Pata

Lovely corner, get in.

He absolutely is, one of the worst in the league for those ’get the ball and maybe break a leg in the aftermath’ challenges. Fucking buzzing that he was shown the red.

How are Saliba and Gabriel not getting booked, fucking hell.

Amazing effort by Toney.

This is the best Everton in ages and would be incredibly harsh if they were relegated.

Soucek tried to kick the ball to the moon ffs. The fact it happens to catch defender's arm doesn't mean it's worthy of a pen.

Fucking hell, that VAR ref should never be allowed to watch another match of football. Well done ref too, never easy to go against VAR on those.

Did the ref give it on the pitch? Or VAR wanted to give it?

This Roma resurgence not a good look on Mourinho.

Not much of a mystery, huh? Got homesick and wanted to go, nothing to do with his ability, And Diame was playing like a prime Vieira at that time.

Interesting that Howe adds the 'absolutely concentrated and really well-trained' line there. Remember reading some Swiss people wondering how he can look so good for NUFC but make simple errors in their national team. Think he has struggled a lot with that in his earlier career and probably one reason why no one thought he could be this good in a two CB system even among NUFC fans. It's obvious he has always had the attributes but he's been a real late bloomer thanks to Eddie. Even the weaker performance against Blackburn was IMO mainly down to lack of concentration and some arrogance.

It's great if a player with his raw potential and attributes also has a great work rate, I didn't know about that. Not the easiest combination to find even in the modern game.

Hasn't posted in a month, hope he's fine. Edit. As has been discussed, that explains it.

It certainly matters but I don't think it's that massive. I just randomly looked at Haaland (good finisher) and Sterling (poor finisher) from Understat. Sterling has scored 110 from 121.06 xG so underperforming by 11 since 2014 in the PL, roughly a goal per season. Haaland since 2019 has 115 goals from 103.45 xG in Bundesliga and PL, so overperforming by roughly two goals a season. I know Understat uses very basic xG data but it's still a class site considering it's free.

Think we would be fighting with Spurs and Villa for top 4/5 without the injuries. Still think we'll finish above Man Utd so 6th is very much a possibility this season too.

I absolutely hate it.

What if you didn't watch the match and want to have some context on the result? The 0-0 draw against Crystal Palace was a perfect example, looks poor but we were really fucking good at everything bar finishing. Shots on or off is such a simple stat, Rashford could have 25 of those shots where he scored from to be as likely to score as that one miss from Haaland in the first half. Then you see those 25 shots to 1 in the stats and think Man United have been fucking amazing.

I'm too weak mentally to start mentioning expected threat here, maybe in the future.

It usually is a negative trait though. If you keep winning games with wonder goals and by your opponent missing sitters, it usually means you are not going to win those games for long, like that Pardew season. Like the first half in this match, someone says what is Pep doing, Man City are losing to Man United at home. Or praising Ten Hag for getting it right. I'm more than happy to say that xG was 2.70 vs 0.19 and Pep more than likely got it right but was on the wrong side of variance.

Yeah, massive lad.

Aye, think that data was done but it's not available anywhere. Remember seeing it used as an extreme example of good luck in some article I read years ago.

Honestly struggle with the fume some people have with xG, it's just another stat that's usually way better than the old ones although not perfect. Fucking cavemen.

XG is just one way to say Man City have dominated. Would you prefer if I said goal attempts are 21-2 without any context of how good the chances have been? And what the fuck does the nickname of my local ice hockey team have to do with my patter skills?

Pep is fucking great again, right?

Boom! Get in!