2023-2024 EPL Season

[Savant]

No, no, no YOU're relying on what might have happened (Pool winning the game after less than a 3rd of the game played, while being down a man against a high scoring team).
YOU are the one trying to rewrite a game based on "potential".

It should have been 1-0. That’s the most important thing that happened.

High scoring teams do not always score goals. City have scored more goals than Tottenham this season and they have been shut out. LFC scored two goals with ten men to beat Newcastle earlier in the season and Newcastle have scored a whopping three goals less than Tottenham in the league this season.

So yeah, the only thing that matters to me is that it should have been 1-0. Nothing else after that matters to me or is particularly relevant. It ruined the game, I am trying to “rewrite” the game because of an egregious, admitted, officiating error

 

[JeffreyLFC]

No, no, no YOU're relying on what might have happened (Pool winning the game after less than a 3rd of the game played, while being down a man against a high scoring team).
YOU are the one trying to rewrite a game based on "potential".

3 potential outcomes
+3
+1
0
LFC got 0 out of it. Most likely they get +3 or +1 without that VAR decision. Worst case for them they would still have got no change. That game results had way more chances to not be a loss for LFC based on probabilities (w or tie) so +1 or +3

Therefore, yes if LFC miss the title by a 1 or even 2 pts it is fair to say that this VAR fiasco had an impact in that.

 

[Wee Baby Seamus]

"even if Liverpool's good goal to make it 1-0 had been correctly allowed, Spurs would've scored because they always do" is way more of a thought experiment than "Liverpool should've been up 1-0 and very likely would've won." there's serious speculation in both, but the former requires a lot more abstraction.

all we know with surety is that it was 0-0 and liverpool were denied, through gross incompetence, a good goal which would've made it 1-0. there can be no certainty that they would've won, but fans are justified in feeling robbed.

 

[cheechoo]

Since Boehly came in they have a net spend of around -740M€, which is absolutely absurd. So I'd love to hear the reasoning as to how that was allowed.

All I'm going to say is thank god that they spent all that money so poorly. It would be absolutely hilarious if they got charged too. But they are probably walking a fine line and can't keep up this spending. Will be interesting to see how they manage their future windows.

It's hard to compare pure spending in terms of Chelsea vs other English sides again due to the amount of academy products that they sell and sell big.

Tomori, Mount, Guehi, Hall, Abraham, Ampadu, Loftus Cheek is about ~ £180m of pure profit towards revenue.

That's not including Maatsen who's at Dortmund now with ~£30M buy option that Fabrizio said he imagines gets picked up and then Gallagher who's another £45M+ as well.

And that's ignoring £80m for Havertz and Jorginho from Arsenal.

£25m from City for Kovacic.

Another ~£40m from Milan and Saudi for Koulibaly, Mendy and Pulisic.

They're clearly FFP complaint as it currently stands, they're just in a precarious position of needing to continue selling academy products (Broja, Chalobah, Gallagher next crop I'd imagine) to hit their amortization windows, and needing to get back into Europe for next seasons books.

I also as a neutral outside who's very intrigued by this Chelsea project, would disagree with their spending being poorly distributed.

That first window when Boehly was flying all across Europe with no SD was god awful. 300 million down the drain on Cucurella, Sterling, Fofana, Koulibaly and some marginal youth products like Casadei.

From last winter on though, I think they're sitting on an enourmous load of talent. They're the right manager away from taking a massive leap the way Villa did replacing Gerrard with Emery.

S tier purchase (imo)

- Kendry Páez. Phenom.
- Benoit Badiashile. Loved him at Monaco.
- Romeo Lavia. Absurd talent.
- Moises Caicedo. Absurd talent. Metronome in possession under RDZ. Great ball winner. Press resistant.
- Enzo Fernandez. Controversial player, but I think the ceiling is sky high.
- Malo Gusto. Player that would allow them to phase James out if his body cannot persist.
- Cole Palmer. What a player.

And then other intriguing buys that I think have high upside.

- Nicolas Jackson. 22 years old with 9 G+A in 16 starts. I don't understand why he's such a meme. His overall game is probably second only to Isak in terms of all around young strikers in the league. Hold up play. Drops deep. Powerful runner. Needs to compose himself in front of goal, but he's far more lively than anything they've had up top, likely since Diego Costa. And if they did splurge on a #9 I think he could play LW comfortably as well.

