Per Stats Perform, Aston Villa — YES, ASTON FREAKIN VILLA — have the best expected-goal differential (per 90 minutes) in the league right now. They’re at plus-0.91. Second? It’s Chelsea at plus-0.82. Villa do it with the league’s second-best attack (by xG) and third-best defense, while Chelsea’s defense is tops in the Prem, and their attack sits fourth. In terms of chance creation and suppression, these are the two most balanced teams in the league; no one else ranks in the top four on both sides of the ball.
Now, the side of the ball to focus on here is, shockingly, Villa’s attack vs. Chelsea’s defense. Despite all the money thrown at attackers over the past two years, Frank Lampard’s team has allowed a league-low 0.09 xG per shot along with a stingy 9.67 shots per game (fourth-best in the league). Villa, meanwhile, LEAD THE LEAGUE in shots per game (16.5) AND passes into the penalty area per game (18.31). On top of that, their average possession moves up the field at 1.68 meters per second, which makes them the second-fastest attack in the UK. This is not supposed to happen! Despite lightning-quick possessions and just a general lack of overall possession — barely over 50 percent — they’re third in the league in share of final-third passes per match behind City and Liverpool, while also, you know, out-shooting the last two title-winners and moving the ball into the box more often, too. So, why the rise from shoulda-been-relegated to, uh, world-class attacking team? It’s the Calf God. Per the DAVIES model, Jack Grealish has been worth a league-best 6.07 goals above average this year — nearly double any of his teammates.
As for Chelsea? Stop worrying about Timo Werner. He’s only scored four goals so far, but he’s been worth 5.6 goals above average according to DAVIES — the third-best mark in the league. Despite the sparkling underlying numbers, they’ve lost three of their last four. Less Timo — on the bench today — is not the solution.
-Shots (on target): Chelsea 16 (5), Aston Villa 10 (2)
-xG: Chelsea 1.82, Villa 0.71
-Final-third passes: Chelsea 112, Villa 65
-Penalty-area passes: Chelsea 12, Villa 11
The NBC announcers seem to think that Villa "were the better team". Perhaps the xG overplays it a bit -- they both spent some time in the opposition penalty area -- but Chelsea should've won this game! Chelsea have edged the xG in the past four matches ... and they've only won one. I'm no huge Lampard fan, but his team is getting bitten by the finishing bug -- on both sides -- match after match. It maybe seems worse than it is because so much of their attack play is based on either A) crosses, or B) super-talented players doing things that super-talented players do. But: Chelsea have a ton of super-talented players, and in a lot of these games, that should've been enough.
Metaphorical Ham Cut in the Shape of Jack Grealish's Leg: Anwar El Ghazi. Four goals in his last four matches; he led Villa in shots and chances created. He also got an up-close-and-personal view of Olivier Giroud's spray-tanned face for an extended period of time. Some may be jealous; others may feel bad for him. Either way: a laudable achievement.
That's it for today! Lotta fun. See you again tomorrow!
Do you know if the xG model you're using includes the height of the ball when the shot was struck? I know Statsbomb's does now, and I guess that would probably downgrade that Pulisic chance from the first half. Maybe I'm wrong, but 1.8 xG seems quite high from what I saw. Thanks Ryan! :)
I would pay so much to read 1000 words from Lampard about what he thinks Havertz’s best position is & what he actually wants him to do. Come to think of it, I bet so would Havertz
Reece James is probably the next least hated? Loads of fans seem to really dislike Mason Mount for some reason, but I don't see what more he could do to make his own fans like him. It's weird.
He’s so easy to dislike because of his boyish looks and weird style but I’ve definitely come around. He’s legit and should start in cm for Chelsea and potentially England
I'd say Chilwell, Silva, James, Azpi, Ziyech, and Giroud are all in that category. Pulisic is only disliked for his injuries I think. Mendy was universally praised initially but since cooling off it's gotten quieter, though I don't think anyone has turned on him just yet.
Mount, Werner, Abraham, Havertz, Kovacic, Zouma have all had their ups and downs. Christensen, Jorginho, and Kepa are almost pure hate.
theres nothing more frustrating then being slacked work related questions while trying to draft a substack chat reply about the heat producing capabilities of graelish's calves...im clearly busy!!!
