the gap might be the problem :/

was curious and 18th April 2014, Sunderland were 6 points from safety with 5 games to play and 20th, they then won 4/5 and stayed up

It's struck me that while the machines have made stuff like "it's not x — it's y" common and it's excruciatingly bad to read, they have at least stopped people using more than three of these..... or multiple of these??? or these!!

Statistical Analysis of Mohamed Salah at Roma If the latest reports are anything to go by, and often they aren’t, then Liverpool fans should be very excited at the prospect of Mohamed Salah joining the ranks at Anfield. Many followers of the P…

funny to see Opta data in that first article - Statsbomb data didn't exist then; and also a link to an article by @rayhamill96.bsky.social at the bottom, a great guy who I met for the first time ever Nov '25 at the Hudl Conference, lotta time passed! finermargins.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/s...

Quite liked this one too where I looked at him in a lull
blogarchive.statsbomb.com/articles/soc...

Coulda maybe gone harder with the last line though: "The chance that he succeeds clearly outweighs the risk that he will fail."

Nearly 9 years ago, back when I used to write stuff; didn't do many "hail the transfer" pieces, but safe to say picked a good one ha
blogarchive.statsbomb.com/articles/soc...

IDEA: maybe it's been done but i'd read "2026 Sports Greatest "Mattingly Get Rid Of Those Sideburns" hairstyles"

Apart from the succession of goal costing slips, team is playing well

let us not suggest local BBC news is dumbing down, but a curious angle for this story, half expecting quotes from the dog given we have a picture of it on duty, taking its job seriously

bsky.app/profile/bano...

I wasn't, but I stand by my point

re: soccer analytics, if you never learned to code, you still would be better off if you did. Yes, AI will enable you to do things you couldn't before, but what's missed in the learning stage is vital. It's analogous to the difference between learning to code soccer data having never watched soccer

I once said something that I thought was valid and quite fun about Darwin Nunez reminding me of Balotelli clanging shots from anywhere at high rate and got absolutely barbequed in the quotes and deleting it made it all go away and was much better

reverse fixture was 17-3 in shots, this one is currently 17-3 in shots :/

Mac Forehand and Felix Pigeon are my Names of the Olympics so far

ngl I thought i had it

love shack

since 2015-16, no non-big 6 team has taken this many shots in a PL game (most is Southampton took 33 v ... Sean Dyche's Burnley in 2016-17), most any team has taken is 37 (3 times, including Man Utd v ... Sean Dyche's Burnley 2016-17)

ha came back to say this, agree - against er... Thomas Frank's Brentford in another 0-0er

i'm tryna check now i'd be surprised if he ever went about idk 20? 25?

team A stomping team B but unable to score = loads of shots, that's a thing; but a Sean Dyche team taking 35 shots is amazing

while i'm in an opining mood, articles that are essentially :
"let's explain [outcomes that are clearly just topping out or bottoming out variance]" I get why they exist but also...

ha related: see also nearly all historical chess discourse, which is great fun

the amount of time sport spends trying to downplay anything political is in direct contrast to the fact that sport is intrinsically political, indeed without the dynamic, much of it wouldn't exist - countries, cities, towns, flags, representation, rivalries.

yeah I can't pretend I have a great handle on this, simply just thought how often a shirt pull in open field is a yellow and here we are @kierdoyle.bsky.social pointed out that type of pull gets carded when stopping attacks, this stopped a defensive attempt

but Haaland denies Szob's ability to save a goal! It's just not fair! It's the rules that are wrong haha

right but he's already on a yellow so off you go son - both pulls are very similar so if both are validly in play (I think they are? lord knows) for one to be no card and the other straight red is odd

yeah idk, I can buy that you're right, just a weird turn of events all told

ha yeah i'm not super fussed (give the goal even) but watching it back the offences look very similar, they both pull each other's shirt and impede progress. I wouldn't call it "careless". One prevents a goal, the other prevents the saving of a goal but they are super similar