Balmy Friday

Welcome back to the Friday night football blog after a two week lay-off. This month’s unseasonably mild weather – never mind what the pub trade apparently call ‘Blackeye Friday’, this was more like Balmy Friday - continued as Simon Gas organised and picked the sides for the final time in 2015. Here’s what the Muswell Hill Soccer Chieftain came up with, (despite being beset with snot):

Blues: Mario, Alex, Sanhab, Danny, Liam, Andy (the Ulster version), Mark, Simon Gas, Joseph

Yellows: specialist goalkeeper Ed, David, Yev, Alan, Mick, Patrick, Ian Baggies, Steve, me

Despite committing the cardinal sin of putting Mario and Alex on the same team, Simon managed to ensure that a decent – and even – game of football ensued. There was slight issue with two large gaggles of young lads congregating at the bottom and side of the pitch; the young scamps had been able to enjoy a free kick around before 8.00 pm as there was no other side on the pitch.

Although they cleared the pitch reasonably uneventfully, one group in particular stuck around in a what you might call a passively provocative stance, gently encroaching onto the field of play every couple of minutes, with one youngster theatrically falling onto the astro turf until his mates carried him off. Eventually the little bit of attention which they were craving arrived in the form of a polite exhortation from Mick –“Boys, get off the fucking pitch, please”, which saw them reluctantly traipse off into the night whilst shouting back at anyone and everyone, so that they sounded exactly like a flock of squawking parakeets.

Onto the goals, (the first one took around 20 minutes to arrive). In trying to clear the ball upfield I inadvertently steered it straight to Mario who took a touch to steady himself and then sent a fierce drive past the otherwise excellent specialist goalkeeper Ed to make it 1-0 to the Blues.

In a relatively low scoring game both Ed and his opposite number, Simon Gas, made a series of splendid stops to deny Liam, Danny and Alex on the one hand and Patrick and Yev on the other. Perhaps unsurprisingly with both Danny and Alex playing in midfield for the Blues they enjoyed the lion’s share of possession and this combination saw Danny swap passes before steering the ball into the bottom far corner to make it 3-2 to the Blues – I believe that Liam had grabbed the second Blues score after steering the ball through a thicket of players.

At the other end the Yellows’ main threats came from the filial duo of Patrick and Mick, with some decent support from the recovering crock, Yev. The Kavanaghs were responsible for all three goals for the Yellows, with Patrick scoring a sensational equaliser to Mario’s piledriver and Mick flipping the ball over a phalanx of Yellows defenders before nudging the ball past Simon in goal. That effort from Mick was the final goal of the evening and we finished with a suitably festive, deep and crisp and even score of 3 – 3.

And so to the Skinners, where the ridiculously temperate climate saw us drink outside until we realised that, equally unseasonably, the pub was so quiet that there were tables (note the plural) going spare inside.

Discussions focused on gameshows past and present, the merits of Challenge TV and this clip from youtube. On the other table the night ended with a series of impressions of the young squawkers responsible for the early drama and a round of best wishes for the season. I understand that we return to action on Friday 8^th January 2016 for a game of football and a fake Christmas buffet in the Skinners.

Who said that January was a bleak month?

Vote Curry

Hello, good evening and welcome back to the Friday night football blog, brought to you in association with Senor Gaz productions and Yardbird Pale Ale.

Apologies for the recent hiatus in match reports – this was due in part to a pretty disastrous trip to Cornwall to visit my, um, ‘eccentric’ in-laws and a nasty bout of Masculinis Snotgripus Maximus, which I’ve thankfully shaken off. I understand that the past fortnight saw two decent and reasonably contested games, even without my stats-system. Apparently last week’s match was contested by fewer than nineteen players - whatever next.  

As I return, so does the heavy responsibility of team selection and here’s what I managed to come up with on Friday, unknown quantities and all -

Blues: Charlie*, Simon Gas*, Tom*, Liam, Tim, Mario, Joseph*, Ed, Tony

Yellows: Danny, Andy, me, Ian Baggies, Ross, David, Peter*, Jaime*, Michele (pronounced Mikaelly), Simon Ink

*(denotes being employed by Morgan Stanley)

And so we kicked off, with the Yellows having the player advantage. The ‘Ed’ mentioned in the team sheet turns out to be a specialist ‘keeper and he periodically switched places with Tony, who is still recovering from injury, rather like Bristol Paul, Yev and most of Arsenal’s first XI.