So, Lampard signs a speedy striker, and the next great German Raumdeuter, and says he has a plan for both. Yet the only tactics this year have been “get it to the fullbacks, cross, and pray” with or without those players. Is there any other sort of tactic going on here I’m missing?
Not that I'm aware of! The only obvious "tactic" that Lampard is employing -- i.e. how the team is playing beyond just the individual decisions players make throughout a match -- is how far the fullbacks push forward. They don't really seem to have a good shape in buildup or in final-third possession. It was just "let Ziyech do cool shit" and that was pretty good for a couple weeks, then he got hurt.
Says something about these two specifically that Barkley not being available is a big loss off the Villa bench and Chelsea don't even notice that he's gone
Had we recorded this week -- after the Palace game shot up their xG numbers with rocket fuel -- it would've happened. I'm still ashamed at all of us, but mainly Fufi.
He's so talented. Hadn't even made the bench in recent matches. I often wonder how good he'd be by now from 1 to Sancho if he just went to Bayern last season
Advanced analytics question: Why don't people just kick Jack Grealish really hard in his exposed shin. Am I missing something? Surely each team has at least one player on the bench with a sense of moral relativism that would allow for it?
He's been shin-guard-less for so long that he no longer has any nerve endings in his legs. He can't feel anything. (Also, most shinguards that pros wear are bullshit and barely make any difference beyond "preventing the ref from telling you to go put shinguards on".)
Very strange team. They feel like they've been through like nine different lifecycles already this season. Outside of the Champions League, they haven't really gone on a sustained run of pairing "good performances" with "good results".
I imagine they're gonna pull an NFL and just keep playing no matter what, but the numbers don't look great. Doesn't seem like City-Everton will be the only game affected. https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
It feels like pulisic is hesitating when he has a chance to beat someone in the box. When he was killing it this summer he seemed to be super decisive and defenders couldn’t handle it
Does Aston Villa have the potential to consistently finish in the top seven for seasons to come or will it be tough to sustain their current level of play?
Really depends on whether or not Grealish stays. He does ... EVERYTHING. With Grealish playing like this plus continued marginal improvements, they definitely could consistently fall in that range. Just doesn't seem likely that a player as good as Grealish will stay for too much longer.
Should we be considering Chelsea's defenders "mid-table" and thus Lamp's ability to get the top defense out of them a real success? If so, wouldn't that be much more valuable to true mid-table side than for the only club that had liquid cash the past window? If not (i.e., the defenders really are world-class) than has Lamps offered Chelsea anything?
Not really? Kante, Mount (who adds most of his value without the ball imo), Thiago Silva, Chilwell, Kovacic, etc. don't really seem like mid-table players to me. Their fees and salaries certainly suggest as much. I don't think Chelsea are outperforming their talent in any clear way, so I still don't really see Lampard as adding anything that [waves hands at 1000s of professional coahces out there] wouldn't also do.
To answer this seriously: You'd assume that Favre and Tuchel are two names at the top of the list if they wanna make a full-time appointment right away. Missing out on Poch by a couple weeks would be something. Maybe Rafa would come in and do the rest-of-the-season thing again if they wanted to wait until the summer.
What do we make of the reporting that Werner's shooting technique is off-kilter and that he basically doesn't aim? Given his history of scoring plenty of goals it seems like a non problem, but it's also not the kind of thing you hear very often from serious journalists. Or does aiming actually not matter and players are just trying to hit it hard at a random number generator that sometimes spits out goals? https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/dec/25/chelsea-best-timo-werner-frank-lampard
I don't really think it matters. You wanna be kicking it hard or picking out corners. As long as you're doing one of the two and getting in good positions, you're gonna score a lot eventually.
How good is Kante actually? Or is he more one of those players people say is incredible because that's just what everyone says, and as a litmus test to show they can judge a player based on more than goals and assists? I haven't watched him enough to be able to tell.
To me, the main value that Kante provides is that he theoretically allows a team to play more attacking players because he has the range to cover the defensive space of two players. So, his value comes from what he allows other players to do rather than any individual thing he does over the course of a match. But I do think he's somewhat overrated. He succeeded on two really weird teams -- Leicester and Conte's Chelsea -- who won in ways that proved to be pretty unsustainable. I think Fernandinho is the better player because he provided the same defensive support and he also was a really capable passer, unlike Kante.
