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A Bunch of Fives So when all is said and done, we analyse where, when and the quantity of times a ball has landed in the back of a net, past and present, or failed to, and somehow deduce why it was destined to be so. That’s the unenviable task of our resident expert Professor Statto, who brings us the benefit of his incisive intellect allied to half a century of football scholarship. And not least, his wry sense of humour.  He leaves the predictions to others, but he’ll provide you with the ammunition to sustain your challenge through your Score Five campaign. He’ll keep you up-to-date with what’s happening in the competition. He’ll lead you along byways exploring weird and wonderful facets of the game past and present, but always in his own inimitable style. Some comedian once suggested that “98% of all statistics are made up”, but the Prof. cordially invites you all to verify any information he presents – if only because he does most of the calculations in his head. Professor Statto and his amazing statistics. ====================================== Visit the Prof's 2008/09 season archives. Previous analysis Shatcha Mahf, and The Great Wall Of Stoke Hello again all, and welcome back! For the first time since before Christmas, we had a fixture schedule that was completed as intended, so there’s no delay in finding out who our FA Cup 4th round winner is. Saturday’s one league game completed our mini-round 22A and brought the tie-breaker into action to separate the 100? players who all predicted the three home winners. You’ll find all the details below. Apart from our lucky winners, there are three other people who had reason to be happy with recent results. Portsmouth ‘striker’ John Utaka has had much criticism heaped in him in recent weeks following the revelation that’s he’s been pocketing eighty grand (that’s 80,000 of your English pounds) per week in exchange for scoring three goals in the last two seasons. I make that just 2m. pounds per goal. Now, following his double in the Cup- tie against Sunderland, that’s come down to a mere 1.25m per goal. Wayne Rooney’s goals cost about 10% of Utaka’s. The Scouse striker’s four-timer against Hull was the first of his professional career. He’s in fantastic form right now: what chance of him joining Jermain Defoe, Andy Cole and Alan Shearer in the Prem’s Five-timer club? I see that United’s next two home games are against the Prem’s bottom pair…. Tuesday night’s game at White Hart Lane marked the 23rd occasion that fullback Gareth Bale had started a game for Spurs, and for the first time, he walked off at the end a winner. That’s a record, but not enough to match Derby’s 2007-08 team mark of 32 games without a win, from Sept. 17 ’07 until the end of the season. I haven’t checked with the ScoreFive Supremo recently, but last time I heard, there were players from 105 nations among us, with every corner of the globe represented.(Congratulations to those of you in Australia, India and Nauru on your National Days this week, by the way). I sometimes have difficulty grasping why the Premier League is so popular outside the UK. On my travels, I’ve often asked the question “Why England? Why not Serie A, La Ligua?” In Prem-obsessed Thailand, a group of local Liverpool and Man. Utd fans stopped slagging each other’s teams long enough to agree that “You see the players smile….the fans look like they’re having fun”. Well, sometimes, yes – but probably not at Hull in January. Despite the current delicate state of relations between Bolton and neighbours Burnley following the move of manager Owen Coyle to the Reebok, there was some humour amid the insults when they met on Tuesday night. Bolton officials removed the more abusive Burnley banners, but did allow one to remain: the Monty Python-inspired ‘He’s Not The Messiah – He’s A Very Naughty Boy’. Burnley’s fans were on the receiving end a while back when their Northern accents were mocked by visiting Tottenham fans “If you can’t talk proper shatcha mahf” sang the Spurs faithful, with not-totally-intentional humour. The Burnley