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A Bunch of Fives So when all is said and done we translate the number of times a ball has landed in the back of a net, past and present, and somehow work out why it was so obviously going to be so and what will happen in the future!! That’s the unenviable task of our resident expert Professor Statto, Nobel Prize Winner in waiting, who’s been explaining the meaning of football life and giving comfort to his followers for years.  He’ll tell you why your predictions were bound to be wrong. He’ll tell you about the most outrageous possibilities to come. He’ll tell you…But whatever he says remember: “98% of all statistics are made up.” ~Author Unknown Professor Statto and his amazing statistics. ====================================== Previous analysis Week 18.... Week 17.... Week 16.... Week 15.... Week 14.... Week 13Ghosts of Christmas past A Very Merry Christmas to you all, ScoreFivers! Wherever you may be, I hope you’re enjoying some free time, good food and drink, and preparing to take in the feast of football that comes to us at this time of the year, at least from Britain. The Spanish, German, Italian and most other European Leagues are now into their Winter breaks, but the Premier League & co. carry on regardless, despite the wails from some of the newer arrivals, who think that playing two games in three days at Christmas (and with the possibility of frost on the pitch) is ‘inhumane’. They don’t know lucky they are - until 1960, the English Leagues always played on Christmas Day itself. The Scots, for whom New Year is the bigger festival, continued with Christmas Day matches until the mid ’70s. For many years, games around Christmas were always played between neighbouring teams, with the intention of preventing long journeys for teams and supporters, but also in the knowledge that local rivalries attracted big crowds. (No one is certain why these games became known as derbies. One theory is that the name stuck after a riot at a game between neighbouring teams in the town of Derby in 1880). Games were played on Christmas Day (and later, Boxing Day) with the return match a couple of days after. In more modern times, the derby games moved to other times in the season and teams simply played a Christmas home/away double. From time to time, I may have tested your patience by rabbiting on about goal-fests in the days before Continental ideas about team formations made attacking football unfashionable in England around the end of the ’60s. For those with no interest in football history, now is a good time to see what’s on TV. For the rest of you, I have a famous Christmas tale from the era of Bulging Onion Bags. If you don’t know the story of Boxing Day 1963, you need to. It’s your football heritage! In those days, players weren’t pampered and confined to team hotels the night before a game: they were normal members of society. Most didn’t even have cars and they travelled to the ground by public transport. At Christmas, they drank (and smoked!) in the local pub and socialised with families and friends on Christmas Day. Just as you or I might overdo the party spirit on occasions, so might they. There’s no other feasible explanation for this set of results from the Prem’s forerunner, the First Division: Blackpool 1-5 Chelsea Even by the standards of the time, the total of 66 goals was exceptional. In that ’63-’64 season, the average goals per game was 3.43, so anything up to 40 for the 10 games wouldn’t have been a surprise. But 66? That’s wild! There are no statistics relating to the number of hangovers that have been taken onto professional football pitches, but if there were, I’d expect 26.12.63 to feature prominently. How else do we explain some of those scores? There were a few wet and muddy pitches, but there were no frostbound surfaces, downpours or blizzards for anyone to blame. There were several remarkable personal performances. Burnley striker (although he called himself a centre-forward) Andy Lochhead scored four against the eventual champions. The young Roger Hunt had the Kop in raptures as he too notched four, for Liverpool. Fulham’s Scottish winger Graham Leggatt was another who scored four, including a hat-trick in something less than four minutes. That remains the fastest hat-trick in the top division to this day (although Robbie Fowler did come close with his 4m 30secs-effort against Arsenal in August ’94). Also among Fulham’s scorers against Ipswich that day was a fellow by the name of Bobby Robson, who was later to manage the East Anglians with great success, and England with rather less. Another future England manager was in action that day: a graduate of Chelsea’s Youth team, he was on the scoresheet at Blackpool. His name? Terry Venables. The team who put most faith in attack that season was Spurs: their 4-4 draw at West Brom helped them towards a season total of Goals For 97, Goals Against 81. Despite finishing fourth, they conceded more than relegated Bolton. On the sportspages the morning after all this mayhem, it was a subject of some surprise that the ace marksman of the day, Spurs’ Jimmy Greaves, had scored only two! Perhaps the most remarkable score was Blackburn’s eight. At the time, they were the Division One leaders. This was probably their finest moment, but their ageing team was on the verge of breaking up, and they eventually fell away to finish seventh. For some reason I’ve never been able to discover, the other two Div. 1 clubs, Birmingham and Arsenal, didn’t play that day. Maybe they knew something the others didn’t!
Top Players With only nine games played due to Man. Utd being in Japan for the World Club Championship, it was natural that scores at the weekend were lower than usual. Most of you began well and piled up points from the Saturday games, but not many could bring themselves to go for West Brom and Newcastle on Sunday. As for Monday night’s Everton/Chelsea game, not one player predicted 0-0 even though it has crept up to become the second most common Premier League score this season (after the old faithful 2-1). The magic number this time is 20.
With only Gareth of the Global Top 20 hitting the 20 mark, there are a few unfamiliar names among our Wizards Of The Week. Congratulations to proud Fratton Ender Nigel Reid, our hotshot with 23. Raise your Yuletide glasses in a toast to Antomeno, whose 19 pts took him above Patrick Ho at the top of the leaderboard – and he’s also top of our Bundesliga competition. Outstanding work, Sir!
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