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Reply | Taxi for Marti
at 16:40 15 Aug 2025
Clubs aren't deciding in round 1 whether to take the League Cup seriously. The optimal strategy as practiced by almost everyone is to treat the rounds up to the quarter-final as slightly more intense friendlies, and then start taking it seriously if by sheer luck you happen to win all your games and find yourself in the semis. |
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Reply | If Celar is the answer what's the question 🤔
at 23:54 10 Aug 2025
Mostly this, yeah. Celar for me is the epitome of a Replacement Level Player, to borrow a Moneyball term. He knows the game enough not to embarrass himself, but we could find another player kicking around on a free who will contribute exactly the same.
Look at it this way, if we'd had a guy called Gianni Sellers on trial from Concord Rangers, 13 caps for British Virgin Islands, YouTube channel packed with worldies, manager says he's got the best nose for goal he's ever seen at that level, and then he copies Celar's performance against Preston kick for kick. Would you be worried about missing out on a generational talent if you didn't sign him up? Or would you think, nah, not ready for this level, and we've got Lloyd and Kolli as medium-term projects already? |
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Reply | QPR: The Modern Circus of West London – Column
at 16:54 4 Aug 2025
Interesting facts, and all credit to Gareth Dixon for his role at QPR, but this piece was definitely given to an AI at some point in its life cycle with the instruction "make this sound prettier". |
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Reply | Morecambe FC RIP
at 15:14 3 Aug 2025
Here's my favourite little factoid for the "reality hits" side of the argument:
Here's every team in last season's League Two ranked by average home attendance.
Bradford City (17762)
Notts County (10626)
*AFC Wimbledon (9745)
Chesterfield (8505)
Doncaster Rovers (8057)
Port Vale (7622)
Carlisle United (7425)
Swindon Town (7229)
Milton Keynes Dons (7025)
Walsall (6470)
Tranmere Rovers (6389)
Gillingham (6268)
Grimsby Town (6067)
Crewe Alexandra (5397)
Colchester United (4998)
Newport County (4239)
*Cheltenham Town (4198)
*Morecambe (3410)
*Barrow (3381)
*Bromley (3111)
*Fleetwood Town (2995)
*Harrogate Town (2968)
*Salford City (2849)
*Accrington Stanley (2556)
And here's the same for League One.
Birmingham City (26326)
Bolton Wanderers (21325)
Huddersfield Town (18817)
Charlton Athletic (18112)
Wrexham (12781)
Reading (12535)
Barnsley (12211)
Wigan Athletic (9946)
Stockport County (9630)
Blackpool (9619)
Rotherham United (9330)
Peterborough United (9151)
Lincoln City (9004)
Bristol Rovers (7880)
Leyton Orient (7875)
Mansfield Town (7769)
Northampton Town (6629)
Cambridge United (6597)
Exeter City (6513)
Shrewsbury Town (6207)
*Wycombe Wanderers (5413)
*Crawley Town (4393)
*Stevenage (4005)
*Burton Albion (3254)
The asterisks are the NEW teams in the EFL post-1986 - the ones who came up from the Conference/National League who hadn't previously dropped into it.
This is the kind of correlation that statisticians dream about - EVERY team who came up since 1986 ranks below EVERY team who was voted in pre-1986, in both divisions. With the exception of AFC Wimbledon for obvious reasons. |
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Reply | Sheffield Wednesday
at 14:37 3 Aug 2025
Heck no, can you imagine?
"Man's nan dies in A&E waiting for a doctor while team of Government-paid millionaires lose 3-0 to Portsmouth"
Never mind the outcry if the safety notice on the North Stand magically disappears, or if the team signs a bargain bin Russian striker from Turkey and the work permit gets waved through... |
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Reply | Singing from the same hymn sheet – Fans Forum
at 22:04 31 Jul 2025
"We've looked at how other successful bakeries have made cakes, and whereas before we might have had some really good flour, butter, eggs, all the rest of it, the questions we have to be asking are - what can we do with those inputs, those "ingredients" if you like, to give them the best chance of turning into a cake? If it was as easy as just mixing all the ingredients together, we'd be implementing that model, but we've found that unless you put them in some kind of vessel first, then mixing them is just going to cover your whole room in semi-solid bits of food. So we've got people working on that, trying out all different kinds of pint glasses, and then of course that feeds into the whole issue of, do we want to be the bakery that just smashes the ingredients together with our fingers? Or is that an area where we can make incremental improvements like getting in there with a toothbrush or some kind of plastic straw, going anti-clockwise instead of clockwise? So many variables that go into a decision like that, and that's before you even get to the question of how long to microwave it." |
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Reply | Morecambe FC RIP
at 21:24 31 Jul 2025
Clubs of Morecambe's size have been going bust for a long time. The drop from League Two to National League is particularly lethal. Before Morecambe it was Macclesfield, before them it was Rushden, Hereford, Chester, Halifax, Scarborough, Darlington, Boston... I've probably missed some. Other, better-run teams step up to replace them. |
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Reply | Kit Porn
at 00:29 31 Jul 2025
Whitby Town. (That's one way to stop the old gits telling you your pink away kit looks weak.) |
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Reply | Sheffield Wednesday
at 00:14 31 Jul 2025
Owners like Chansiri? Wednesday fans were delighted with Chansiri in 2016 when they made the playoffs. Step up from Mandaric, never felt this much trust in an owner, man of integrity, really gets what we're about as a club.
