The worst thing about this awful article is that it genuinely suggests that 'performative reading' (which seems to be reading in public and/or secondhand books) equates in men to "f***boy behaviour; casual cruelty hides behind their finely crafted feminist image". Utterly wild to make that jump.

🤷‍♂️

🦇 Today is #OneHealthDay, a unified approach that recognises that all sectors must work together to achieve the health of animals, the environment and humans. Bats, people, and their ecosystems are closely connected, and so actions to support one part of this system also benefit the entire system.

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

oh my god, The Tweet is exactly ten years old tonight

⚽ 🇸🇪 Analytics FC's work with AIK Fotboll is making a real impact AIK’s Head of Football Strategy, Jeremy Steele, has given an update on our partnership with AIK’s is having a tangible impact on scouting, recruitment, and performance reviews. Find out more below: analyticsfc.co.uk/blog/2025/10...

🦇 Amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill are likely to be discussed @houseoflords.parliament.uk today. The Bill ignores and disregards the need for evidence and will not benefit the economy, our natural heritage or society. Updated briefing here:

I swear if one more commentator says Agyemang "causes chaos" I will reach into my TV and throttle them

Sarina is a brilliant coach and I love what she has done in general, but at some point we have to start giving meaningful chances to new players especially in midfield.

English football’s focus on possession over transition causes so many problems when the international side comes up against quick strong sides with a core of NWSL attacking players.

If this team didn’t have Russo idk

🌍 Market Analysis – Norway’s Toppserien @shelatneel.bsky.social looks at one of Europe’s more youthful elite women’s leagues and showcases some of the exceptional talent to be found there analyticsfc.co.uk/blog/2025/10...

I’m extremely over getting AI-generated messages on LinkedIn asking about the football industry. A) AI can be spotted a mile away in this kind of missive; don’t do it! B) how can you be expected to be taken seriously if you outsource saying hello to a fucken robot

What does this even mean my god

🧵 Thread: I recently explored a few ideas to analyze a team's press in more detail 👇 1️⃣ Pressing triggers ▫️By focusing on the opponent's pass before a 1st pressing action in a sequence, it's possible to separate different triggers 👇 The graphic shows an example, with the 8 triggers that I defined

I think a lot about how most big-city newspapers used to have a a couple of movie critics, a theater critic, a few book critics, an architecture critic, a music critic or two, an in-house cartoonist, at least two or three foreign correspondents, a fashion writer, and a whole staff of photographers

Sheffield Wednesday are in administration Without structural reform this stuff will keep happening - it is yet another sign English football needs to get its house in order and move clubs away from owner reliance Analysis w/Phil Buckingham and @mjslater.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/athletic/674...

This is a very fair summary of where it’s at currently

And so it begins.

Not saying a huge style shift guarantees trouble, but if your squad is used to one thing and then you try to get them doing something epically, wildly different, or you try to adapt to do something epically, wildly different, it is quite unlikely to work.

Was a real pleasure chatting to Adrian about data analytics in football

Needs a @atherton.bsky.social Sad Dad Bands entry on each

The face Joe Marler just pulled to the muscle comment absolutely killed me

It’s not wildly unhinged, sorry, but John Le Carré was very, very underrated as a novelist because of the genre thing (this applies to a good few sci-fi’ers too) Also, Chaucer is way more GOATed than many realise and the Riverside makes it surprisingly accessible (he’s usually taught v badly)

Friday Stat Dump: Saves and Save % The analytics folk, me included, have for the past decade or so extolled the virtues of evaluating goalkeepers on something like goals against - post-shot xG (G-PSxG). I don't think that's wrong, per se, but, if that is the only metric, we've got some issues. 1/

Shea Charles has been looking better and better for Southampton and tonight he’s excelled for NIR as well. Real asset for club and country at such a young age

Yes. I was alive for this day

This is a great piece

This here’s a man of the people.

All's Well That Ends Well... With a Long Throw-in marclamberts.substack.com/p/alls-well-...

The point of good statistics work in sports isn’t to end the conversation, it’s to start the conversation from a better place.

I know these guys are all dumber than a sack of hammers, but it is fascinating to see the military decide “logistics are gay” in real time

The @scoutedftbl.com 50 is here. I voted in part with my heart and in part with my access to elite level scouting algos. Sub to Scouted. It makes sense.

My working theory of football teams is that the best managers work out how to get the most ball control & space control out of their teams in order to buy players with better ball control and space control, on repeat www.getgoalsideanalytics.com/positional-p...

Few style points on MUFC managers (no judgements!) Elite teams (Klopp/Pep) usually sit in the bottom right zone, lots of possession in the final third etc. United have consistently moved away from the dominant zones on the right. Amorim heading the right way from ETH in possession at least

This drops tomorrow and I’ve voted. Subscribe to Scouted to read all the good stuff

I do get making more NHS services available online but as someone with a parent with dementia, there needs to be much more flexibility especially around how you book appointments and find out stuff. Railroading people into digital services for cost/ease reasons doesn’t help everyone

Here’s the top 20 players in those five leagues for quality of throws into the box in the last 12 months. Note how some clubs are really leaning into it (Brentford, Hoffenheim, Parma, RBL). Kayode is also second for volume of throws into the box per 90 in this period

🦇 Most UK bat species evolved to use trees as roosts, while many also hunt in woodland. Explore how bats use and rely on woodlands and trees in our 'Bats and woodland' pages: www.bats.org.uk/our-work/lan...

This is one of the funniest things I’ve read

Yes and I will fight them (while also info-dumping about bats)

this exists it is called thinking

Usage rate klaxon

Transfer fees can tell us a lot about how clubs can and want to construct a squad. The positions of the big five/six are very clear, with Newcastle obviously seeking to bridge the gap. The gap between the big teams and the rest is also pretty huge, with two very clear clusters

And this, friends, is the fun of it! Both types. My PhD supervisor used to tailspin every time I sent him anything because it was all just digressions and research rabbit holes and I didn’t finish but I fuckin loved it

I mean, obvs not significant, but come on

I think that the two most important things a manager can do are pick the best players at their disposal, & be pretty similar to the last manager so those players probably fit what they want to do. And if they don’t, the playing squad fit should be more important than ‘philosophy’. Apropos nothing

23/24 the European football market incl UK was worth ~€38b. The European gaming market is worth ~€22b. I doubt it’s an exaggeration to say that the staff of the English football press dwarf those being paid to write about gaming across Europe as a whole

When @iainmacintosh.bsky.social asked me to write about a computer game again, I could hardly say no Here is my take on Command & Conquer: Red Alert and the pleasures of nostalgia trackrecordmedia.org/2025/09/11/d...

When @iainmacintosh.bsky.social asked me to write about a computer game again, I could hardly say no Here is my take on Command & Conquer: Red Alert and the pleasures of nostalgia trackrecordmedia.org/2025/09/11/d...