With so many people on the pitch, many of them under 35, space and time were at a premium, but quality will out and there were a number of spectacular and high-class goals on the night. Liam, as he was keen to tell me in the pub, may have only had two shots in the match but both counted, leaving him with a 100% strike rate. After the Caledonian hitman opened the scoring for the Blues, the Yellows then unleashed Danny from his berth in goal and the game assumed a more even tempo. 

With Peter winning 99.9% of all headers and decent support coming from Danny, David and Jaime (with Ross and Michele up front), the Yellows nevertheless found themselves against a well-drilled defence and some excellent goalkeeping. By contrast, the Blues looked to have rather more joy against the Yellow’s defence, which was perhaps not quite as mobile, (or well marshalled).

As the lead changed hands with a basketballesque frequency – Michele levelled things up for the Yellows - it was clear that it was going to take something special for the Yellows to get past the Blues’ assorted defensive kingpins and something special is what we got from David, with his party piece making it two-all on the night. Collecting the ball in centre midfield, the sprite-like Oxford graduand skipped across the astroturf and spotted Ed loitering on the edge of his area, well off his line. He chipped the ball high into the night sky with a degree of curl and it eventually plopped back down a few yards from goal, where Ed could only scrabble at it forlornly as it trickled gracefully over the line. One of the goals of the season.

Peter made it three apiece with a ridiculously hard shot that sounded – and moved – like a shotgun cartridge and quite possibly broke Tony’s finger en route to the net. That spelled the end for the north London cineaste and with the Blues two men short, I crossed the Rubicon to make the final stages of the game an eight side affair.

Shortly after this switch Tim nodded the Blues 4-3 ahead from a corner, with Andy and Simon Ink’s Chuckle Brothers routine on the goal-line largely to blame for the Yellows conceding. Charlie then received a short corner from myself before unleashing an unstoppable shot into the top left corner to complete the scoring.

Final score: Blues 5: Yellows 3

And thus to the pub, where the pre-Christmas works drinks activity looked to have begun in earnest, young people supping what looked like anti-freeze from wine glasses and all. I oscillated between one table with Danny, Andy and Simon Gas, who was bending the landlord’s ear about some sort of post-Christmas buffet (terrible idea) and the younger phalanx of Liam, Tim, Simon Ink, David and Ross, who were discussing Jamie Vardy, Troy Deeney and the bearded songstrel John Grant.

I’m missing this Friday’s match for a gig, but will be back on the 18^th for end of year festivities and hopefully a curry, if we can persuade Simon that eating in a restaurant needn't be a social minefield.

You know it makes sense. Vote Curry.

Marchons, marchons!

Welcome all to a brand new week. Hopefully this post will provide some form of light relief following the appalling news over the weekend. Friday’s game saw yet another bumper crop of eager young (and not-so-young) things turn up for a game, with a grand total of nineteen players in the mix.

Here’s what the PASS supercomputer came up with:

Blues: Mario, Joseph, Peter, Danny, Mick, Chris, Simon Gas, Tim and Liam

Yellows: Alex, Jaime, Patrick, Antonio, Callum, Alan, Ian Baggies, me, Phil and Ross

As you can see, ten plays and nine and a real work-out for the highly complex algorithm deployed by the ones and zeros of data crunching.

It was first blood to the Blues; almost literally, when Peter stood on my index finger following a goalmouth melee, but Peter soon got on the scoresheet with a clinical finish following some Klopp-style pressing on the Yellows fullback positions. Callum soon equalised, for the first of his four goals, and then the scoring continued in a percussive, ding-dong fashion right across the hour’s play.

I think Patrick got the second Blues’ goal – whether or not it was the second or third Blues goal it was a fine finish. The LSE undergraduate controlled a lobbed pass on this left knee and swivelled to smash an explosive volley into the bottom left hand corner of the goal. Danny then scored a very good equaliser, guiding the ball high over the ‘keeper’s head with his left foot after a tigerish tackle from the left wing.