The best owner in the EFL is a promotion (to raise expectations) and two relegations away from having the fans marching to the ground with his face crossed out on a banner. |
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Reply | Sheffield Wednesday
at 03:59 30 Jul 2025
The respective sports only stepped in to buy Montreal Expos, Chivas and Arizona Coyotes because they had the credible option of folding or relocating, which they did in all three cases. If the FA were to say "we will keep Morecambe alive and playing in Morecambe come hell or high water" and you're a prospective owner who wants a club for a fiver but would eventually have been flushed out by the threat of the club ceasing to exist, you no longer have to worry about that. You can watch the FA get more and more desperate for a sale until they're paying you to take it off them debt-free. |
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Reply | Kelman:Here We Go
at 13:41 27 Jul 2025
I'm skeptical of this point; literally every club bar the Premier League top 6 can point to clubs that have accelerated past them and grumble, because those are the eye-catching stories. But for every successful Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Luton or Huddersfield there's a Reading, Wigan, Bolton, Luton or Huddersfield going the other way. |
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Reply | Josh Windass
at 21:27 24 Jul 2025
Word-itis 🤣 it's a text-based message board, would you prefer semaphore?
Everyone agrees that wages are a factor predicting attainment, but not the only factor. To put it in a way that precludes argument over the meaning of words, the correlation factor is greater than 0 and less than 1.
You are the only person who feels clever for noticing this fact. [Post edited 24 Jul 21:28]
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Reply | Josh Windass
at 14:49 24 Jul 2025
"I pay attention to argument, complexity and controversy" didn't last very long 🤣 |
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Reply | Josh Windass
at 23:31 23 Jul 2025
The words "black and white correlation" tell me all I need to know about your grasp of statistics. Correlations are not black and white. If you think you have a black and white correlation, a relationship with an r^2 of 1.0, what you have is a dependent variable. The r^2 of wages to points in the Championship is in the 0.5 region, which means half of the variation in points can be explained by the variation in wages; pointing out that therefore half of the variation *isn't* explained by the variation in wages is not the insight you think it is. |
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Reply | You're the boss: What's your current thinking?
at 10:51 1 Jul 2025
We have four who defend, oui? Four who defend, one two three four like that, and six who attack. So. The six who attack, always you have one at the front and two at the sides, oui? So that leaves three more guys, and you know the formation from what guys you choose to be those three. You have two that stay and one that goes, you have a 4-2-3-1. One that stays and two that go, you have 4-1-4-1. All three that stay, 4-3-3. All three that go, 4-5-1, or you can call it 4-4-2 if one of the guys that goes says Forward on the squad list and gets paid too much, on hon hon. |
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Reply | How optimistic are you now?
at 22:32 28 Jun 2025
It'll all be crap, everyone'll be injured all the time, we'll play lovely tippy tappy football and lose to teams that run in a straight line towards our goal, Stephan'll be gone in November and replaced with Grant McCann, we'll get to Christmas with Frey being the only striker to have scored any goals at all, our relegation will be confirmed with four matches to play, we'll then win all four of those matches to finish 22nd one point behind Oxford. |
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Reply | Centre forward
at 16:12 28 Jun 2025
Christ no, a striker who's looked the part in the SPL needs to prove he can do it at League Two level first. |
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Reply | QPR complete head-turning acquisition of Peterborough’s Poku – Signing
at 16:00 28 Jun 2025
Poku-Chair-Dembele behind a striker means sorting out the defence sufficiently that we no longer need the "coagulant" as Clive puts it, of Varane-Field-Colback/Madsen sitting in front of them.
In practice I don't think the issue will arise because Chair and Dembele won't both get through 90 minutes. If they do, "nice problem to have". |
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Reply | Mbengue capture a positive sign of lessons learned at QPR - Signing
at 01:59 28 Jun 2025
So wait - he can't track a runner, he can't head the ball from a standing start, League One attackers routinely draw fouls and cards from him and he wanders off after a ladybird once a match?
Awesome. He'll be the new Damion Stewart. Can he play up front? |
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Reply | Jaylan Pearman
at 11:21 22 Jun 2025
Surviving in the Championship is overrated. Its only value lies in the fact that the Championship is where you get promoted to the Prem from. If your plan is Prem after five years but you're not a realistic contender for the automatic spots this year, you're literally better off spending years 2-4 in League One than spending them in the Championship. |
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