There’s something strange going on with Manchester’s Premier League teams. For a start, at the time of writing, both of their points totals combined would only put them four points clear of top spot. But also, Manchester City might get worse when they’re winning. When drawing, their shot maps for and against in the league…
In a world where we have Siri, cars that park themselves, and roombas, why manually make graphics by typing in all the text yourself? Why not just hook up bespoke, branded templates directly to a database, a suite of data visualisations, and your image library? Sounds useful. Sounds smart. Well, that gives us a perfect…
Everton and Manchester City face each other in a November FA Cup final to end the 2019/20 season. Their starts to the 2020/21 campaign make this strangely unpredictable.
Laboratories sound like fun places, if a little intimidating. Do you need to bring your own Bunsen burner, can test tubes go in the dishwasher, is this a puddle of water or acid? Happily, the Football Lab in the Twenty3 Toolbox is much simpler, while arguably being even more fun and useful. More importantly, it…
Will Leeds United ever not be remarkable? Marcelo Bielsa’s team, somehow, managed to score six non-penalty goals against Liverpool and Fulham from an expected goals figure of 1.15. The reason why it felt like every time someone shot they scored in those matches, is because that’s generally true. However, while they may not appear to…
For many reasons, 2020 makes no conventional sense. Allow another addition to the list. Across the first two Premier League games, the order of London’s teams on expected goals difference reads: West Ham, Crystal Palace, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Fulham. Bless Fulham for being a safe jetty of continuity on this river of confusion we’re bobbing…
Imagine the scene. You’re going shopping. You’re walking through the supermarket (mask on, hands sanitised). You’re approaching the fruit and veg aisle and you look down at your shopping list. ‘Large berry with a balanced sweet and acidic watery flesh, x6’. Tomatoes. You want some tomatoes so you can make a nice pasta sauce. And…
Taking the last two seasons as a guide, Premier League new-boys Leeds United, West Bromwich Albion, and Fulham have three roles to divide between them. It’s how the promoted sides do things now. One team challenging for Europe, one team in a traditional relegation scrap, and one team bombing completely. This might have emerged as…
With the Women’s Champions League final on Sunday, there are parts of the 2019/20 season still to be wrapped up, and yet 2020/21 is already upon us. New dawns, new faces, new outfits; our levels of knowledge drop again on the rollercoaster of sporting life. But a new season also tends to mean that we…
The combined age of Barcelona’s two top-scorers is 66. That’s pensionable age. It’s no surprise, given the ground-breakingly embarrassing exit from the Champions League, that there’s talk of a rebuild at Camp Nou. Some are even wondering how Los Culés might look if Lionel Messi left. But the player that needs shifting most urgently is…