- Not going to give my thoughts on Mudryk. But another high ceiling, young player purchase. Huge talent and he seems to be getting better game by game.



No idea whether he sinks or swims.

And then more young talents like Angelo Gabriel, Datro Fofana, Dorde Petrovic, Lesley Ugochukwu.

I get not being moved by this grouping of players, but I personally think they're sitting on a sleeping giant.

I didn't even mention young France internationals Wesley Fofana (broken body), Christopher Nkunku (do you exist?), Axel Disasi.

But Pochettino is not the man to take them to the next level, and persisting with him could unravel the entire structure.

 

[Jersey Fresh]

I can’t imagine spending £1B and *not* ending up with five senior players to point to with talent. Hardly makes me believe in their project - it’s just a money pit. And most of those guys are pretty far from sure things.

 

[Evilo]

It should have been 1-0. That’s the most important thing that happened.

High scoring teams do not always score goals. City have scored more goals than Tottenham this season and they have been shut out. LFC scored two goals with ten men to beat Newcastle earlier in the season and Newcastle have scored a whopping three goals less than Tottenham in the league this season.

So yeah, the only thing that matters to me is that it should have been 1-0. Nothing else after that matters to me or is particularly relevant. It ruined the game, I am trying to “rewrite” the game because of an egregious, admitted, officiating error

No the most important thing is that you consider a win a game stopped at the 30th minute when down a man against an offensive juggernaut in form.
That's the most important point in your argument. And it just doesn't hold.
High scoring teams don't always score goals? Well guess what? Spurs do.

 

[Savant]

No the most important thing is that you consider a win a game stopped at the 30th minute when down a man against an offensive juggernaut in form.
That's the most important point in your argument. And it just doesn't hold.
High scoring teams don't always score goals? Well guess what? Spurs do.

Real goals are more important than imaginary goals.

 

[spintheblackcircle]

No the most important thing is that you consider a win a game stopped at the 30th minute when down a man against an offensive juggernaut in form.
That's the most important point in your argument. And it just doesn't hold.
High scoring teams don't always score goals? Well guess what? Spurs do.

You keep this up and you’re going to end up with one of those cockerels tattooed on your shoulder

 

[Blender]

A ton of their early spending was amortized over 7-8 years so for FFP reasons so spending 600m in the first year only counts as 70-80M/year spending. They likely sold Werner at a slight FFP loss, but Palmieri, Jorginho and Gilmour are ~35M of pure FFP profit. So last year that's a net FFP spend of something in the range of 40-50M which seems reasonable for a club like Chelsea to support.

This year they spent ~470 over 5 year amortization, so ~94M/year. Up to maybe 175M/year in amortization that they have to account for including both years.

They sold Havertz for nearly what they paid for him and he had probably 40% of his deal left so that's ~45M FFP profit. Mount was 65M pure FFP profit, Kovacic was likely ~20-25M FFP profit, Pulisic 20M FFP profit, Mendy ~10-15M profit, RLC 18M profit, Ampado 8M profit. So that's ~185-195M FFP "profit" from the sales that gets booked right away.

So from the FFP standpoint their net spend on transfers since the ownership change is only 30-40M which is totally reasonable. The bigger issue for them is moving forwarding since they'll be dragging that 175M anchor forward for the next several years. Missing out on CL football hurts a lot for that. It's also why there's so much talk about selling a guy like Gallagher, despite it being insane to sell a talent like him, because that's 50-60M of pure FFP profit.

Right, for FFP purposes their spending can be entirely accounted for because of all the sales they made since the purchases are amortized over many years. The big problem for them now is that they have an anchor around their necks for years.

 

[hatterson]

Another apology for botched call



When LFC lose the league by less than five points, going to look directly back at this. Not as bad as what happened against Tottenham, but those points just feel stolen at this point.

I don’t understand why they don’t set up a central replay office to help with the consistency.

Have a dedicated team of a few refs whose primary job is to do replays of all games. Then you have a VAR at each game whose job isn’t to make the VAR calls but to identify things the main office should look at. Basically they’re just looking for things that take more than a quick look and let the main office be the ones who make all the actual recommendations.

It would lead to better consistency and it wouldn’t take any more time during the games.

 

[Savant]

I don’t understand why they don’t set up a central replay office to help with the consistency.

