle 5-6 : Swam across sewer without snorkel and with Turtle on back >10 : Drowned halfway, eaten by turtle (monstrous sewer turtle, it's not completely humiliating...). This week's wonderful Lucky Eddie episode involves our protagonist being told by Hagar to keep a lookout on the pier, with invaders expected. Invading hordes proceed to flood the village by Horse, Foot, Jeep, Helicopter, Jetpack and pillage away while Eddie watches the pier stoically. Eddie - me. Pier - Zaragoza. Pillage Village : Villarreal. Where...the...f%^&....did that come from!!!

In hindsight it could have seemed a bit optimistic to expect them to take at least a point off Europa Champions Atletico - who had absolutely nothing to play for, were coming off the back of a successful and tiring European campaign - but I wouldn't really know, since there's a huuuge banner saying "SEGUNDA" that's blocking my hindview mirror (that sounded much closer to an enema than I'd expected....) It's been 6 days and I'm still in shock, a looottt more in shock than last year's Deportivo relegation - that was a team whose golden age players were gone, and were playing without the rich talented squad Villarreal have. This shock is more like their Galician rivals Celta Vigo going down in 2003-04, but that was just the professional shock of a really good team going down, this was personal.... this was one of my teams! (yes I have sooo many teams. If you have a problem with that, what do you think of your mom having sooo many men.) After that unwarranted but vastly satisfying jab, which wasn't very good come to think of it, let's get to the conspiracy theories. I was really looking for some dirt on Granada aka ugly ass team playing ugly ass football, but unfortunately there came a barrage of dirt on Zaragoza (yes another team I like, if you have a problem with that, you're.....like.....stupid........there I said it). 

After that unwarranted vastly satisfying AND quite good jab, let's get to the conspiracy theories... Rayo tells Granada that they're safe. Villarreal tells Atletico they have nothing to play for, and Getafe have 3 men sent off against Zaragoza... Zaragozan referee apparently "screws" Granada in the previous round resulting in their loss to Real Madrid, a fixture Granada had obviously taken for granted to be a facile victory - not unreasonable given a high flying season where they've scored 11 goals less than CRonaldo alone. What a sham, I can't believe this ugly ass team gets to stay in Liga! or to rephrase, I can't believe one more ugly ass team gets to stay in Liga (a close thing between Levante, Sevilla, and Granada.... and I'm not really getting into Levante's blinding season...). But back to the Villareallycrap, what a woefully hilariously off-the-mark post this was, I assume at the time I would have been hoping my caustic tough-love would spur the team on to realizing their potential and winning back my favor... now I sadly conclude our 1 reader wasn't the Villarreal coach.. 

I can't believe nothhinggg changed from that pathetic game against Barca, unless you count Rossi and Nilmar missing pretty much most of the season after that. Enough dandruff has been shaken from Lotina's target-marked scalp, so I'll take the high road and... WTF WERE THEY THINKING????? Anyway, slight silver lining is both Depor AND Celta are on their way back! How awesome is that. Villarreal B get demoted to the third division since two teams can't compete in the same league, I was wondering if it might be allowed for them to get promoted up to Liga? Villarreal B in Liga, Villarreal in Segunda.... but possible ruling aside, there's also the small matter of them being 15 points off the last playoff spot, with 4 games in hand.... impossible? maybe Lotina can help, after all I thought Villarreal getting relegated was impossible.... ok improbable... actually it looked quite likely but WTF WERE THEY THINKING!!!!!! LOTINA???? Joins Hiddink, Koeman, and Ranieri in my blacklist.

P.S : The Champions League final is tonight, did anyone notice? Most inconspicuous UCL Final in modern times! Chelsea probably going to do what they do best. Nothing. but end up winning anyway... Really hope Toni Kroos starts, coz me likes what me sees (and I'm not licking my lips while saying that, so don't imagine it...)

Did you know...

..that Arsenal have the highest short passes per game in the league? Putting the ball on the ground and passing it around has been central to Arsenal's style of play and this particular stat shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has watched even the odd Arsenal game. Wenger's answer when he was asked what he looks for in a player is unforgettably sparse - a good first touch and a good pass. That is all. (If I were the interviewer my follow up question would have been "Walcott?", but never mind) His belief in building a team with such players shows through in the statistics. At 503 passes per game, Arsenal sit comfortably at the top of EPL, followed by Man City, Swansea and Man Utd. What about the passmasters of La Liga, I hear you La Liga supremacists holler. Surely the El TechincalWizards dwarf the English Ogres when it comes to playing football the way it should be played? Surely?

