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.