Callum, meanwhile, was gorging himself at the other end, clinically seizing on any errant pass and volleying home an array of goals with dead-eyed aplomb. At the other end, Peter and Liam were in similarly voracious mood; Peter got a hat-trick on the night with characteristically efficient shooting, while Liam performed his trademark roll manoeuvre to get on the scoresheet. On another night he could have had at least three, as a cheeky flicked header landed just the wrong side of the post, while another opportunity went begging after he managed to overcompensate by shooting wide of the goalie’s left and also the post.

Antonio was also in amongst the goals, capitalising on a blocked attempted clearance from Peter to ping home a nice volley, which made it something like five apiece.

After Callum had scored goal number four and Liam made it six for the Blues, Antonio was on the end of a fearsome looking crunching tackle from Chris and had to withdraw from proceedings. This should have left the Blues with an advantage and with a few minutes left the smart money would have been on them grabbing goal number thirteen on the night. However, following an abortive first whistle, play continued and Ross harried Danny and assorted Blue defenders to slam home a seventh goal for the Yellows just as the whistle was being peeped. To be fair, around half of the Blues’ players had stopped playing, but not those immediately in front of the goal.

If 6-6 sounds like a tennis score, think of Ross’s finish as a tie-breaker. We agreed that in the Golden Clog award, given to this season’s highest scorer, Ross’s ‘goal’ from Friday would be denoted with an asterisk.

To the Skinners, where a few of us watched the highly predictable death-by-a-thousand-passes 2-0 win for Spain over England. There were a few England players looking out of their depth, to be frank, which doesn’t augur well for next Summer’s Euro tournament. With Alan and Mick choosing to watch Ireland take on Bosnia-Hercegovina in the Irish pub around the corner, it was a relatively early finish to proceedings. On the way home I was checking the other scores when the terrible news from Paris started to roll in. Tomorrow night’s game at Wembley should be a highly emotional affair. I think the idea of England fans singing La Marseillaise is a very laudable one, but given that they struggle to keep time with the moronic theme from the Great Escape I think a dignified silence would best given the circumstances.

I’m off to Cornwall this weekend, so I’ll rejoin you in two weeks’ time.

The Last Empiricist

Another great night for empiricism this week, as the new Jarvis Player Attribute Statistics System (PASS) helped create another close game. Following last week’s debut for the PASS methodology, Simon Gas put it through its paces once again, with a grand total of nineteen players and two significant late changes, (Phil dropping out to be replaced by Alex).

Here’s what the super computer came up with:

Yellows: Simon Ink, Paul, me, Danny, Liam, David, Jaime, Tim, Mark and Alex

Blues: Mario, Nick, Simon Gas, Ross, Mick, Dan, Patrick, Ian Baggies, Tony

As the game kicked off the Blues looked slightly stronger and quickly took a stranglehold on possession, with Mario, Nick, Dan and Tony looking to set up Ross and the young legs of Patrick. However, around ten minutes in Tony pulled something or other and had to withdraw, a turn of events which saw Paul cross the Rubicon and pull on a Blue bib. Nine aside. Game on. 

As is the custom, Danny started off in goal for his team – this week, Yellows – and on conceding the first goal (Patrick the scorer), he was replaced by myself. The Yellows equalised through Liam, before two very soft goals saw the Blues take a 3-1 lead. First, a corner from the right wasn’t parried properly by either Simon Ink or myself to allow Ross to steal in, while a few minutes later the two Simons once more got into a defensive jam with a speculative pass that allowed Ross to nip in and ram the ball home into an empty net. “Ridiculous”, said Jaime. He wasn’t wrong.

The Yellows did manage to get back into the game, however. Having got one goal back to make it 3-2 (Mark doing the damage), Jaime scored a brilliant equaliser, running from the halfway line wide on the left before smashing the ball in off the crossbar and over the line. More was to follow: Liam calmly controlled an excellent pass from Alex to steer past the ‘keeper and suddenly the Yellows were 4-3 ahead.

Sadly, the comeback could not be completed, as the Blues scored two more – both were close range finishes as the Yellows’ legs began to tire and were unable to clear the ball. Patrick and Ross were the beneficiaries, the latter completing his hat-trick. (Props to Ross for details of all the goal scorers).