Combining the teams of La Liga and EPL, quite expectedly, Barca come tops at a mammoth 657 passes per game thereby annoyingly skewing my graph and messing up my y-axis. I have omitted them in the graph to make things more readable (and competitive). Next in line, albeit a distant second, is Arsenal beating some obvious contenders like Madrid, Bilbao and Valencia (who are some way down at 393) very, very comfortably if I may add. What is striking is for all the depictions of the Spanish league as the short ground passing, highly technical, pure footballing league and the EPL as physical brutes plying their Rugby trade in the wrong sport, it is the EPL sides which dominate the top 10 positions. 

I will have to admit I was very surprised to see Liverpool and Chelsea beat a team like Bilbao who are way more exciting to watch the mind-numbing, paint drying style of play of the English sides like Liverpool. So what explain this discrepancy between numbers and experience? Maybe short passes don't measure what we intend to measure, namely the attractive style of passing football that we here like? Or it could be that looking at a single stat in isolation leads to missing the bigger picture and perhaps if we look at short passes along with number of crosses, zones of attacking play, number of touches in zones, shots etc. we will get a more holistic picture. Or maybe whoscored's definition of short is not short enough? Or maybe my experience is wrong? I don't know. All I know is Arsenal top the EPL when it comes to playing some neat, tidy, short passes (and are also third in the league) and that is very faith-reaffirming.


Data from the wonderful www.whoscored.com

Narzidamus Returns

Last day of football till Euro (not remotely interested in the UCL finals, though I'll watch it anyway just to boo both of them, and still haven't found a streaming site for the Copa del rey finals) so here's my customary lord of destiny post for the critical games in Liga and Serie A tonight. Far as Liga goes, I see no reason to change the final round predictions I made last week - though on review there's far too much dollop of hopeful biasedness, in the form of Zaragoza beating Getafe (who admittedly have nothing left to play for, but are in good form and have an annoying propensity to beat teams I like) , Villarreal beating Atletico (little less irrational since I expect Malaga to thump Gijon and seal UCL, while Bilbao should win at Levante though I'm going for a draw there - in essence sealing Atletico's Europa place regardless) and Rayo beating Granada (my head says Draw, but that means Rayo goes down and Granada stays up...so some generous dollopness required here) - these aside, only other result I'd change from original prediction basis last week's performance is probably Sevilla snatching a late draw at Espanyol instead of losing.

Over to Serie A, where I need to significantly up my prediction accuracy,

AC Novara - pointless win for AC

Juve Atalanta - Win seals an invincible season

Cesena Roma - Roma win another pointless game to end a miserable season for them, no Europe next season

Parma Bologna - could be an entertaining draw, but purely on form Parma win, no real consequence though

Catania Udinese - Udinese win and seal UCL

Chievo Lecce - on to the 4 games of actual consequence, last week I'd imagined Lecce to take a point at Fiorentina and win at Verona to escape relegation at the expense of Genoa, but after losing to Viola I'm not so sure anymore. I'm going for a draw, which means Lecce go down to Serie B

Genoa Palermo - Palermo slipping down steadily, but should do enough to grab a draw - if Genoa lose this and Lecce win at Verona, Genoa get relegated on goal difference, but can't really see Lecce winning...

Lazio Inter - game of the night, Europa league up for grabs, no room for biasedness since I hate both teams, and I think they've both burned themselves out in the past 2 months so dull draw for me, so in hindsight I guess it's not game of the night after all. no europe for Inter next season haha stupid Inter.

Napoli Siena - Napoli win and seal Europa.