Ryan, any thoughts on my sense that there don’t seem to be a lot of proper strikers coming through the pipeline in England? Was thinking about potential Vardy replacements and haven’t seen/read about many options (would love a Leicester chat at some point)
I think it's more of just a general trend that stretches beyond England. Most of the top young attackers are wide forwards in the Messi/Ronaldo mode now because it's way easier to consistently affect a game from those positions now. The pure striker/poacher is still a valuable player -- see: Vardy -- but the game is moving away from those types of players at all levels.
Is Tottenham Hotspur a club that will still challenge for a place within the top four or will their finances hold them back to where their mainly challenging between 5th and 8th place?
They've finally got the finances where they should be able to challenge for top four every year. Arsenal aren't a serious team at this point, and Spurs actually made more than Chelsea over the last reported year, which put them fourth in revenue (in large part due to the CL run). Fans eventually filling stadiums again will have a huge effect on this, too. It used to be an underdog victory for Spurs to be in a top-four race; now, anything less should be a disappointment.
Put another way: how many teams have multiple CMs who are consistently playing and who would start over Curtis Jones on Liverpool? Maybe City, maybe Chelsea ... and that's it.
Could Curtis Jones play the John McGinn role well? That is, shuttle the ball, bully players physically, guard against counterattacks, and above all else keep the supply line to Jack Grealish flowing? He's certainly not getting in to the Villa midfield over Grealish, and they already play a pretty attacking three so they're not replacing Douglas Luiz.
I feel like when everyone is healthy he doesn’t start for Liverpool, would be interesting for City but probably wouldn’t start, Mourinho would be even more skeptical of him than Ndombele, Lampard would choose Mount over him, & he would be great for United but instead they would choose the Fred-Mctominay double pivot of bleh
How many attackers getting good xG numbers but not actually finishing is too many? Asking for a friend. Also, does it matter if you also have Giroud doing the near opposite?
How far would Villa have to finish down the table for Grealish not to be one of the favourites for player of the season? He has to be the a top three contender at this point right?
Still doesn't feel quite like he's being appreciated as he should be in England. I mean, the guy is one of the five best players on Planet Earth right now. Plus, there's a bias against players at mid-ish-table clubs. Not sure how efficient these markets are, but looks like he's right around the sixth-ish favorite for the award: tied with Mane, but behind Salah, Kane, Son, Bruno, KDB. https://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/premier-league/pfa-player-of-the-year
That seems fair, I guess it all comes down to the "MVP vs Best Player" argument that happens with this award in every sport. Seems extremely strange to me that a team whose two top attacking talents are English and are the largest club in the second biggest city in the country are so underappreciated domestically
I do not. Betting markets have 'em landing in eighth. That's close enough to bump up to fourth, but I'm skeptical of a team being able to maintain this big of a leap in quality for a full season.
I wonder what kind of reputation Kante would have if he came to the Premier League two years later than he did. Backbone of a 1-in-a-hundred-thousand title winner. And then won another with a Chelsea team that didn't even have the best goal-differential in the league. His best years were when the Premier League's overall quality was probably at its lowest in recent memory.
FT Stat Update:
-Shots (on target): Chelsea 16 (5), Aston Villa 10 (2)
-xG: Chelsea 1.82, Villa 0.71
-Final-third passes: Chelsea 112, Villa 65
-Penalty-area passes: Chelsea 12, Villa 11
The NBC announcers seem to think that Villa "were the better team". Perhaps the xG overplays it a bit -- they both spent some time in the opposition penalty area -- but Chelsea should've won this game! Chelsea have edged the xG in the past four matches ... and they've only won one. I'm no huge Lampard fan, but his team is getting bitten by the finishing bug -- on both sides -- match after match. It maybe seems worse than it is because so much of their attack play is based on either A) crosses, or B) super-talented players doing things that super-talented players do. But: Chelsea have a ton of super-talented players, and in a lot of these games, that should've been enough.
Metaphorical Ham Cut in the Shape of Jack Grealish's Leg: Anwar El Ghazi. Four goals in his last four matches; he led Villa in shots and chances created. He also got an up-close-and-personal view of Olivier Giroud's spray-tanned face for an extended period of time. Some may be jealous; others may feel bad for him. Either way: a laudable achievement.
