Close to Worst Case Scenario

Despite results that conspired to leave Newcastle perilously close to the drop zone, the football has been pretty good the last few days.  We'll start with the Newcastle mini-disaster train then move on to happier things.


Best Team in EPL Through 90 Minutes?

Probably not but we have coughed up a bunch of points in stoppage time.  This time Newcastle snatched a draw from the jaws of victory on basically the last play of the match.  Was I ticked off?  Surprisingly no where near as much as you might expect.  First, as I said last week, a draw on the road to Wolves would be a good result so 1-1 was okay.  Yeah, but you coulda had a win.  The four minutes of stoppage time had been played and Dubravka was fouled on the goal.  Where's your outrage man? Here's the play.

On the stoppage time point, I had expected four minutes to go up on the board so I don't think that was excessive.  Benitez made a sub after 90 minutes so that should have added at least another 30 seconds. Wolves were clearly attacking and Traore's cross went into the box at about 94:32.  Hard to see the ref blowing the whistle without allowing that play to, well, play out.

Upon further review, the ruling on the field was wrong

As for the foul on Dubravka, initially I thought the play was okay.  But this picture with Boly's hand in Dubravka's face makes me think otherwise.  Still, remember that Yedlin got away with a clear shirt pull in the box in the first half?  We got lucky on that one.  More generally, Wolves had more and better chances.  The Newcastle goal was on keeper error.  Metrics at 538 back me up here.  In many ways, Newcastle were lucky to come away with a draw.  BTW Dubravka took a lot sh..tuff for that play; should go a little easier on him given the facial wash he was getting from Boly but he would have been better served punching that ball anyway. On a positive note, the 20 or so minutes we saw from Almiron looked promising.  Though his role at that point in the game was more about possession than scoring, he looks lively, quick and skilled.  He will probably draw a lot of fouls; alas, he might flop a bit too.  In sum, we got an unexpected point and have added some attacking power.  The glass is one-quarter full.


Making the Case for VAR

I've made no secret that I support the EPL plan to implement VAR next year.  Touring around this week's results only reinforces that position.

The most obvious (glaring?) example came in the Brighton - Burnley contest.  With Brighton down 0-2, Burnley defender Jeff Hendrick looked to have deliberately handled the ball in the box.  There was no call and the clearance went directly to a Burnley attacker who might or might not have been offside.  He went directly onto goal but was fouled by the Brighton keeper before he could get a shot off.  That PK was awarded and converted so instead of a PK to make the score 1-2, Brighton found themselves down 0-3.  Though the Seagulls scored two minutes later, the deficit was just too great at that point and the match ended 1-3.  Fast forward to about 2:32 in this video to see the incident; the attacker was in his half of the field so no offside but IMHO VAR would have overruled the decision on non-handling.

Overall a great match that one.  Yeah, I remember that I said it was a weird choice for the 12:30 feature match.  Attacking football from both sides with many excellent scoring chances.  I hadn't realized that Joe Hart had been demoted to Burnley's #2 keeper.  Ouch.  His replacement - Neal Heaton -  came up big at least three times and was a major reason Burnley left the coast with all three points.

Exhibit B is Tottenham's 3-1 win over Leicester.  Also a great watch by the way; truly fun viewing.  That aside, in the first half,  Michael Oliver booked Son for simulation; on the replay it looked to me like there was clear contact by Maguire (?) and the correct call should have been a PK for Tottenham.  There were also suspicions of offside on a Tottenham goal and possible handling in the set up of another.  Oliver probably got those right but they were close.  Other thoughts from that match include a question as to whether problems between manager Claude Puel and Jamie Vardy led to the striker's benching for the match.  He came on as a sub and his first touch was to take a PK, not a very good one that Lloris saved.  Also realized that Shinji Okazaki, Leicester's irrepressibly happy forward, is what Matt Kuchar would be if he was a 5'9" Japanese footballer instead of a 6'4" American golfer. 

Exhibit C is Liverpool - Bournemouth.  I confess that I sped through the DVR of Liverpool's 3-0 win.  But I saw enough to note that the Reds get another goal that probably would not have withstood VAR review for offside.  Not quite as bad as Monday's non-call on Milner and Liverpool added two more so it was not quite as critical a call.