Birds of a Feather

(continued from title).... get cooked and eaten together in the same way, but on different days... Across this season, Bilbao has always struck me as a Valencia without brains, but with much more talented attackers in Susaeta and Muniain. That aside, these are the two most similar teams in the league (apart from Real Madrid and Sevilla, coincidence I hate them both?...I think not..) and I'll get to some nice proof of that later on (from the wonderful whoscored website which is an intellectual masturbator's ultimate porn, leaving aside actual porn of course - but since I've used the word intellectual it has to be well structured in terms of plotline and philosophical dialogue). The post isn't to say two of my favorite sides play really similar football - something that should be a given for people who support teams for style of football hence my portfolio of Roma, Valencia, Villarreal, Barca, Zaragoza, Juve, and of course the holy mother may she rest in peace early-2000's Ajax. The post is to wonder why teams don't learn from the success or failure of their twin teams, especially teams with cerebral coaches like Bielsa - Atletico Madrid punking Bilbao 3-0 in the Europa finals with just about an identical performance to their 4-2 and 1-0 punking of Valencia in the semis (and I guess philosophically from the Barca-Chelsea but that's only to bring up Barca in this post to catch some google search hits - since gameplay wise there isn't really similarity to that game or to Barca in general).  

Valencia and Bilbao have almost identically high % of open play goals, and low % of fast breaks and set pieces. Leaving RM/Barca aside, Val/Bilbao both have the highest avg possession,and the highest pass completion %. They have scarily identical shot zones : 8% in the 6 yard box (highest in the league) and only 38% outside the box (2nd lowest only to who else but Barca). They play an identical lone striker 4-3-3 with 1 side of the field marshalled by a more-defensive wingback behind the more talented winger (Bruno/Pablo and Aurtenetxe/Muniain) while the other side depends on hugely versatile players who play excellently off each other (Alba/Mathieu and Iraola/Susaeta). And they lost to Atletico in identical fashion. Valencia's 4-2 loss was because of a static right flank (R.Costa is really a center back, and Feghouli is a bald loser) and a static under manned MF (Topal in his new man-marking avatar, and Costa woefully out of form) - all the right changes for the 2nd leg in a 3-man MF of evergreen awesomeness Albelda, my new favorite Sergio Canales, and neat and tidy Parejo - problems? R.Costa replaced the faster and positionally brilliant Victor Ruiz, while Barragan is too defensive to play against a bus-parking team. Lost 1-0 to tight, efficient and admittedly tactically superior Atletico. 

Thus came the Bilbao-Atletico game and Bilbao had the chance to look at the Valencia-Atletico mirror and realize it was their reflection, or they could think it was someone else. The previews made a big deal about Bielsa watching Atletico tapes and making his players watch tapes of who they'd be marking or playing around. He should have spent all that time watching Valencia play Atletico and making his players watch corresponding Valencia players. He should have seen R.Costa/Barragan get totally overrun by Arda Turan and Parejo get bossed by Gabi. They should have thrown Iturraspe back into a 3-man D to allow Iraola the freedom to get beyond Arda, while allowing Ander.H to drop back away from Gabi's attention instead of counting on him for drive and width. Valencia suffered from Albelda getting pulled away from Canales too often in attack, and getting pulled towards the wings when Turan/Adrian broke on the counter thus exposing the CB's to Falcao and Diego - further case for a 3-man D to watch for Atletico's fast breaks. The problem with watching Atletico's tapes is they play a much less compact game in Liga, case in point Malaga game last week. 

A lot was made of Amorebieta (who both the commentators insisted on calling "Amorebiate") having a bad game, which I think was unfair given he often had to cover for Aurtenetxe being out of position. Player of the game : Arda Turan. Most of Bilbao's moves come down the right wing (Just like Valencia's left wing) with Iraola and Susaeta (my fav. Bilbao player along with Javi) - they were just completely quiet with Arda's off the ball movement being incredible - consequently all Bilbao could muster was from Muniain down the left exchanging quickly with De Marcos and pulling Aurtenetxe into a more attacking position than I've ever seen him occupy. Gabi bossed Herrera just like he did Parejo (compared to Tiago geez what are they still doing with that moron), in what turned out to be a painful replay of the semi-final. Bilbao beat Atletico 3-0 in Liga, Valencia beat them 1-0, but neither Bilbao nor Valencia shed their naivete in thinking teams don't regress tactically in knockout fixtures so I guess they're identical in this too. Then again, Atletico were really good to watch before Simeone came in with his blood/guts/heart/courage/freedom speeches so major sighage this season on the result vs gameplay debates.