That's it for today! Lotta fun. See you again tomorrow!
Do you know if the xG model you're using includes the height of the ball when the shot was struck? I know Statsbomb's does now, and I guess that would probably downgrade that Pulisic chance from the first half. Maybe I'm wrong, but 1.8 xG seems quite high from what I saw. Thanks Ryan! :)
For reference, Statsbomb has Chelsea at 1.4 xG. Interestingly, Opta/Caley have it even lower at 1.2.
Aston Villa don't respect the game. Also: Kante just hanging behind El Ghazi on that cross. Not great!
Hello, friends! Despite everything you just read: Villa are playing the same exact lineup they played two days ago. We'll see how that goes.
YOU TRY TO INJURE GREALISH AND YOU DIE, PATRICK
Lampard: "The players have to take responsibility. At half time I told them NOT to concede"
I would pay so much to read 1000 words from Lampard about what he thinks Havertz’s best position is & what he actually wants him to do. Come to think of it, I bet so would Havertz
El Ghazi is the new Ryan Giggs.
Seems like all of the guys we used to make fun of (el ghazi, Mount, etc) are good!
And all of the guys we think are good --Adama Traore, no one else -- are bad.
Can you guys make fun of Tom Davies more? Asking for a friend
Not Kepa I suppose
Can't confirm until we see his chest hair
Chelsea fans: It seems like you guys ... hate most of your players? Does anyone other than Kante have a near-universal approval rating?
Reece James is probably the next least hated? Loads of fans seem to really dislike Mason Mount for some reason, but I don't see what more he could do to make his own fans like him. It's weird.
He’s so easy to dislike because of his boyish looks and weird style but I’ve definitely come around. He’s legit and should start in cm for Chelsea and potentially England
I think Chelsea Twitter genuinely thinks Reece James is the best right back in the world
Isn't that corner of the market dominated by the Arsenal fans?
But all of Arsenal’s players objectively suck so not a fair comparison
Just kidding. Saka, Martinelli and ESR are the truth
Nihilism: more than a club
I thought Chelsea fans liked their players okay, but were just convinced their youth loan army players would be even better if only they got to play
I feel like I don't see any criticisms of CHO beyond his role
A clear sign of a deeply unhappy fanbase: Their favorite player is the guy who rarely plays.
Gael Kakuta is the best chelsea player currently
he was crushing it in ligue 1 earlier this year
Found out today that Lucas Piazon is still a Chelsea player on loan at Rio Ave
I'd say Chilwell, Silva, James, Azpi, Ziyech, and Giroud are all in that category. Pulisic is only disliked for his injuries I think. Mendy was universally praised initially but since cooling off it's gotten quieter, though I don't think anyone has turned on him just yet.
Mount, Werner, Abraham, Havertz, Kovacic, Zouma have all had their ups and downs. Christensen, Jorginho, and Kepa are almost pure hate.
Ziyech was really good for three (?) matches then got injured again
Mount, Chilwell, Giroud, Pulisic (when fit) have all had solid seasons
Pulisic hockey assist king!
Damn, Adam, you beat me to the joke, lol
It was a pretty sweet hockey assist though 😃
Did I have it pre-typed, just ready to hit post? Maybe.
Hahaha!!
Will Grealish's performances decline in the winter due to his refusal to de-expose his calves?
theres nothing more frustrating then being slacked work related questions while trying to draft a substack chat reply about the heat producing capabilities of graelish's calves...im clearly busy!!!
you think the cold can stop those cannons?!
So Pulisic gets his first 90 minutes in what feels like forever, then starts 48 hours later. What could go wrong?
He played 90 against Wolves and 83 against West Ham in the past two weeks as well, but those were 5+ days apart at least...
Yeah, hopefully the fitness issues are behind him now, but this just seems like suboptimal management from a suboptimal manager.
Soccer has officially made it in America: We're now worried that a guy is playing TOO MUCH for one of the best teams in the world.
Not wrong to worry, I might add!
recklessly bet on chelsea -.5 for sake of thread
prior to reading ryan's tweet / what he wrote above about Villa....
I took Villa +330 after reading that. 0-0 draw forthcoming
Oh wow. Dueling bets. Let's go!
Related: good thread on the difficulty/illusion of sports betting. https://twitter.com/WMoneyball/status/1343598847155699717
You subconsciously knew that Villa wouldn't rotate.