Take the Points 

The match that I did think worthy of so much attention was a bust.  I had fully expected that Chelsea could keep the margin under a field goal against Man City but not even close.  The Citizens had a 4-0 lead by the 25th minute as they buried Chelsea 6-0.  Despite the blowout, if I were Pep I'd be very concerned about this trend:

                                          Time to First

Date      Opponent      MCI Goal
1/29       Newcastle       :25
2/3         Arsenal           :46
2/6         Everton       46:09
2/10       Chelsea         3:26

Not forgetting you Jeff H.  Man United was not pressed at all handling Fulham at Craven Cottage easily for a 3-0 win.  Arsenal were also comfortable winners over Huddersfield.  Both sides pass Chelsea in the race for top four.


Relegation Special

The most dramatic match of the weekend was clearly Southampton vs Cardiff City.   Those who eschewed the TV matches and hunted this one down were rewarded.  Not so much with great football but with tense match that featured a crazy ending.  Cardiff carried a 1-0 lead late into the match with Southampton creating chance after chance that they couldn't convert.  Finally, in the 91st minute they got the equalizer on a corner and looked set to rescue a point.  But Cardiff put in a second one in the 96th minute.  Things are so tight at the bottom that the late goal briefly catapulted Cardiff out of the bottom three and into 15th while dropping Southampton to 18th.  Later results for Burnley and Newcastle sent them back to 17th but still out of the bottom three.


Unlucky or Ungood

During the Southampton Cardiff match, as the Saints were squandering chance after chance, Dennis and I wondered if missing three in a row is bad luck or bad football.  Well, the EPL website does have a stat called Big Chances Missed (haven't found a definition yet).  We also know goals scored, though of course, not every goal comes from a big chance.  But we can take the two and at least get a rough idea using Goals/(Goals plus Big Chances Missed).  The table is provided below.

	Big
	Chances	Goals	Conversion
	Missed	Scored	Rate
Brighton and Hove Albion	17	28	62.22%
Manchester City	47	74	61.16%
Arsenal	35	53	60.23%
Liverpool	39	59	60.20%
Tottenham Hotspur	37	54	59.34%
Manchester United	36	52	59.09%
Cardiff City	17	24	58.54%
West Ham United	27	32	54.24%
Burnley	26	29	52.73%
Newcastle United	20	22	52.38%
Wolverhampton Wanderers	31	34	52.31%
Chelsea	42	45	51.72%
Everton	34	36	51.43%
AFC Bournemouth	35	37	51.39%
Huddersfield Town	14	14	50.00%
Crystal Palace	28	27	49.09%
Leicester City	34	31	47.69%
Southampton	32	28	46.67%
Fulham	31	25	44.64%
Watford	44	34	43.59%

Also, the league average is 54%, as in one out of every two good chances turns into a goal.  So on average, the probability that a team misses three good chances in a row is about 10%.  So then I ran a correlation on points in the table with conversion rate and got about 60%, which suggests at least some relation between a good conversion rate and success in the league.  The bigger news is that the correlation between total chances (Big Chances Missed + Goals) is about 94%, which seems staggering.  Continuing down the rabbit hole, the correlation between Big Chances Missed and points in the table is 75%. I'll be sending the spreadsheet over to BFS Director of Operations Research Dennis F for further study.


Champions League

Huge night Wednesday for Spurs as they took on Ballspielverein Borussia 09 c.V. Dortmund (simply Dortmund to their friends) at Wembley.  Tentative first half but Son got things going off this beautiful cross from Vertonghen; we'll make it this week's YouTubeableMoment.  Vertonghen (and when did he become an offensive force?) got one for himself and Llorente added a third late.  They'll be quite happy to take the 3-0 lead to Germany.  Not as happy a picture for Man United as they went down 0-2 to PSG and will now miss Pogba due to red card suspension in the return match in Paris.  First time losing under Ole Gunnar.  This week Liverpool host Bayern on Tuesday (TNT 3 pm) while Man City take on Schalke on Wednesday.  Michael B will give me sh..stuff about being parochial if I don't also mention Atleti hosting Juventus on Wednesday (also TNT at 3 pm).


The Training in Spain

This weekend is 5th round FA Cup so you know where Newcastle will be.  That's right, doing some warm weather training in Spain.  Unfortunately you'll need ESPN+ to catch any of this weekend's matches.  The full schedule is here.  Mostly scheduled sequentially so you can catch them all.  The feature match of the set is clearly Chelsea Man United Monday at 2:30.