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.