Bearded Pulisic can't finish. I'm certain the stats back this up
His xG keeps rising, his goal tally does not
So, Lampard signs a speedy striker, and the next great German Raumdeuter, and says he has a plan for both. Yet the only tactics this year have been “get it to the fullbacks, cross, and pray” with or without those players. Is there any other sort of tactic going on here I’m missing?
Not that I'm aware of! The only obvious "tactic" that Lampard is employing -- i.e. how the team is playing beyond just the individual decisions players make throughout a match -- is how far the fullbacks push forward. They don't really seem to have a good shape in buildup or in final-third possession. It was just "let Ziyech do cool shit" and that was pretty good for a couple weeks, then he got hurt.
It's looked like he's tried asking Werner to be a left-sided Ziyech over the past couple weeks and it's worked out about as well as you'd expect
I guess today is “let Kante do cool shit?”
This has been my reaction every time I see Chelsea play. It's all crosses... what's plan B? Or a better plan A?
I think plan B has been hope Zouma or Silva net a corner haha
It can certainly work... James and Chilwell cross it well. Seems strange though that they don't try to play to the strengths of Pulisic/Werner/Havertz
Who deserves the ham today? I don't know who deserves the ham today.
I think Cash has done well since I started watching in the second half.
Doubly so, after getting kicked in the face in the first half.
The answer is always Grealish
Cursed tweet: https://twitter.com/USMNT/status/1343623812164816897
HT Stat Update:
-Shots (on target): Chelsea 7 (2), Villa 6 (1)
-xG, per Stats Perform: Chelsea 1.46, Villa 0.28
-Final-third passes: Chelsea 48, Villa 32
-Penalty-area passes: Chelsea 5, Villa 3
I think this is the type of match that separates Aston Villa with the rest of the top six clubs. It’s the lack of depth on the team.
Bit of a Leeds-lite feel to this one so far from Villa.
Says something about these two specifically that Barkley not being available is a big loss off the Villa bench and Chelsea don't even notice that he's gone
That confused lampard look epitomizes his management style
It seems like his management style is a combination of telling the players what to do, but not how to do it effectively, and great PR.
calvin and i both losing our "dueling" bets was always the inevitable outcome
At least the game was entertaining-ish
Cant believe none of you took Grealish on your Ballon d'Or pod
Had we recorded this week -- after the Palace game shot up their xG numbers with rocket fuel -- it would've happened. I'm still ashamed at all of us, but mainly Fufi.
"bro, i'm sayin' my boy young Jack"
Feel me??
I apologize for not picking Jack. I’ve been a hater since the beginning
You can tell Grealish is a real Leader In The Clubhouse because all the Villa players are following his short-shorts lead
That pass from CHO across to Pulisic was absurd
He's so talented. Hadn't even made the bench in recent matches. I often wonder how good he'd be by now from 1 to Sancho if he just went to Bayern last season
To be fair, he was injured the past few weeks (at the exact same time Ziyech was hurt too).
At the same time, Lampard didn't let him on the field when *both* Pulisic and Ziyech were hurt to start the season. I don't get it.
Advanced analytics question: Why don't people just kick Jack Grealish really hard in his exposed shin. Am I missing something? Surely each team has at least one player on the bench with a sense of moral relativism that would allow for it?
He's been shin-guard-less for so long that he no longer has any nerve endings in his legs. He can't feel anything. (Also, most shinguards that pros wear are bullshit and barely make any difference beyond "preventing the ref from telling you to go put shinguards on".)
I didn't realize Roy Keane followed this newsletter
#CONCACAF
I guess really what I'm saying is that I'm surprised more Ryan Shawcross types aren't at least tempted into TRYING it
He gets fouled all the time. It doesn't work. He is indestructible.
Looking at Chelsea’s bench... my god they should be better than they are
Very strange team. They feel like they've been through like nine different lifecycles already this season. Outside of the Champions League, they haven't really gone on a sustained run of pairing "good performances" with "good results".
I don’t think Frank is capable of figuring out his best squad
Their best run of form coincided with Ziyech being healthy
Will COVID do what the FA won't and give the Premier League a winter break?