hordes responded in their local patois “If tha’ cain’t talk reyt, shut thi’ gob”. Laughter all round, and it’s better than chucking bricks at each other. Weekly highlights Pt. 1: Cup I like to think the ScoreFive FA Cup competition brings in the fans who know a bit more than just the Prem big names – players who can spot a lower league club that might be worth backing to cause an upset. A quarter of you could see the writing was on the wall for Burnley at Reading, 10% fancied little Notts County to hold Wigan, and a similar number were behind Crystal Palace at Wolves. Despite these surprises – and the less-expected successes of Leeds, Birmingham and Stoke, the average score was 25.55 points (30.02 with Banker). Correct results average was 47.38 and Perfectos 7.36%. With Chelsea, Villa and Man. City all facing lower-league opposition, Bankers were a predictably-high 89.51%. Bolton loyalist Trotters continues to play Russian Roulette by risking his ’fiver on Kevin Davies & Co., but he got away with it this time. Same again at Liverpool on Saturday, Trotters? The matches at Aston Villa, Cardiff, Scunthorpe and Stoke didn’t produce a single ’fiver between them, but there were a select few that did. JohnW nailed the 2-2 at Notts County, Rolls-Roys had the same forecast for Spurs/Leeds. Ruthless and SouthernHunter relied on the Brummies to win 1-2 at Goodison, but best of the lot was CfcMark, who had the West Brom-Newcastle 4-2, which is the first correct prediction we’ve ever had of that rare result. As the points on offer halve with each succeeding round, a good start to the FA Cup is vital. Round 3 winner AndrewWelsh1958 has just held onto his lead, but HelloArthur2000 has rocketed up into 2nd place, a point behind. Three other players – Len, Turvey100 and Southern Hunter – have surged into the Top 10 on the back of 37s. If you have 100 pts or upwards, I reckon you’re in the hunt. It will take something exceptional, like Trevorsio’s 43 pts, for a player below the ton to get among the leaders from here on in. Strange how some players have contrasting fortunes in the League and Cup. Big Phil and Bryal51 are flying in the League, but in the Cup, they’re down among the dead men with the ever-contrary Norm. I just hope no-one at the Bridge finds out that Phil Banked on a Reading-Burnley draw instead of siding with Chelsea. With the eight ties of Round 5 offering your last chance for a big (45) points haul, I’d suggest you give extra attention to the scores when you come to your predictions. In Round 4, in nine games where Big met Small, we saw seven Smalls score and five get two against the Bigs. Not only that, six of the Big Boys scored two or less. This wasn’t reflected in most predictions. Do the big boys have any incentive to bust a gut and go for a third or fourth goal if they’re coasting at 2-0, and with a tough Prem game coming up? I think not. We’ll soon see: Round 5 is on Feb. 13-14th.
Weekly highlights Pt 2: League At first sight, the three-match Round 22A looked like the ScoreFive equivalent of a supermarket trolley dash: grab all the points you can carry. Three of the Big Four at home? Easy…. Well, almost. With Arsenal and Man. Utd playing basement-dwellers, the difficulty was likely to be predicting by how many they would win. Liverpool, on the other hand have been stuttering of late, and with improving Tottenham the visitors, only 37% of you were confident enough to back the home team. In the event, they won without over-extending themselves. No surprises then, but with Arsenal and Man. Utd notching four apiece, Perfectos were scarce. Basic points were 6.28, and with Banker 11.11. Correct results were 77.20%, Bankers 96.70% and Perfect 5s 5.13%. Though no-one predicted the 4-2 at the Emirates, LisaJane was the only player to foresee Bolton scoring twice, so I’m making her 3-2 the Top Tip. With three results and Banker shared by 101 players, it needed the tie-breaker to separate Numba1 and Maxbo75, the two players with 17 pts, after whom we had a boatload of 15s. This was only Max’s second set of predictions – I’ll be looking out for him in future.
