What I Wrote, Week of 9/30

[Jim Nantz voice] Hello, friends.

My book, Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution, which is an inside-look at the net gains being made across the Beautiful Game as it undergoes an analytics revolution, is out in two-and-a-half weeks! Pre-order here, if you haven’t already. Also, the contest winners from last week will be notified in the near-future. No one, however, is beating this:

I also wrote some stuff for ESPN this week:

-Why every national team — other than maybe the Netherlands, Argentina, and Brazil — is bad:

Nearly all of England's Nations League matches could've gone either way, with a roughly equivalent number of chances for both sides. It seems as if that's almost what Southgate wants, with his team finding the edge on set pieces, individual execution and defensive execution. It could work, and England could win the World Cup -- but it really feels like they could be so much better than that, too

-What’s the state of the Premier League’s Big Six?

I think there are two ways you can look at Liverpool's season thus far: (1) It's over. They're not catching City. Their title odds are already cut in half. Or (2) Despite an early-season injury crisis and what seems like an absolute worst-case six-game run of league performances, they still have the third-best expected-goal differential in England. They're only going to improve from there.

The frustrating part: neither one is necessarily wrong.

Enjoy your weekends, all.