Have a dedicated team of a few refs whose primary job is to do replays of all games. Then you have a VAR at each game whose job isn’t to make the VAR calls but to identify things the main office should look at. Basically they’re just looking for things that take more than a quick look and let the main office be the ones who make all the actual recommendations.

It would lead to better consistency and it wouldn’t take any more time during the games.

Too easy for Howard Webb, who would rather just protect the lousy ones that he has in house.

There are such easy ways (including this) to fix/improve things but Webb isn't that guy to implement any of it.

 

[cheechoo]

I can’t imagine spending £1B and *not* ending up with five senior players to point to with talent. Hardly makes me believe in their project - it’s just a money pit. And most of those guys are pretty far from sure things.

It's not like these weren't either extremely highly touted players, or courted by the elites of Europe though?

Lavia - Liverpool

Caicedo - Liverpool/Arsenal

Enzo/Nkunku/Gusto - Would have been purchased for the same money if Chelsea hadn't pushed the envelope in drastic fashion

Badiashile - Barcelona/Newcastle

W Fofana - Was viewed as the best young centerback in the league at Leicester. Their best player. Carried them to an FA Cup win with an MOTM performance

Palmer - Pep disciple

Feels like the low hanging fruit to go after Chelsea right now during their current climate. And they deserve it. But they've also accumulated a tonne of young talent with massive upside. They're flying towards the sun, but could fall fatally.

I don't think fans really understand the current market.

United had to spend ~£130M on Hojlund and Mount. And if they want Joao Neves like rumored that's another £100M.

City nearly spent ~80M on Paqueta and had to spend 77M on Gvardiol

Liverpool were willing to break the transfer record for Caicedo.

Arsenal spent >200M last summer and have spent >600M under Arteta and still have a disjointed midfield. Need a striker and have no backup for Saka.

The money Chelsea have spent (excluding that first summer) has been extreme but more justifiable when you view it as doing four windows worth of work in two and contrasted with massive selling power that other English clubs can't match. I'm sure it'll level out over the next decade or so I assume. They're sitting on so many young talented players that they should be just be tinkering around the edges going forward since the core is intact.

 

[Paulie Gualtieri]

Bissouma has supposedly gotten malaria.

 

[Evilo]

Real goals are more important than imaginary goals.

And imaginary results and more important than real results I guess.

You keep this up and you’re going to end up with one of those cockerels tattooed on your shoulder

Well, nobody can call me biased on this ! I like watching Spurs this year, but I'm hardly a fan.
Though the cockerel at least fits the only team I'm a real fan of.

 

[Savant]

And imaginary results and more important than real results I guess.

Of course not, but when you take real goals off the board, it’s a game changer. We don’t know what would have happened next. We do know it should have been 1-0. No one would rather be at 0-0 than 1-0 right?

Last I’ll say on this today for everyone’s sanity, I liked what WBS said about the thought experiment here. The analogy that I would like of think of if is you are playing Poker. If you are holding a pair and your opponent is on a flush draw/straight draw/etc. The opponent may have more outs, but they still have to hit those outs. Sorry if explaining this bad but basically you are winning until you aren’t.

But enough from me on this. Going back into my cave until the next time Webb has to apologize or LFC get scheduled for the early game after an international break

Well, nobody can call me biased on this ! I like watching Spurs this year, but I'm hardly a fan.
Though the cockerel at least fits the only team I'm a real fan of.

here comes the tattoo thread

 

[Wee Baby Seamus]

And imaginary results and more important than real results I guess.


Well, nobody can call me biased on this ! I like watching Spurs this year, but I'm hardly a fan.
Though the cockerel at least fits the only team I'm a real fan of.

and here i've spent my whole life thinking that the middle of that crest was the Eiffel Tower! learn something new every day

 

[Evilo]

Indeed!

 

[Evilo]

Of course not, but when you take real goals off the board, it’s a game changer. We don’t know what would have happened next. We do know it should have been 1-0. No one would rather be at 0-0 than 1-0 right?

Last I’ll say on this today for everyone’s sanity, I liked what WBS said about the thought experiment here. The analogy that I would like of think of if is you are playing Poker. If you are holding a pair and your opponent is on a flush draw/straight draw/etc. The opponent may have more outs, but they still have to hit those outs. Sorry if explaining this bad but basically you are winning until you aren’t.

