“For the 806 Portsmouth fans that travelled all the way up to Morecambe on Easter Monday and saw their beloved side held to a frustrating 1-1 draw, nothing was too different from what they’d witnessed throughout the campaign; nothing would have shocked them; and, in different circumstances, nothing would have sunk spirits to deeper depths than they’d already reached over the past seven months or so – sorry, the past five years or so. …”
Backpage Football
W – Portsmouth F.C.
YouTube: The Fall & Fall of Portsmouth FC (2016), YouTube: Portsmouth FC

“Last summer, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain gave an interview with The Athletic where he talked about the skill of getting on the end of shot rebounds. … Oxlade-Chamberlain stressed the importance of being proactive and ‘gambling’ to get to where the ball might fall rather than reacting at the same time as defenders.  … We’ve all seen attackers materialise out of nowhere at the spot where a goalkeeper tips the ball away, and it’s easy to believe some players have developed a nose for it. But how important are shot rebounds, really? And if players are going to train for them, what exactly should they be practising? …”
The Athletic

Harry Kane
“My favourite would probably have to be Roberto Carlos, against France in 1997. Others might refer to Cristiano Ronaldo against Portsmouth in 2008, maybe Paul Gascoigne against Arsenal in 1991, or draw from the back catalogues of David Beckham, Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho or Juninho Pernambucano. Yes, we’re talking about free kicks. We love them — or rather, we love it when they fly into the back of the net. It feels as though fans’ expectations are often quite high when you see a player line up a direct free kick but, across Europe’s top five leagues, the average conversion rate of a direct free kick has been just six per cent since 2016-17. …”
The Athletic

“When Ryan Beal played as a semi-pro goalkeeper in Hampshire, there were a lot of things he had to figure out for himself. If a through ball put a striker in one-on-one, should he charge out or wait? Spread his body to block a shot or go to ground to smother it? Outfield players had experienced coaches to teach them the finer points of their position but a goalkeeper coach at that level was rare. Data wasn’t much help, either. Beal got involved with football analytics while studying for a PhD and now works with two start-ups in the field, AI Abacus and Sentient Sports. But the event data he could get his hands on as a student only recorded on-ball actions and players’ coordinates on the pitch, not the body movements that a researcher would need to study technique. …”
The Athletic

“Expected goals, or xG as it’s also known, provides fans with an insight into the quality of every chance in a game, and the likelihood of a goal being scored from them. Fast forward nearly a decade since Stats Perform first introduced the metric, and xG is now even more sophisticated. The advancement and depth of data collection in football is a process that is continually evolving. With each addition and improvement, we gain more powerful insights into what is happening on the pitch. These data points can be used as inputs to power more complex models and evaluate chance quality more accurately than ever before. …”
The Analyst

“Perhaps no player has had such a sudden and unexpected impact at a team like Michu had at Swansea. A bargain from Spain that Sir Alex Ferguson had ‘never really heard of’ lit up the Premier League in his only full season in South Wales. But how did Swansea find him? And what happened to him after that season? Seb Stafford-Bloor writes, Henry Cooke illustrates.”
YouTube
The Athletic: Michu on his friend Haaland & turning down more Premier League riches ‘for love’(March 2020)
W – Michu

“When you’re deep into a game save in Football Manager, sometimes you often wonder how many other people are carrying out the same actions as you. You’ve just signed a new player, but how many other people are backing that wonderkid your coaching team says has five-star potential? It’s 3pm on Monday but you’ve already spent 15 hours of that day playing FM. How many others are in that boat? We spoke to the team at Football Manager to answer the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. All data below relates to information derived from Football Manager 2021. Football Manager 2022 is still a “live title”, so concrete data is not yet available yet. …”
The Athletic

“You may have noticed a slightly unusual event during the final of the Club World Cup between Chelsea and Palmeiras. After Chelsea were awarded the extra-time penalty that would eventually seal the trophy, Cesar Azpilicueta grabbed that ball and stood by the spot, for all the world looking like a man who was about to take the kick. Around him swarmed mild chaos, with the Palmeiras players vehemently protesting against the VAR-awarded penalty while also doing their best to put off the man with the ball in his hands. …”
The Athletic

“Diogo Jota controls an inch-perfect clipped through ball from Trent Alexander-Arnold expertly on his chest, his first touch taking the ball across Ben White who now knows he cannot possibly touch the Liverpool man. Aaron Ramsdale rushes out and flings himself at Jota’s feet, but not before the Portuguese striker deftly dinks the ball over him into an empty net. It’s Jota’s second of the game, and Liverpool now have a commanding 2-0 lead over Arsenal in the Carabao Cup semi-final. No Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane – they’re both at the African Cup of Nations. No problem. Jota has picked up the slack brilliantly. …”
The Analyst

“Here’s a list of Everton’s managers since Farhad Moshiri became the club’s biggest stakeholder in 2016: Ronald Koeman, David Unsworth, Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva, Duncan Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafael Benítez, and, as of the end of January, Frank Lampard. Setting aside the turnover, there’s a breadth of philosophy here that any big club with aspirations to be bigger would find ungainly: Each of these managers employ a vastly different approach to soccer, and taken together, their appointments tell us that Everton has no clue what kind of club Everton would like to be. Maybe that’s the problem? …”
The Ringer (Video)

“Will Sean Dyche steer Burnley to safety again? How much of an impact will Newcastle’s January signings have in their bid for survival? Can Bruno Guimaraes be their saviour? And what about Frank Lampard and Everton — are they too good to go down? With at least 15 games to play for the teams in the Premier League’s bottom seven there is still so much to play for. Burnley are bottom but are only three points off safety, and they have plenty of games in hand over some of their rivals. …”
The Athletic (Video)

“Are positions relevant in the modern game of football? How can Alexander-Arnold, Matty Cash and Tomiyasu all be listed by the same position? Do we need more terms to describe players? Or do we need to look at the game in a different way? Alex Stewart explains that to better understand the game, we need to think about roles rather than positions. Illustrated by Henry Cooke.”
YouTube

“Roy Hodgson’s Fulham had just survived relegation from the Premier League by goal difference. Two season’s later they were 4 minutes away from winning the Europa League. This is the story of how Roy Hodgson assembled a team of experienced and responsible players, defied the odds by beating some of Europe’s giants, and fell at the very last hurdle in extra-time to Atletico Madrid. Written by Seb Stafford-Bloor. Illustrated by Craig Silcock.”
YouTube

“Nature Abhors a Vacuum. The last Burnley Premier League game to contain a goal of any kind was their 3-1 defeat at Leeds on January 2. They next play a league game a week on Saturday, the omni-postponement clasico against Watford. So that will be at least 34 consecutive days mid-season that Burnley Football Club will have neither scored nor conceded. That’s the first time that’s happened in the Premier League era, but it’s one of those detested concocted stats because, as we know, the run actually only covers three games. …”
The Analyst