Well, what would you call it when a quarter of the way through the season, Bournemouth and Sunderland are in the top four?
A Must Win Match in October?
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| Murphy's strike gets Newcastle an early lead |
I only half kid that this was a must win match. A loss would have left the Magpies in 17th and a draw just 16th. As it is, the win only lifted them to 12th. Yes, it's early in the season but at some point, the hole was going to be too deep to be relevant this season.
A Slew of Upsets
We will not lose faith in Opta after one weekend but there were a bunch of results that went against their forecasts:
- Aston Villa managed a 1-0 win over Man City. The stats say maybe the Villans were lucky to get the win but they sure played tough. Bad news is that the rejuvenated Buendia suffered some type of foot injury and details about his expected return aren't available yet.
- Sunderland scored late to take all three points at Stamford Bridge in a 2-1 win over Chelsea; you can see Talbi's dramatic late winner here.
- Liverpool continued to stumble, suffering their fourth straight league defeat at the hands of Brentford; my own viewing and the stats suggests this was the correct result.
- Spurs crushed Everton at their new digs 3-0; I wouldn't have counted this as an upset except that Opta had the Toffees as decent favorites.
Results Elsewhere
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| Roger Le Bris has Sunderland in fourth Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images |
Two things though. The win at Chelsea aside, Sunderland's schedule to date has not been the most rigorous. They haven't played any top five sides and the average position of their opponents is 13. Second, the expected goals stats suggest they may be on a lucky streak. They've scored 11 with an xG of 9.4 and conceded 7 with an xGC of 10.8. Putting them together, xgscore.io calculates that, based on expected goals, Sunderland would have 11.4 points rather than 17. Ranking on adjusted points, Sunderland are 13th. The xG differences may not be just luck but it will be interesting to see how they fare going forward.
The Kiss of Death?
Reports say that the West Ham board is backing Nuno Espirito Santo "for the foreseeable future" and sound prepared to be active in the January transfer window. That's really sweet of the board not to fire him after four matches in charge. More ominously though, how often have we heard ownership voice support for a manager and sack him shortly thereafter? If I were Nuno, I would not answer my phone or check emails for a while.
We Are Obligated To Carabao It
As defending champions, Newcastle are sort of required to be serious about the EFL Cup. Not like, say Liverpool, who trotted out basically a full second team lineup against Crystal Palace and unsurprisingly lost 0-3. Eddie Howe did make some concessions to the congested schedule with a slightly rotated lineup against Spurs. This is where the depth of the squad may be working out. Barnes, Elango, Krafth, Willock and Ramsdale all got starts but there wasn't a noticeable drop off in quality. The Magpies dominated early and were rewarded with a Fabian Schar header goal off a corner in the 24th minute. Spurs seemed to wake up and the rest of the half was pretty even.
Newcastle added to the lead early in the second half when Woltemade got another header goal. Spurs did not go quietly into the night so the two goal cushion was much appreciated. The stats are pretty close, suggesting the 2-0 final is a bit flattering to the Magpies. They'll face Fulham in the quarters in December and thanks to the draw, that one is also at SJP.
Letting the Goals Go By or This Is Not My Beautiful Game (apologies to The Talking Heads)
The first half of the Union - Chicago match at Subaru Park on Sunday might have been the most shithouseryest 45 minutes of soccer I've ever seen. When the Fire's keeper lingered over the first goal kick less than a minute into the game, you could see where this was going. They deployed all the classics - respotting the ball on free kicks, preparing to take a throw-in only to hand it to a teammate who would take another 30 seconds off the clock, cynically fouling Union players, and writhing on the ground after being fouled. Two parties aided Chicago in executing the plan - the Union and the referees. The Union looked like a U12 side with every player packed into one sixth of the field at any given time. The refs merely offered hand gestures in an attempt to get the Fire to stop stalling rather than flashing a yellow once the strategy was evident. The worst part was that Chicago generated the better chances too.
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| The Union goal scorers Iloski and Vassilev Photo by Carl Gulbish |
So, onto PKs we went, since they don't do extra time in the first round matches. The critical miss came when Waterman hit the cross bar on Chicago's fourth attempt. Bueno "buried" the fifth take (actually it was a cheeky ball on the ground) and the Union escaped with a win. This game was so ugly, there was nearly a fight during the shootout between Blake, Chicago keeper Brady and I forget who between one of the kicks.You can see the whole PK shootout - including a little bit of the dust up - here.
Aside from the aestethics, the statistics suggest some real issues. Though the U had more shots (16/13), shots on target were 5/2 and xG was 1.9/.9, both favor Chicago. In other words, we dodged the bullet here. Also, for all my bitching about the best of three format, the U really lucked out here; in the old format, they'd be heading to Chicago 2-2 and the Fire with two away goals, i.e. in big trouble.
Just Keep Going
Another busy week. No early game Saturday, which is always a major disappointment here. Right.
It does mean a crowded 11 am time slot (clocks turned back in England, remember?) with five matches. USA chose Burnley - Arsenal. I might have gone with Crystal Palace - Brentford, two mid-table teams who will probably actually play. With our faith in Opta a little shaken, we don't understand how Nottingham Forest are slight favorites at home versus Man United; talk about no respect. The other choices are Brighton - Leeds or Fulham - Wolves. In the latter, we'd look for Fulham to establish that they are not relegation candidates.
The 1:30 feature match looks good with Spurs hosting Chelsea, except it will only be "featured" on Peacock. Guess the Rutgers Illinois football game is more important. They try to make up for that with Liverpool - Aston Villa at 4 pm on USA; despite their recent form, the Reds are pretty big favorites over the Villan. We'll see about that.
Sunday's fare has West Ham- Newcastle at 9 am (turn our clocks back) and Man City vs Bournemouth. Really looking for Newcastle to build on recent momentum against a struggling West Ham side; we like Nuno but not enough to not want all three points. On paper City are big favorites over the Cherries. Don't look now but by the end of the weekend, the Manchester clubs could be 2-3 in the table.
The matchweek concludes with Sunderland vs Everton at 3 pm on USA. This is a good test for the Black Cats.
Midweek action is Matchweek 4 of Champions League, Europa Cup and Europa Conference League. Some classic and not-so classic fixtures. In the former category we have Liverpool - Real Madrid, Man City -Dortmund and maybe Spurs - Copenhagen. In the latter we have Arsenal - Slavia Praha, Grab Bag Qarabag FK - Chelsea and Newcastle - Athletic Club (better known as Athletic Bilbao).
Thursday's Europa Cup fixture between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel-aviv in Birmingham has drawn more than its share of attention for unfortunate reasons. Local law enforce sought to prevent ticket sales to M. Tel-aviv supporters based on fears of violence. The club then decided not to accept any ticket allocation from Aston Villa. The initial attempt to ban supporters has drawn attention/criticism from many quarters, including the British government. Though M. Tel-aviv does have a record of hoolaganism, this seems more about political tensions than just unruly fans.
MLS playoffs continue with the second matches in all of the best-of-three series. The Union will be in Chicago on Saturday at 5:30. Note that except for Charlotte losing to NYCFC, all the favorites came through "unscathed."
Just keep plugging away, an international break is coming shortly.
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