 P.S : The part about liking a certain gameplay and hence following many teams with similar styles - and for Arsenal fans claiming they are the Liga-ic team of EPL : Arsenal have the third most number of crosses/game in the EPL (next only to Lpool and ManU obviously), and the highest % of fast break goals in EPL (almost double that of the next highest), ironically they have the same % of fast break goals as the highest in Liga.... which would be? yep, Real Madrid and Sevilla. How awesome is whoscored.com!!

If at first you don't....

If at first you don't succeed, retroactively redefine KPIs to stoop to level of failure (which in hindsight seems too obvious a corpo-ism to not be some dilbert comic somewhere, no I don't think dilbert is funny, how'd you guess….), now that I've vaguely connected the post title and the cartoon, let me proceed to spin a yarn that dangerously flirts with the most thoroughly frayed strings of relation. Last week, most teams sealed their destinies, barring anything dramatically..well..dramatic on the last day - I explore whether they feel a sense of achievement (however trivial) considering their expectations at the beginning of the season. 

Messi : is going to be Pichichi and Golden Boot, Cron beat him to it last year and Barca said the league was more important. Cron beats him to the league this year, and Barca saying Pep's and Messi's moments are more important. If you don't play to win, why play at all, Barcelona....they always win. 

Valencia : 3rd place ist unseren. Heil. They finished 3rd last year 25 points off the top, KPI this year would have been 3rd but only by 10-15 points, and UCL Quarters. They've been 3rd 28 rounds of the season, an avg position of 3.25, made it to the Europa semis, but finished thirty-friggin-six points off the top - B. 

Malaga : seal 4th, considering their final fixture. Finished 11th last year, but UCL qualification would have been minimum KPI, should be celebrating given a strong finish after a miserable start - B +. 

Atletico : I see them losing their last game in the interest of my Villarreal fandom so 7th place. Given their squad, UCL qualification should have been a KPI, although through the course of their dismally inconsistent season I suppose that was downward revised. Europa finals tonight will tell - ?. 

Bilbao : Going to finish below their last year's position BUT Qualified already for Europa next year, in 2 Cup finals, 1 of which I expect them to win. Destroyed the most despicable team on the planet ManU. AND Bielsa not poached by Barca. A++. 

Mallorca/Levante : Finished 1 and 2 points respectively off relegation last year - this year looking set for top half and quite possibly Europa for both! A. 

Granada : Looking on track to fulfill my bold prediction of dropping from 15 to 18 and relegation, especially after their quite brilliant ban-monging after the RM game. But they were one of the promoted teams so meh KPI couldn't have been much more than 17 - B - . 

Villarreal : F. 

Zaragoza : Not there yet but....What..an..escape. My byutiful Zaragoza. Despite lowly Granada casting aspersions on the Zaragozan referee in the RM game, this has been a stunning fightback by Zaragoza in 2012. That being said, they finished 13th last season and always play really brilliant football, so I imagine their KPI was top half. So wonderful escape (not yet final obviously...) aside, C+. 

And on the topic of base humans feeling happy about trivial achievements : who noticed I got 8/10 right on Liga Quiniela as opposed to Phil Ball 5/10! My 6/10 on Serie A has noone to compare with, so I'm just going to assume that's awesome too. More on Serie A next week after the final positions, but for now let me just say.... Juventus. Booyakasha. and of course this really heart warming and nostalgic (if you're a fan...and I suppose after this invincible season there's going to be no dearth of "diehard" Juve fans)  goal.com timeline too. 

Neither win Norwich

In a rare mood of optimism not commonly observed among Arsenal fans I had imagined that Arsenal would swat the just promoted unheard of club from the hinterlands of East Anglia (me neither) like the undeserving, above-weight punchers that they are and that I could sing paeans of such an imperious victory in a celebratory post cleverly titled "Nor which?". But, like the second half of the opening line of that infamous soliloquy,  it was not to be.

Arsenal went into the game with their fate in their hands: win the next two games, seal the third spot beyond doubt. One would have thought such an incentive would have spurred the players on to come out of the blocks flying, get to top gear and so on. For about two minutes, it looked so. Just after the first minute, Benayoun scored from a pearler of a curler, drifting in from the left and finishing in the top right corner. 1-0 to the Arsenal. My optimism doubled and I opened my browser and typed in the words 'Nor which?'. (It said webpage not found. I had to then go to blogpost, sign in, click on create new post and type in the text box for titles the words 'Nor which'. But brevity is the soul of wit yeah.)