But enough from me on this. Going back into my cave until the next time Webb has to apologize or LFC get scheduled for the early game after an international break

here comes the tattoo thread

See to use your analogy, to me, your point is that you have a pair of 2 against an ace/K before the flop and claim you would have won the pot. And your opponent is on a lucky streak that sees him hit every single flop.
The pot was hardly won and the odds don't favor you. You might have won the pot, you might not have.
But you can't take the money and claim it's yours.

 

[Savant]

See to use your analogy, to me, your point is that you have a pair of 2 against an ace/K before the flop and claim you would have won the pot. And your opponent is on a lucky streak that sees him hit every single flop.
The pot was hardly won and the odds don't favor you. You might have won the pot, you might not have.
But you can't take the money and claim it's yours.

For sure. I don’t think we are too far away from each other it’s just a difference of interpreting which is fair. I think your opinion is respectable even if it’s different than mine.

But again, the pair wins over AK until proven otherwise. LFC being up 1-0 is having the pair. That’s all I’m saying. We can disagree about what happens after but it’s all good

 

[hatterson]

22 vs AK off is actually ~53/47 to the 22 so actually the odds would favor you.

Either way I'd say it's far more like you flopped a set but then the pit boss came over and said that they had to throw out that flop and run it again. You're in a very clearly winning position. Doesn't mean you *will* win, but you're clearly winning at the moment and the heavy favorite to hang on. Then you got screwed out of it.

 

[Wee Baby Seamus]

22 vs AK off is actually ~53/47 to the 22 so actually the odds would favor you.

Either way I'd say it's far more like you flopped a set but then the pit boss came over and said that they had to throw out that flop and run it again. You're in a very clearly winning position. Doesn't mean you *will* win, but you're clearly winning at the moment and the heavy favorite to hang on. Then you got screwed out of it.

I understand statistically why this is true but the fact that I would never think that way in an actual game is why I'm bad at poker, LMAO.

 

[hatterson]

I understand statistically why this is true but the fact that I would never think that way in an actual game is why I'm bad at poker, LMAO.

Well one of the reasons it doesn't feel that way live is because the betting doesn't end pre-flop.

You raise with your 22 and someone three bets you. If you *knew* they were on AK off, you should try to get it all in pre-flop (at least in a cash game). But you don't. They might be on AK off, or maybe AK suited or maybe they've got jacks or kings or something and got you absolutely crushed.

Even if you just call the three bet to get to the flop and it comes down something like 4-9-J, your odds against AK off got even better, but you don't know that you're up against AK off so you're looking at an under pair. Were they three betting with something like KQ and picked up a gut shot straight draw with still two overs? Or maybe something like AJ off and they have top pair, etc.

 

[Wee Baby Seamus]

Well one of the reasons it doesn't feel that way live is because the betting doesn't end pre-flop.

You raise with your 22 and someone three bets you. If you *knew* they were on AK off, you should try to get it all in pre-flop (at least in a cash game). But you don't. They might be on AK off, or maybe AK suited or maybe they've got jacks or kings or something and got you absolutely crushed.

Even if you just call the three bet to get to the flop and it comes down something like 4-9-J, your odds against AK off got even better, but you don't know that you're up against AK off so you're looking at an under pair. Were they three betting with something like KQ and picked up a gut shot straight draw with still two overs? Or maybe something like AJ off and they have top pair, etc.

idk man i let excel do math for me

 

[Savant]

22 vs AK off is actually ~53/47 to the 22 so actually the odds would favor you.

Either way I'd say it's far more like you flopped a set but then the pit boss came over and said that they had to throw out that flop and run it again. You're in a very clearly winning position. Doesn't mean you *will* win, but you're clearly winning at the moment and the heavy favorite to hang on. Then you got screwed out of it.

I had a feeling that someone on here would be able to articulate what I was trying to say in Poker terms better than I could. Had a feeling it might be you honestly. Cheers

 

[Evilo]

22 vs AK off is actually ~53/47 to the 22 so actually the odds would favor you.

Either way I'd say it's far more like you flopped a set but then the pit boss came over and said that they had to throw out that flop and run it again. You're in a very clearly winning position. Doesn't mean you *will* win, but you're clearly winning at the moment and the heavy favorite to hang on. Then you got screwed out of it.

Except you didn't take into account the context I provided (guy with hot streak = Spurs scoring + red card).