Much as it pains me [fan perspective], Arsenal appear rock solid for the title this year [analytics, reality, depth of squad perspective]. Didn't quite expect Liverpool's wheels to come off quite this quickly after a fast start, but it at least makes it interesting.

I like this Tottenham lineup. Simons in midfield theoretically helps, and i'm somewhat invested in Tel and Odobert coming good; they can only do that if they're on the pitch. Udogie has been lively recently & i'm more positive than many that eventually passes will connect & the team looks better

Fun with pressure maps This is Richarlison in the Super Cup, with a neat pattern i've been looking for since:

1:42.77 gets you last place in the men's 800, a madness

absolute chills there before today two women in history had gone under 48 seconds for the 400m and they were in the mid 80s, now two more in one race

Prime Vision anyone? The game moves too fast for most of what they've got, but small points for the attempt, it's a lot

Duplantis: one of the most electrifying performers in sports entertainment eh

Men's World Championship Marathon had both a false start and a photo finish

Last 10 PL champions have lost 38 games total, so a team losing 2 before the end of August doesn't give much wriggle room

Gonna hype this up a bit. It's quite a unique position in European football (i remember only one junior de job post posted before) and there is a big project ahead that's gonna look very good in any tech cv, not only for football jobs. The team is full of specialists and we enjoy working together.

Current/recent lightning map of part of the UK with Grimsby highlighted

Think first: every time someone writes "completed 100% of their tackles (2/2) 💪" a random R session crashes on an analyst's laptop

Tip for every professional soccer club in the world, all levels: hire at least one person who *legit* understands data/analytics, and if you're hiring adjacent roles, pro-actively look for people who understand data/analytics. You will reap the benefit by broadening actual data knowledge in house

My daughter is ~two weeks younger than Max Dowman and some way off an Arsenal debut; i've asked her to up her game

An extremely "good players who don't know each other yet" half from Man City there

In a fairly wild, but not necessarily illogical piece of groupthink, every single pundit, alongside an AI and supercomputer submission (they should team up!), has predicted Liverpool, Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea as the top 4 www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

Frank playing strong Frank-ball in his first game against a team as good as PSG with a cup on the line was entirely reasonable and largely worked well, will be curious what tweaks and other gears emerge as we progress

Stuff I'm not used to: crossing, taking time over restarts, being a team of man-mountains

Stoke weren't able to end their wait, although they'll get another chance if their game with Sheffield Wednesday goes ahead. I've written something on the longest waits for a team to sit top and bottom of a table here, and the latter is even more interesting: www.experimental361.com/p/which-club...

Curious about Palhinha and age, he's 6 months younger than Raheem Sterling, has played ~50-60% the career minutes, all of Sterling's were at highest level, Palhinha only spent 3 seasons outside of Portugal. Different positions, requirements, fitness/injuries but still there's 30yr olds and 30yr olds

I wrote 13 of these I think the last year we did them as StatsBomb, anyway - le baton is long since passed->

As someone who has had and continues to have a detailed view of the data landscape in professional football since at least 2017, I endorse a heck of a lot of what Ian Graham said to the FT today

Don't think this is news, but here in current times players overperforming their xG appears to be often presented as an unequivocal good

I've enjoyed the Club World Cup so far, is what I thought I'd be saying at this point, but sadly it hasn't captured my interest at all yet *waves small CWC flag*

Frank replacing Ange in charge?

Bit sad on Ange, he won his final and that was fantastic to experience. Similar to Poch though - except he lost his final - but for both, the final arrived while overall metrics were in freefall

I'm not tired ha

Brennan Johnson: "all the fans get battered, we get battered for not winning a trophy" 💪

Gareth Bale "...and the fans will celebrate this... with a lot of alcohol"

Ange winning this playing Mourinho ball is pretty special, 3 goddamn shots

Who remembers Marseilles Vs Red Star

Clear handball, ref missed it? 😎

Time to put the ghost of Keith Houchen to bed 💪

Always happy when people in my team do good work as @lwoodblake.bsky.social has done here looking at ball carrying: www.hudl.com/blog/digging...

Perfect afternoon to sit in the garden with a glass of wine, content that no sport is happening that I could possibly be missing

Mildly curious at the BBC running what look like transfer bait stories last couple of days. Yesterday it was Man Utd interested in Cunha, today talking about 4 clubs interested in Huijsen.

Chart a bit busy at this stage, but point to make is Liverpool haven't had a "bad" defensive game in the PL all season. Arsenal's xG Against is a clip lower, and they've been solid too, but just nothing given away by Liverpool, worst game was Bournemouth in Sept, 1.36 xG against #d#

Haven't watched any preamble of MNF in a good while, but a whole presentation of the PL table via xG is pretty cool. Dave Jones described it and did a decent job, albeit it didn't provoke a discussion (yet)

Most of the time I don't care about golf but happy McIlroy has achieved that, what a saga. Soon as his daughter made that putt, never in doubt :)

Absurdly good finish that

De Bruyne debate on Sky rn, the only aspect I think is arguable against him being the PL's best ever midfielder is longevity, cos on the numbers when he was on the pitch the lad knocked it out the park

I said to someone couple of weeks ago, could see Tottenham losing away at AZ 1-0 and winning the home leg 4-0, so important to note we are on the right track with that

The echo of Moyes telling his team to be first to every loose ball is loud in this one. Get the basics right etc

Tel gets shots, I like it. Also feels like more aggressive crossing today, which I also like

I forgot this was on and built a bed for my daughter tonight, just finished to come down and flip it on for injury time 🔥💔

Wow memories of Jagielka

Somewhat self selects by being "the guy that stayed fit" you end up playing a lot, but Havertz defo played a ton this season (not to hand but ~top 10 in PL across all comps)