Stottie

Opta's supercomputer has started to see daylight between our chances and Tottenham's. It still puts us behind Villa, presumably on calendar year 2023 form. https://theanalyst.com/eu/2023/08/opta-football-predictions/ Villa have City and Arsenal at home before we play Spurs next Sunday, so a big week ahead.

Great result and much relief that we finally managed to turn an hour of dominance into the deciding opportunity. Credit to their center halves for not giving us many clear chances before that. I saw the match live on a sober Sunday morning, but hope everyone who got to see it on Saturday night got to enjoy themselves. Games are coming thick and fast, but this was an especially good three points. A CL qualification six pointer against a team with plenty of previous against us. Its important to celebrate wins like this.

It's four years since the ridiculous handball called on Sissoko in the Champions League final. It was pretty much identical to the Tino one. That's a long time to sort the rules out, and evidence enough that it can affect the highest profile of matches.

Contrast with Spurs' backup center halves yesterday. Completely AWOL for the Watkins offside header and the Torres headed goal. They look way more defensively frail with the backups in. I do not see that level of dropoff with Lascelles.

I don't think I've ever seen as many throughballs in so short a space of time.

Mad game. No VAR, but that looked like an elbow in the box by Diego Carlos.

There was a great article on the Athletic last week about our set pieces, about the variations, choreographed blocking, misdirections, etc. we do. Following on from it, yesterday we manufactured a free header for Joelinton that he should have scored and a free header for Lacelles that hit the back of the net. It was three or four passes after the free kick, so maybe won't count in the stats as a set piece, but was clearly us working the ball so it could be delivered from an unexpected angle to an unexpected target. That would be a set piece goal in my book.

That's in fixtures including 10 of the top 12 other teams. We've only played three of the bottom seven.

We've now scored four or more in four out of thirteen league games.

BIG JOW PICK THAT OUT!

If fairness, most of Nick Pope's mistakes are sweeper keeper rushing outside the box. This always carries some risk. He doesn't fluff kicks from the hands, or let many soft ones through his hands. A bad Nick Pope clearance sails out of touch, not 30 yards to one of them.

I have one medal (!) for winning three games in the first round of the Northumbria Police 5-a-side in 1981 or 1982. I was in goal, but scored the winner in a penalty shoot out. We got hammered in the second round. I was basically useless at football, but got stuck in goal enough to get good at angles and stopping shots. That's enough for 5-a-side, where you have the protection of your own area. For an eleven a side, I was too lightweight and just got shoved about. When I played as an adult, I was amazed at how knackering all the sprinting you do as an outfield player is. I've run half marathons and a hilly 20k trail run, but football is a completely different type of fitness.

Perhaps its possible or best to view FFP through different lenses at the top and bottom of the table. At the bottom of the league, it stops any wealthier club just blitzing the transfer windows beyond their means to avoid relegation. Everton's gain is someone else's massive loss. Its not hard to make a case for FFP in this situation. At the top of the league, if you limit spending for less established teams, you prevent them from making a realistic and sustainable assault on the title and the Champions League positions. This is an absolute necessity to increase revenue and reduce the FFP exposure. The equation for us is that if we cannot keep it up, we lose Bruno G. An inabilty to keep going forwards will cause a huge step backwards. This is FFP acting to close the door, just after Chelsea and Man City were allowed to spend what they liked.

It sounds like Chelsea and Man City are being investigated by the FA as well as the Premier League. So yes, having FA-connected people on our staff is probably an advantage.

I'm fifty-five, so my ambition is to become a pensioner. Unfortunately that's almost as far away as being a doctor.

I'm not a doctor, far from it, but I see Murphy and Burn's upper body injuries as freak and nothing to do with stress. Murphy in particular is our Swiss Army Knife covering several positions, useful in injury crises like we have now. It leaves us with our second Swiss Army Knife that is Ritchie, who still has a tooth pick, a fish scaler, and a can opener, but no cutting edge.

Isak featured in 30 plus La Liga games a season three times for Sociedad. I think we've just been unlucky with him.

Just to save someone else counting them, but we play Liverpool at Anfield on Jan 1 and that's the eleventh (!!) game from now, Nov 16th. That's a lot of making do with who we have available. After that, we have an FA Cup tie and Man City home for which Kalvin Phillips would be banned anyway.

It doesn't rank by head to head as the tiebreaker does, but a chance to play with the remaining fixtures and calculate tables here. Only two rounds to go, but many outcomes are still possible. https://www.worldfootball.net/table_calculator/champions-league/ Avoid defeat at PSG and we have the head-to-head tie breaker over them.

Had we beaten Bournemouth, we'd top that Premier League form table. It just shows the shadow cast by the injury crisis and the Dortmund defeats in the CL.

I've been bullish about Top 4/5 but am starting to get concerned now the injuries have piled up and Tonali has been banned. Neither of things could have been predicted. How many teams buy a player and then see him banned for the season for something done at his previous club? The injuries have included freak upper body ones like Murphy and Dan Burn. Regarding the home/away split I thought we looked knackered second half at Wolves and that let them back in. We also looked knackered all game at Dortmund and super knackered at Bournemouth at the weekend. West Ham was just a good recovery and great goal by them. Conversely, we did win at Old Trafford, so I think the timing of some of the games has been a factor, rather than just the home/away factor.

Frustrating to be so uncompetitive in an easier fixture but this is the perfect storm of injuries. Everyone knows we need more players, and the owners would likely pay for them, but FFP says no. The net result is Matt Ritchie and kids.

Need to keep the ball for more than five seconds.

Spurs last season. Games 1-10 = 22 points Games 11-20 (starting with us) = 10 points. With no points in games 11 and 12 and the fixtures Nut mentions, we may see a similar slump this season.

All it takes is six other clubs to vote against or abstain. I can't see Brighton voting against their business model, or a transfer heavy team like Forest. Or teams with lots of loanees like City or Chelsea. There's four already.