Having done that, Arsenal decided to relax and stroll around a bit having collectively come to the conclusion that the Norwiches of the world don't have it in them to stage any sort of comeback. Ramsey dawdled, Song cantered, Vermaelen started playing centre forward. Or def midfielder. And at times, right back. Norwich happily dominated the midfield and sent forth waves of attack that was entirely our doing. If we had kept pressing and kept our concentration things wouldn't have snowballed the way they did. Some idiot shot at Szcz who fumbled with the ball and let it bounce off his hands into the net. This gave Norwich the impetus and drive to attack even more. Arsenal continued to stay back and invited pressure. Ramsey went AWOL. Some sloppy passing in midfield resulted in a 3 on 2 situation and some other idiot shot at Gibbs, whose block looped over a stranded Szcz into the goal. 2-1. I closed my laptop.

To Arsenal's credit, they improved massively after the break although admittedly it was very easy to improve upon their first half performance. Ox was brought on to make the midfield more direct and give us more presence and Ramsey was taken off. The substitution took some time as Ramsey was nowhere to be found.

Right after the introduction of Ox we had more possession in the midfield and it looked like there was a bit more fluency in the way we played. Gervinho, who had earlier joined the anonymousolics anonymous along with Ramsey, became livelier as the game progressed and made a name for himself (heh). Rosicky began to play with more freedom and moved further up front. It looked to be a matter of time before Arsenal equalised. A matter of time went by and Song and RVP did their chip and volley routine to make it 2-2. Song dinked the ball over defence, like he has done n times this season, to find RVP who cleverly beat the offside trap (n times) and volleyed with his magic left foot (n+1 times) giving the goalkeeper no chance. Arsenal seemed to have learnt from their mistake and instead of relaxing continued to pile on the pressure and attacked in hordes. Gervinho did well on the left flank, beating two defenders with ease but only to waste it on a poor final ball. Coequlin bombed forward from the right, Vermaelen continued to play centre forward. Everyone was pushing for that winning goal and with so many options to score, it was RVP who scored again. Someone shot (think Gervinho), RVP collected the rebound and slammed it into the net to make it 3-2. I wept in joy and opened to check whether a draft of my post had been saved.

With 10 mins to go and Arsenal being Arsenal I knew nothing was certain. Song having put a stellar pass earlier on decided to keep going for the showboating spectacular goodness all throughout resulting in his giving away the ball in the most inexperienced of fashions. He lost the ball in our half, the Norwich goons were only too happy to try their luck one last time. Some idiot throughballed, another idiot shot past Szcz from a decently tight angle. 3-3. I wept. Songinho had let us down yet again.

Things went pear shaped post match yesterday but today's results have brought some much needed cheer. 10 man Spurs drew with Villa and as added bonus cheer that little fack Danny Rose was sent off. Newcastle lost to City and that means it is the our fate in our hands situation all over again. Win the West Brom away game, finish third irrespective of other results. Draw, then finish fourth and hope Bayern can beat Drogba (i.e Chelsea). Lose, weep.

I don't think I want to think of titles for the West Brom post yet.

SMBC - Saturday Morning Bull Crap

Liga fans (complement Madrid/Barca) like me are always contemptuously dismissive of morons saying Liga isn't too competitive, at least those morons who base this on no teams being capable of challenging the top 2 for the title. We repeat the "Liga starts at no.3" and evade the damning pathetic defeatism by happily pointing out RM/Barca would run away with the top 2 positions in any league (and though a Clasico final would have been a nice cherry to prove that point, the fact that it was popped by Chelsea/Munich in a knockout fixture proves nothing much). But the competitiveness of the league really comes to light when trying to predict results. This flowed into my g.reader a few hours after my liga table projections, and I thought it was an obvious and simple but quite nice thing to do, check % prediction accuracy and get others to do the same - especially if the same person does it across leagues, % variation could be used as an indicator of unpredictability of the league rather than just ignorance of the predictor. Of course I don't have the energy to predict fixtures from 2-3 leagues every single week, so I'll just do it this one time and mathematically induct the results to be true for all cases, especially now that I've started the post off with a neat 3-color squiggly graph which is just about arcane enough to need a second look for parameter comprehension. 