I imagine they're gonna pull an NFL and just keep playing no matter what, but the numbers don't look great. Doesn't seem like City-Everton will be the only game affected. https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
Is there an easier PL player to dribble past than Jorginho?
Phil Jones is technically still on the ManU roster
It feels like pulisic is hesitating when he has a chance to beat someone in the box. When he was killing it this summer he seemed to be super decisive and defenders couldn’t handle it
Does Aston Villa have the potential to consistently finish in the top seven for seasons to come or will it be tough to sustain their current level of play?
Really depends on whether or not Grealish stays. He does ... EVERYTHING. With Grealish playing like this plus continued marginal improvements, they definitely could consistently fall in that range. Just doesn't seem likely that a player as good as Grealish will stay for too much longer.
Should we be considering Chelsea's defenders "mid-table" and thus Lamp's ability to get the top defense out of them a real success? If so, wouldn't that be much more valuable to true mid-table side than for the only club that had liquid cash the past window? If not (i.e., the defenders really are world-class) than has Lamps offered Chelsea anything?
Not really? Kante, Mount (who adds most of his value without the ball imo), Thiago Silva, Chilwell, Kovacic, etc. don't really seem like mid-table players to me. Their fees and salaries certainly suggest as much. I don't think Chelsea are outperforming their talent in any clear way, so I still don't really see Lampard as adding anything that [waves hands at 1000s of professional coahces out there] wouldn't also do.
If Lampard gets sacked (never want to talk about another man’s job), who would be the replacement? Would Favre or Nagelsman be serious candidates?
Guus Hiddink.
Hiddink for the rest of the year, then John Terry, isn’t it?
We can only hope.
To answer this seriously: You'd assume that Favre and Tuchel are two names at the top of the list if they wanna make a full-time appointment right away. Missing out on Poch by a couple weeks would be something. Maybe Rafa would come in and do the rest-of-the-season thing again if they wanted to wait until the summer.
I'd have to think Tuchel would be in the conversation? German and Pulisic had his best Dortmund years under him.
What do we make of the reporting that Werner's shooting technique is off-kilter and that he basically doesn't aim? Given his history of scoring plenty of goals it seems like a non problem, but it's also not the kind of thing you hear very often from serious journalists. Or does aiming actually not matter and players are just trying to hit it hard at a random number generator that sometimes spits out goals? https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/dec/25/chelsea-best-timo-werner-frank-lampard
I don't really think it matters. You wanna be kicking it hard or picking out corners. As long as you're doing one of the two and getting in good positions, you're gonna score a lot eventually.
That is a very strange article. Not sure it’s based in fact just having watched his goals at Leipzig on YouTube
How good is Kante actually? Or is he more one of those players people say is incredible because that's just what everyone says, and as a litmus test to show they can judge a player based on more than goals and assists? I haven't watched him enough to be able to tell.
To me, the main value that Kante provides is that he theoretically allows a team to play more attacking players because he has the range to cover the defensive space of two players. So, his value comes from what he allows other players to do rather than any individual thing he does over the course of a match. But I do think he's somewhat overrated. He succeeded on two really weird teams -- Leicester and Conte's Chelsea -- who won in ways that proved to be pretty unsustainable. I think Fernandinho is the better player because he provided the same defensive support and he also was a really capable passer, unlike Kante.
I wonder if younger Kanté was an incredible floor-raiser and maybe he’s lost a step a and is now only a slight ceiling-raiser
Ryan, any thoughts on my sense that there don’t seem to be a lot of proper strikers coming through the pipeline in England? Was thinking about potential Vardy replacements and haven’t seen/read about many options (would love a Leicester chat at some point)
I think it's more of just a general trend that stretches beyond England. Most of the top young attackers are wide forwards in the Messi/Ronaldo mode now because it's way easier to consistently affect a game from those positions now. The pure striker/poacher is still a valuable player -- see: Vardy -- but the game is moving away from those types of players at all levels.
with the exception of josh sargent, of course
Surely DCL, right?? I feel like I'm missing something here
Wouldn't Abraham be a top option?
Is Tottenham Hotspur a club that will still challenge for a place within the top four or will their finances hold them back to where their mainly challenging between 5th and 8th place?
