“He’s made a name for himself as a Football Manager fiction writer, but here on PNIG, Chris Darwen turns his hand to how stats can be used in the game. Friday, 8 May 2015. 20:28. This is what happens when a story-teller starts to try and understand the game a little more. This is what happens when I start to read a book and try and apply it to the real world of FM. This is what happens when all the little things that I have thought about for the last 20 years of football management gaming all falls into place.” Put Niels In Goal

“Barnes’ ‘football bible’ has evolved over his 11 years as Sunderland’s match commentato. Behind every great football match is a great commentator, and in front of every commentator is a set of notes. BBC Radio Newcastle’s Nick Barnes and NBC Sports’ Arlo White have some of the best—and most unique—in the business. In this extended issue 05 feature, we present a side of the commentary booth rarely seen. Check back tomorrow for part II, featuring Arlo White, exclusively on The Pitch. All photographs by Henrik Knudsen for Eight by Eight.” 8 by 8, Cheat Sheets II: The Colorful Commentary of NBC’s Arlo White

“In the past two weeks, we’ve updated our Talent Radar player rankings in the Goalkeepers, Defenders and Midfielders section. We’re now left with this season’s final issue of the Forward Rankings. It’s common tendency that players playing up front attract the most attention, from both fans and clubs. Many of the names on this list will be the subject of transfer speculation in the coming months. We’re going to leave any kind of speculation surrounding these players out of this and give you an unbiased judgement of how the players have done this past season to let you know the reason for the hype around them.” Outside of the Boot

“It was quite predictable that Stoke, a team with a reputation for tough play, should be able to roll over a typically soft-centered Tottenham side and so they did.  Usually, I might just point out a few issues surrounding the dismal performance and proffer a positive solution but this week happens to coincide with a bit of research I carried out which paints a dismal picture of where Tottenham are with regard their inability to prevent chances.   Amongst analytic types, this is not a new theory, i’m reminded of Colin Trainor and Paul Riley respectively highlighting and dryly remonstrating with Tottenham’s defensive issues.   This plight has been a bit of an elephant in my room: I knew it was there, but tried to ignore it.  Hugo Lloris has had a great season?  Well, you only get that kind of swift analysis when a keeper is busy, and he sure has been.” Stats Bomb

“In December, a film critic friend of mine brought me to a private screening of ‘The Water Diviner’, or ‘Elderly Gladiator with a Happy Ending’, as she named it. Apart from the tragically untalented female lead and the need for Russell Crowe to have a love interest, there were some poignant moments that tugged at the heart-strings. Any parent would find it a difficult watch, though when it fully descended into a Turkish-Australian-American circle jerk, the film was already well off the rails. It surprised me that a man with Crowe’s intelligence, experience and depth of knowledge would not see a potential minefield for the ‘epic’. The very people, Turkish Patriots, that he was lauding, also helped perpetrate the first genocide of the 20th century. And worse, the release of the movie coincided with the 100th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide.” backpagefootball

“Constantine, the eastern capital of Algeria, is situated atop two steep plateaus some eighty kilometres inland of the Mediterranean coast. Seven suspended bridges run over and above the menacing gorge below, connecting the two crags at various points. During the colonial era, Constantine was a roughly divided city. One plateau was generally reserved for Europeans and the other for the indigenous. In a reflective letter addressed to everyone and no one, my paternal grandfather recounts how he managed to find work in Sidi Mabrouk, then a neighbourhood exclusive to European police families in Constantine.” In Bed With Maradina

“Bob Marley balancing and bouncing a football on his thighs; dribbling in a spray of dust through some anonymous Jamaican dirt yard; knocking a ball down with his chest, trapping it with his inside foot, hammering it into the net with a flick of the toe. Not the archetypal image of the reggae legend but apt nonetheless. Marley loved music and ganja and Rasta. And he loved football. As a boy in Nine Mile, in the central Jamaican highlands, he was content kicking a dried-up watermelon around the lopsided waste ground scraped out of the hillside. His passion for the game stayed with him throughout his life. Indeed, there were times he seriously considered forgoing a musician’s life for a professional footballer’s.” 8by8

“As we approach the penultimate month of the Premier League season, few would have expected Garry Monk to be in with a shout of collecting the Manager of the Year award when it is all said and done. In fact, the odds on Monk, who was appointed Swansea boss on a permanent basis in July, being one of the first managerial casualties this year stood pretty high. But, amidst all the derision and hindsight 20/20, there was good reason for Monk’s name to be falsely associated with managerial misery.” backpagefootball