On the whole, the graph shows Liga to have the lowest point difference slope once you remove the first 2 teams - that they're the most competitive. EPL looks as mismatched overall as an F1 race with its associated pointless battles here and there, barring a quite meaningless 10-14 squabble, and  slightly less meaningless 15-18 curfuffle. Serie A might have the highest average point difference from team 20 among the 3 leagues, but the slope of the graph right from 3 - 17 is almost as low as Liga, evident from Novara, Cesena sealing relegation almost 3 weeks back, and everyone else climbing over each other for position (mainly by losing games from impossibly advantageous positions). On the strength of this conclusion that EPL is far too obvious to bother wasting time predicting (and the less important but disclosure obligatory "I know diddly squat about EPL"), here's my Serie A Quiniela to check predictability vs Liga (or my ignorance vs Liga)

Home	Away	Result for Home Team
Lecce	Fiorentina	D - Hope Delio Rossi is happy now
AS Roma	Catania	W - God what a boring game this fixture was earlier
Siena	Parma	L - Hate to admit Giovinco, Biabiany have been \m/
Atalanta	Lazio	L - Irritatingly efficient Lazio, on ascendancy lately
Bologna	Napoli	L - like duh
Novara	Cesena	D - but WHO CAAARREESSSSS
Palermo	Chievo Verona	D - both sliding down happily
Udinese	Genoa	W - byebye Genoa, Lecce to survive
Cagliari	Juventus	L - booyakasha chaammpiiioonnssss
Internazionale	AC Milan	W - day has come when I support Inter…

Los Che Ergo Sum Tertia

Excellent mid week round of La Liga on Wednesday, not even remotely because there were some lovely matches yielding exciting unexpected results, but really because the sorely used and abused (much like the phrase used and abused...) title race is finally over. Who it is over in favor of is irrelevant, not even remotely because the team I support had false started and been disqualified from the race, but really because RM won and I'd rather not admit the point relevant thus having to give them any credit. What's relevant though, is that focus has finally shifted to the real La Liga, Valencia down to Santander in a two week finale that sees 5 teams fighting for UCL, all the way down to Sociedad at 14th place fighting for Europa, and Granada below them at 15th still in the 5-team relegation curfuffle. After Valencia lost the critical Malaga fixture while their sole Indian fan missed the game on account of some Himachal snow prancing, a strong comeback 4-0 against Osasuna (who themselves have followed up a really strong 3 months with a home stretch slip up lately) sees Che almost cement 3rd.There's been enough and more said about Valencia's raison d'etre in Liga nowadays, an argument mainly hinging around the fact that they're not good enough to fight for the title, yet too good to ever slip below 3rd - an argument they've tried to rubbish by showing they can quite easily slip to 5th and depend on the incompetence of others to push them back up.

But despite Che fans being quite unforgiving this year about any off game (or...5 straight off games....) in a more unreasonable manner than usual (tell that to Genoa, Roma, and probably Delio Rossi now - each trying to outdo each other in a bid to attract TV viewers to switch from Primetime soaps to Serie A) Valencia's realistic raison d'etre is to be a placeholder in Liga, the pace setter that the league can try and follow, a pace setter that the league leader would be in any other league. They've secured UCL and need 1 more win to seal automatic UCL, although I think they really need just the point. Bilbao have already booked their Europa spot since they're in the Copa del Rey finals so I expect them to cool off and save their breath for Europa finals. I'd hoped Atletico would go for Levante's jugular and along with Mallorca finally boot Levante out the European spots they've usurped undeservedly since... round 1 (so maybe not "undeservedly", but I just don't like their faces...) - but now it doesn't seem possible given Atletico / Mallorca have tough fixtures (Malaga & Villarreal / Levante & Madrid) and the fact that Levante have a better head-head if they end up level on points. So my projection for end of season table - almost unbiased logic-centered projection, if you leave aside the fact that Zaragoza win both their games and Granada lose both theirs to ensure my byutiful Zaragoza escape relegation..... Zaragoza meet Santander whose raison d'etre is to lose, but then finally Getafe, whose raison d'etre is to piss the sh*t out of me so fingers crossed. And yes, this post's raison d'etre was to use raison d'etre as much as possible...