The Ultimate Football Thread 2013-2014 Vol. 4 EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A etc

[dlo13]

Pochettino to Spurs and Bielsa to Marseille were both just officially announced.

 

[champcruthik]

Bielsa has fallen from grace some since the previous campaign when Llorente, Javi Martinez, and Muniain were firing on all cylinders. Or was that two seasons ago?

 

[AZwildcats]

 

Chelsea needs to find a striker more than anything...


Man, I hope Juve doesn't sell him or King Arturo... It would be a shame to see that team lose talent. Word to [@=/u/40517/EyeSeeSoles]@EyeSeeSoles[/@]!


Hope things work out Champ...

So Costa is not enough?

What does a striker have to do with reinforcing our midfield? 


We need somebody to play alongside Matic just as much as we need a striker. 

Modric, Kroos, Vidal, Pogba, or Javi Martinez would be ideal. 

Can Chelsea realistically sign any of these dudes? Maybe Kroos or Vidal. Matic and Pogba/Vidal would be amazing

 

[eiddyfouw]

Pochettino to Spurs and Bielsa to Marseille were both just officially announced.

I believe, that is a VERY good look for them.

 

[rook]

Saw this posted on twitter.

boys sounding like a mixture between fergie and jesus

 

[fear the ibis]

 

 

 

Chelsea needs to find a striker more than anything...


Man, I hope Juve doesn't sell him or King Arturo... It would be a shame to see that team lose talent. Word to @@EyeSeeSoles!

Hope things work out Champ...

So Costa is not enough?

What does a striker have to do with reinforcing our midfield? 


We need somebody to play alongside Matic just as much as we need a striker. 

Modric, Kroos, Vidal, Pogba, or Javi Martinez would be ideal. 

Can Chelsea realistically sign any of these dudes? Maybe Kroos or Vidal. Matic and Pogba/Vidal would be amazing

Kroos small chance but possible.

Vidal- Would be crazy expensive

Pogba- See Vidal

Javi Martinez- very possible 

 

[rook]

Whats chelseas projected midfield for next year as it stands now? Salah, Matic and Oscar, Ramires, Schuurle?

 

[blackmomo]

​

Whats chelseas projected midfield for next year as it stands now? Salah, Matic and Oscar, Ramires, Schuurle?

Your forgetting Hazard, his younger brother Thorgan, Willian, and Mikel

 

[rook]

​

Whats chelseas projected midfield for next year as it stands now? Salah, Matic and Oscar, Ramires, Schuurle?

Your forgetting Hazard, his younger brother Thorgan, Willian, and Mikel

They so deep i totally forgot about young gawd eden lol.

 

[blackmomo]

That's what I was thinking but then Al-Khelaifi went & bought Luiz for the price he did... Not sure if they're going to spend for Pogba because that'll be a big middle finger to Platini & the UEFA FFP...
If the deal gets done sure, but I would think the next on the list would be another centre back, a younger one.

If Chelsea goes for Pogba, I would think they'd off load some of their existing MFers...

Chelsea are pretty good at the CB department. They just signed Zouma in Jan and also have Kalas

 

[champcruthik]

NT ain't ready for Nathaniel Chalobah.

 

[eiddyfouw]

Rogério Ceni is the only professional goalkeeper that has scored over 100 goals, with all of them coming from penalties and free-kicks! Here is Ceni scoring a superb free-kick.

 

[blackmomo]

NT ain't ready for Nathaniel Chalobah.

hopefull he gets some cups game this season. I'm glad to see that Chelsea finally has some decent young players in the academy. Can't wait to see Chalobah come up along with Fayruz, Traore, Piazon, and Baker can do in the epl

 

[Beans]

pogba :x

 

[eiddyfouw]

pogba :x

Kid looks like he's going to be a real talent...United should sign him up.

 

[eiddyfouw]

 

[eiddyfouw]

pogba :x

 

[Coupé It]

Pogba would be perfect for Real man, with the 4-3-3 they play.

I think Illara and Khedira aren't cutting it to fix to be Xabi's replacement. No way.

 

[dlo13]

Wright Thompson did a long profile of Suarez for ESPN The Magazine. Well worth the read.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/sto...nner-luis-suarez-soccer-most-beautiful-player

 

[eiddyfouw]

Giroud with a firecracker...

 

[fear the ibis]

 
[h1]Best ever English football team revealed by statistics[/h1]

• 17:30 22 May 2014 by Jacob Aron
• For similar stories, visit the Sport  Topic Guide

It's a debate that rages in pubs throughout the world: which is the best football team of all time? Brazil in 1970, Hungary in the early 1950s, the Johan Cruyff-inspired Netherlands team of the 1970s? The Barcelona team built by Pep Guardiola? Or Liverpool during the 1980s?