They've finally got the finances where they should be able to challenge for top four every year. Arsenal aren't a serious team at this point, and Spurs actually made more than Chelsea over the last reported year, which put them fourth in revenue (in large part due to the CL run). Fans eventually filling stadiums again will have a huge effect on this, too. It used to be an underdog victory for Spurs to be in a top-four race; now, anything less should be a disappointment.
Shocking from Kante for the equaliser.
Christensen down injured hear the half-way line. Azpi shuffles across to cover in the middle.
What does Kante do?
Half-heartedly press a guy who already had two guys on him...then fail to track the run of El-Ghazi, leaving him all alone on the back stick.
Imagine the reaction if Pogba did the exact same thing ...
Don't need to, as he does it most weeks ;-)
Just quite jarring to see that from such a defensively-aware player as NGolo.
Won’t get to participate Wednesday so I’m going to ask now. How many starting Prem midfields would Curtis Jones get into right now?
I, uh, kinda think the answer is 20?
Put another way: how many teams have multiple CMs who are consistently playing and who would start over Curtis Jones on Liverpool? Maybe City, maybe Chelsea ... and that's it.
Biased, but would take Ndidi/Tielemans/Maddison over him
I didn’t think about Leicester. That’s a fair argument
Could Curtis Jones play the John McGinn role well? That is, shuttle the ball, bully players physically, guard against counterattacks, and above all else keep the supply line to Jack Grealish flowing? He's certainly not getting in to the Villa midfield over Grealish, and they already play a pretty attacking three so they're not replacing Douglas Luiz.
lampard would still start mount though
Is it cheating to say 19 and the one he shouldn’t get in is Liverpool?
Clever -- not cheating. He's probably gonna hit a wall at some point anyway.
Bold of you to assume that he would get played over Granit Xhaka
Agreed. we haven’t seen any evidence that Jones can choke people as well as xhaka...or disrespect his club.
Curtis Jones, lacking intangibles?
I feel like when everyone is healthy he doesn’t start for Liverpool, would be interesting for City but probably wouldn’t start, Mourinho would be even more skeptical of him than Ndombele, Lampard would choose Mount over him, & he would be great for United but instead they would choose the Fred-Mctominay double pivot of bleh
jones > kimmich
2 N’Golo Kante shots in like 2 minutes. Interesting approach from Frank...lol
How many attackers getting good xG numbers but not actually finishing is too many? Asking for a friend. Also, does it matter if you also have Giroud doing the near opposite?
"What if we built the whole plane out of Timo Werner?"
All of the attackers who aren't finishing will make up for when Giroud inevitably stops finishing, imo.
a jorginho blunder in his own penalty area feels imminent
Not sure about this Villa tactic of leaving Chillwell in acres of space just outside of the box
Since everyone is having substack sales, which ones do you recommend?
Grace Robertson's is very good. 10/10 would recommend.
Loved her thing on pep
How far would Villa have to finish down the table for Grealish not to be one of the favourites for player of the season? He has to be the a top three contender at this point right?
Still doesn't feel quite like he's being appreciated as he should be in England. I mean, the guy is one of the five best players on Planet Earth right now. Plus, there's a bias against players at mid-ish-table clubs. Not sure how efficient these markets are, but looks like he's right around the sixth-ish favorite for the award: tied with Mane, but behind Salah, Kane, Son, Bruno, KDB. https://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/premier-league/pfa-player-of-the-year
If Villa finish top four, I think he has a really great shot. If not, I don't think he'll win it.
That seems fair, I guess it all comes down to the "MVP vs Best Player" argument that happens with this award in every sport. Seems extremely strange to me that a team whose two top attacking talents are English and are the largest club in the second biggest city in the country are so underappreciated domestically
Do you think they will finish top four? Guess the Christmas period will have a large bearing on that, so hard to say right now
I do not. Betting markets have 'em landing in eighth. That's close enough to bump up to fourth, but I'm skeptical of a team being able to maintain this big of a leap in quality for a full season.
It feels like heresy to even mention, but is Kanté showing signs of being washed?
I wonder what kind of reputation Kante would have if he came to the Premier League two years later than he did. Backbone of a 1-in-a-hundred-thousand title winner. And then won another with a Chelsea team that didn't even have the best goal-differential in the league. His best years were when the Premier League's overall quality was probably at its lowest in recent memory.
I mean I don’t think anyone at Leicester is upset they have Ndidi over him right now
do people still say this?