At the top of the Global ladder, Wako is holding off Andreas, while Trevorsio has regained third spot.. They, along with Scratville, Danch and Lano, have cracked the 500-pt barrier. After this week’s twin rounds 23-24, you can be sure that will be the minimum for a Top 20 place. I trust you have got your predictions in. Tall stories It was a comment from the BBC’s Lawro as Fabregas prepared to take a free-kick at Stoke during Sunday’s Cup-tie that set me thinking. “Look at the size of the Stoke wall….they’re all massive!” As I was hearing this on the radio, I couldn’t look, so I did a bit of googling. Centre-back pairing Robert Huth and Ryan Shawcross are 1.91m, Danny Higginbotham is 1.85m as is Danny Collins, and behind them for good measure, was ’keeper Thomas Sorensen, at 1.96m. But Stoke aren’t the only team of defensive giants. Bolton’s back line regularly has four players (Cahill, Knight, Steinson and Jaaskeleinen ) all 1.88m (6’2”) or above. Man. Utd’s first choice defence has four the same (v d Sar, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra), as does Villa’s (Friedel, Dunne, Collins, Cuellar) and Birmingham’s (Hart, Dann, Johnson and Ridgewell). The average height of Premier Leaguers has been increasing rapidly these last 10 years, with the consensus of coaches/managers appearing to be “A good big ’un will always beat a good little ’un” as they say in the north of England. Of the 545 players listed on the Prem’s own website, 158 are 1.88m (6’2”) or above, and 298 1.83m (6’0”) upwards. The average is 1.85m / 6’1”. If we compare today’s crop with, say the imposing Liverpool team who ruled the League in the ’80s, there’s quite a difference. Their defence of Lawro 1.82m, Hansen 1.88m, Alan Kennedy 1.78m, Phil Neal 1.81m and Ray Clemence 1.91m had an average of 1.84m, or a smidgeon over six feet. They’d be the smallest defence in today’s Prem. Quite a change…. The first requirement today appears to be a colossus between the posts. The only clubs whose first-choice ‘keeper is not at least 1.90m are Liverpool, where Pepe Reina is 1.88m and Man. City (Shay Given 1.85m). Of the 20 tallest players, 13 are goalkeepers. There are 30 ’keepers of 1.88m and above, making it the tallest position. Centre-back is next, followed by full-back. Presumably midfielders need to be nippy enough to get from box to box at speed, thus having the build of a heavyweight title contender, Mr. Huddlestone, could be a bit of a drawback. Strikers are a mixture of Crouches and Defoes, if you get my drift, except at Stoke where baby James (1.85m) Beattie looks up to Ricardo (1.91m) Fuller and Mamady (1.93m) Sidibe. It’s not just the crowd and Rory Delap throws you have to confront at the Britannia Ground! But surely skill and artistry and can overcome size and strength? If Arsenal are the Prem’s artists, then their 0-3 defeat by Chelsea in November was a victory for Big. On average, Chelsea’s players were on average 5cm taller and 10 kg heavier. Are any teams at risk due to a shortage of giants? The only team without a 1.90m player is Man. City, where Lescott and Onuoha, at 1.88m are the big lads. Maybe there’s some hope for normal mortals. For your interest, here are the tallest Premier League players, 2009-10: 2.02m Stefan Maierhofer (striker, Wolves) 1.98m Peter Crouch (striker, Spurs) 1.98m Marton Fulop (’keeper, Sunderland) 1.98m Zat Knight (centre-back, Bolton) 1.97m Diego Penny (reserve ’keeper, Burnley) 1.97m Pascal Zuberbuhler (reserve ’keeper, Fulham) 11 at 1.96m. I’ve been taking all the height details quoted from the Premier League’s own website, but I’ve just seen something that makes me question their accuracy. Man. Utd’s fullback pair Rafael and Fabio da Silva are listed as respectively 1.90m and 1.72m…that’s some disparity for twins! Maybe you’re wondering where the clubs are finding all these monsters. In Britain, the average adult’s height has increased 6cm (2.5”) in the 65 years since World War Two. That’s a staggering rate of change. It’s a consequence of a better standard of living, and the improved nutrition and healthier environment that has accompanied it. With young footballers increasingly living in club academies where their diets are controlled, they’re likely to develop faster and grow bigger than their contemporaries. I’ve no stats for other countries, but I read recently in China, where increasing affluence has brought diets with a higher protein content, a generation of kids is growing up who will tower over their parents. I must allow the final word on the subject of growth to a Chinese-American business colleague. In ’95, or maybe ’96, he and I were sitting in a departure lounge – Singapore I think – waiting for our delayed flight. He got talking to a fellow-passenger opposite us, and in due course, he asked “What do you do?” The other guy replied “I’m head of development for McDonalds in China”. My pal was impressed. “Wow, you guys are everywhere there now, man!” He then stood up, walked over to the McDonalds guy, shook his hand and whispered “And thanks for putting tits on the girls in China!” Until next week, pals, stay safe Prof. Statto |
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