"The whole point of sport is to work out who the best is," says statistician Ian McHale  of the University of Salford, UK. "It seems like a natural question to me to ask 'Who has been the best over all time?'"

So McHale and his colleague Rose Baker waded in. They might not have an answer to the big question – yet – but they can reveal the best team in the history of the English league.

Fans of beautiful football look away now. The greatest ever team is apparently the Chelsea team of the 2005/06 season.
[h3]Defensive skills[/h3]
To figure out which team from which era tops the rankings, McHale and Baker created a statistical model of team strengths. They used this to analyse goal data from 200,000 matches in England and Wales that occurred between 1888, when the Football League was founded, and 2012 in the top four English leagues, the FA Cup and the League Cup.

In the model, each team scores goals at a rate determined by its attack ability divided by the opposite team's defensive skills, with an extra boost for the home team to model home advantage. Using the model, McHale and Baker could work out the most likely outcome of any English football match played over the 124 year study period – and use the results to calculate which was the all-time greatest team.

Doing so revealed that the Chelsea team of 2005/06 comes out top, followed by the Manchester United team of 2007/08 and Arsenal's 2003/04 squad of "invincibles", which went unbeaten in the league. The similarly invincible Preston North End team from 1888 came just tenth.

"As a Liverpool fan, I was convinced they would at some point be the best, so it was a bit of a surprise," says McHale – the club's 1987/88 squad is ranked fourth.
[h3]Best of the best[/h3]
An alternative measure looks at a team's strongest average performance over a 10 year period, and gives the same top three teams.

A third measure, dominance, gives the probability of a team winning against the second-best team over a 10-year period. The Manchester United of 1992-2002 come out on top with a 37.7 per cent chance of beating their next best rival, closely followed by Liverpool during 1979-89 and Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1951-61.

As well as coming up with all-time rankings, the pair's model lets them set teams from different eras against each other. "Even the guys in the physics department can't time travel, but with this model you can," says McHale.

For example, a match between Manchester United's 1998 team would have a 28.9 per cent chance of beating Liverpool's 1980 team, but a 39.7 per cent chance of losing the game. There's a 31.4 per cent chance the two teams would draw.
[h3]Out of time[/h3]
"I think it is interesting, but it just focuses on what happens on the pitch," says sports historian Matthew Taylor  of De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. "It's very difficult to wrench them out of the social and cultural context of the period and imagine how they would compete against each other."

"You need to be careful how literally you take this," agrees McHale, because the model can't account for wide-ranging shifts in the training and diets of all players over a number of decades. "I cannot accept any modern day team wouldn't absolutely destroy Preston North End 1888."

Sanjit Atwal, who runs football stats site Squawka, says the model's top picks are in line with what he would have chosen, but he's not sure the model will work as well in other countries where football is played according to different tactics. "They are weighing attack and defence equally. In other styles of play, possession of the ball is very different."

As for whether this will settle the argument of the greatest team ever, these statistics are just more fuel for the debate, says Atwal. "Fans will take whatever they can out of the data to win an argument."

Journal reference: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, DOI:10.1111/rssa.12060

 

[rck3sactown]

 

Pochettino to Spurs and Bielsa to Marseille were both just officially announced.

I believe, that is a VERY good look for them.

intestesting

.... tell me more pls 

 

 

[eiddyfouw]

 

Pochettino to Spurs and Bielsa to Marseille were both just officially announced.

I believe, that is a VERY good look for them.

intestesting .... tell me more pls   

He's been great at Southampton. Look at them finishing 8th this season. He had a nice solid ideology of how he liked his team to play, and gave players the freedom to express themselves (Lalalalala, Pretty Rickie, Rodriguez). He managed to get great results out of Rickie Lambert who is 32 right now. With that said, going forward looked great for SH, but defensively, Clyne, Fonte, and Shaw had some great performances this season, and seemed like they were really enjoying their football under him.

Potti has an eye for talent, a love for youth talent, a clear vision of how he wants his team to play, and the man management ability to actually carry out his vision. I think he's exactly what Spurs need right now.

 

[eiddyfouw]

Arsenal should sign this Giroud kid up, 2 goals tonight...he's looked great tonight, wonder where he's been playing this past season...

 

[rook]

Pogba would be perfect for Real man, with the 4-3-3 they play.

I think Illara and Khedira aren't cutting it to fix to be Xabi's replacement. No way.

Yes lawd.