That was the end of the scoring, although the Yellows did have other chances and the game had assumed a real end-to-end feel by the close of eight ‘o’ clock. A rare week saw not one ball hammered out of the park and into the murky surrounds of Coram Fields, while controversial incidents were limited to a foul on Liam by Nick which went unpunished owing to the proximity of Ross, who provided the other slice in the Blue sandwich that done for the effervescent Scotsman.

Final score: Blues 5 – Yellows 4

To the Skinners again, with topics under discussion this week including Tim Sherwood’s abortive managerial career, the merits of Klopp versus Brendan Rodgers, plans for the Christmas do (vote Curry House!) and why young children don’t play football, or much of anything outside the home anymore. Simon Gas also filled us in on his Euro accumulator, which yielded the princely sum of £46 and Mark ended the evening by relaying the backstory behind Rangers’ demise in Scotland.

The mild weather continues and so does my PASS - see you on Friday.

A Victory for Stats!

Following last week’s mismatch, I came up with a new system for picking the teams this week. I assigned each player a numerical value based on their overall on-pitch effectiveness (i.e. how good they are at football) and pasted these names and values into Microsoft Excel, whereupon I tried to get the two bottom lines as near as damn it. Not necessarily the easiest manoeuvre when there are odd numbers, but who said Maths was easy? Not me, that’s for sure. I only got a ‘C’ at GCSE and that was the best I could have got, as I was in the thickie la-la set.

These values have been saved in an hermetically sealed data storage facility on an ice-bound Scandinavian outcrop in the Baltic Sea and can only be accessed using a complex entry mechanism based on unique biometric data and an advanced knowledge of the names of the pets I’ve had in my life. So don’t ask.

Once I’d locked the data centre and flown back to London after changing flights in a secret mountain top airbase the following teams came out of the supercomputer:

Yellows: me, Phil, Steve, Alan, Tony, Liam, Jaime, Peter and Mario

Blues: Ian Baggies, Andy, Tim, Simon Gas, Dan, Ross, Joseph, Danny, Antonio and Yev’s mate Vitaliy

Bizarrely, Yev arrived early with the aforementioned Ukrainian goalmonster Vitaliy, which was as Alan pointed out nothing if not perverse, but then what else would you expect?

I’ll have a go at recalling all nine goals. 

I can’t quite remember which team scored first, but I’ve a feeling it was the Yellows through Phil, who bagged a brace on the night. His first effort was a clinical finish following a centre from the left after some decent approach play from Liam, who was selflessly ploughing a lonely furrow at left half, while the second came from a fairly acute angle on the right. 

By this stage the Blues were not so much knocking on the door as pounding it with heavy ordnance. Despite a couple of saves from myself to deny first Vitality, at point blank range from a header, and then Antonio (I managed to claw out a cheeky chip from just under the crossbar) Yev’s compatriot nearly took the net away from the stanchion with a violent volley that flew in from just outside the area after some clever prompting from Antonio.  

Having got his eye in with his first goal, Vitaliy then went berserk. I can’t remember how much velocity was on goal number two, but the one to complete his hat-trick almost sang as it left his left foot and flew like an arrow into the top right hand corner of the net, leaving Tony with no chance in goal.

Although the Yellows saw plenty of the ball and created a hatful of chances, Peter and Mario were uncharacteristically profligate while Phil, Liam and Steve all had chances of varying degrees of difficulty to finish but came up against a resolute Blues’ backline that was just a little too well organised for the Yellows to get past. At the other end Antonio’s intelligent passing allied to Ross’ tireless running and Danny’s tenacity created the bullets for Vitaliy, who proved to be absolutely clinical. I believe that Ross was also amongst the goals and the Blues eventually ran in six, although at least one of those was when the Yellows were down to eight men (versus ten) when Phil had to retrieve one of the balls. The Yellows also got one more goal; Mario took a chance from distance that found its way into the bottom hand corner via Ian.

Final score: Blues 6 – Yellows 3

And with that victory for stats, we were off to the pub. Another decent turn out and another mild evening saw myself, Alan, Ross, Liam, Tim (as well as Simon Gas, the Ukrainians and Steve) stay to discuss the following – 1) the fact that the Haka is a glorified dance routine for a bunch of preening bullshit munchers 2) the quality of pundits on BBC– compliments for Chris Sutton, Jason Mohammad and Wrighty, brickbats for Darth Crooks 3) the very much unappreciated and overlooked qualities of early 90’s pop-punk bands Mega City Four and Senseless Things.

A final word for Bristol Paul, who’s been in the wars a bit with his pushbike. Get well soon, mate. I hope you enjoyed reading the card, although Simon seemingly selected the most girly one that Clintons stock.

Kindergarten Klopp

And another welcome back to the Friday night football blog. And another match report for your perusal, following this week’s game.

In his regular Friday morning email Simon explained that we had sixteen players to choose from, but only sent me the names of fifteen people, which I found absolutely perplexing until Simon spotted that he’d put Patrick’s name down twice and omitted that of Ian Baggies. Further confusion came with the unexpected introduction of Mick and then, conversely, his son Patrick's late arrival (having been given a heavy pre-match billing). This required some on the fly re-arrangements, which I think it’s fair to say didn’t go too well.

After young Patrick’s arrival, here is what the two sides looked like:

Yellows: Simon Gas, Jaime, Mario, Dan, Danny, Peter, Paul Tanner, Ian Baggies and myself

Blues: Bristol Paul, Joseph, Alex, Patrick, Antonio, Liam, Tony and Mick

Let the record state that originally Tony was on the Yellow team and were it not for Simon’s dressing room intervention on the Yellow team he would have stayed. Let the record also state that Simon was concerned the Yellow team would be too strong (hence the switch) and, furthermore, let the record state that our attempt to rebalance the teams after the Blues went 2-1 up was very much with the original line-up in mind and not, as had been claimed, some attempt to engineer a Yellow victory. 

Onto the goals. The Yellows took the lead through Peter; at this stage in proceedings the Yellow / Orange team had a two man advantage owing to Patrick’s tardiness, but following his arrival the Blues had soon equalised and it became apparent that a team featuring the ball-winning skills of Alex and the “ridiculous feet” of Antonio would, to put it mildly, become rather a handful. Liam scored the second Blue goal and at this stage, fearing an avalanche, I did try to rejig the sides only to be rebuffed by Tony and Alex and to be accused of trying to gerrymander the result.

A third, fourth and fifth Blue goal soon followed – Antonio’s feet were a blizzard of movement and he steered in one, while the team revisions that never were resulted in the Yellow team losing shape with the consequence that some very soft goals were conceded in a five minute spell. I think that the Blues eased off at this point, either deliberately or subconsciously, and the Yellow team did back into the game, possibly as the Blues found it difficult to move back up the gears. Mario scored at least twice, both of the goals that I can recall being fierce efforts that fizzed low into the goal from wide on the right and then on another occasion from wide on the left (and some distance). I’d let in another soft goal from Tony by this point to give the Blues six goals, but a fourth goal for the Yellows proved to be the final score of the night, despite some late pressure from a midfield triumvirate of Jaime, Danny and Peter. 

Other notable incidents included a rare shot from distance from Simon Gas and a tough looking tackle from Ian Baggies on Liam that had everyone wincing. That lad’s ankles must look like a moon crater. On a more positive note, not so many balls kicked over the fence this week. 

Final score: Blues 6- Yellows 4

All in all, not exactly a classic and one perhaps best forgotten about. 

A reasonable turnout at the Skinners, with myself, Mick and Ian Baggies debating the cultural decay of working class life which has resulted in far fewer world class footballers from these islands, Wales excepted. Bristol Paul regaled us with a story about a catty remark his girlfriend received at a Hot Chip gig, while amongst the usual football chat (both at Coram Fields and beyond) came a comment from Tony. A man who often seems on the cusp of outrage, he opined that Arsène Wenger and Jurgen Klopp promote a style of play that he denigrated as “playground football”, which I thought was a characteristically obtuse viewpoint. It did, however, provide a splendid title for this week’s blog. 

Hopefully I’ll have a better match report to post next week.