Of Number Crunching and Joey Barton

It's that time of the weekend. Premier league games are going to be hitting our TV screens in a few hours. It's about now when Twitter time-lines start filling up with previous match-ups between teams, win-loss records, goals scored against this opponent, goals scored by Mr Soso etc. While a lot of these statistics are quite interesting and give us a way to use up some time before the actual games begin, this number crunching has gone way too far nowadays that sometimes I find that some of it, actually most of it, is just useless. 

Stats are good, but at the end of the day they're just stats. I'm not completely blind to suggest that all stats are useless, but the thing about this overdose is that now we have stats not based on actual events, but even on hypothetical situations, that are probably playing out in some parallel universe. The irritating part is that you can manipulate these numbers to make a good situation better, a bad situation worse or basically any way to prove a point that you want to prove. Now if you ask me why I'm coming up with this anti-stat rant it's because I started thinking about it when I saw this USELESS stat that I'm going to talk about.

Defence of the Arsenal Defence

In case you missed the CL qualifier, I just want to start off by saying that Arsenal actually won the match against a relatively fancied Italian opponent, clean sheet intact and all that, although some newspapers might have you believe that winning nowadays is not the point. The media have been banging about on how Arsenal just escaped, how SZCZ's saves barely rescued us from embarrassment, how frail the team was and so on. It seems to me that most of these nut-cases who wrote these reports had started with an already planned agenda before even watching the game. Now, while I acknowledge the fact that there is frustration in Gooner world around Arsene Wenger's reluctance to splash the cash in the transfer market, those wearing the Red and White on the pitch did a lot to lift our spirits and gave us a win. 

Please let the football begin

Aren't we all fed up with all this transfer talk? I don't know about fans of other clubs, but if you're an Arsenal fan who sees a blog on Fabregas, Nasri or even Wenger or Gazidis you probably just go - Oh no, not again! Maybe we should just have like a social network for clubs to conduct their business and make it public for the whole world to see. Now that would be fun. Okay, not so much for football journalists, who'll have to actually think of something creative to write about when there is no football on, but it would benefit the footballing society in general.

It should be something like a combination of Facebook, Ebay, YouTube, Twitter and emm... okay let me throw in Google+ as well, just so that it doesn't feel left out. It should be made mandatory for all managers, players, coaches, scouts etc. to join (yes, even Arsene Wenger will need to create a profile even though he prefers to do his transfer business privately in  a dark cave in the French Alps). 

It's IPL time again.... Yawn

The latest installment of the IPL is a week old as I write this, and we Indians haven't even had the time to gloat over a famous World Cup win. I have yet to watch a full game and the credit (of course I'm being sarcastic) goes to some of our favorite commentators, all back after being rested for the World Cup. Laxman Sivaramakrishnan says, "Oh yes! Happy to be back. Had to keep myself fit for this one. That's why I opted out of the World Cup sponsored by Money Gram International, Reliance Communications, Castrol, ESPN Star ....... ",  all this hoping that at least a few of the brands would pay him a few Rupees for mentioning their names on live television. It's hard enough for cricket fans, having to many times miss the first and last ball of an over because of a commercial break and now we have these dimwits at the mercy of advertisers playing out the audio versions of the commercials almost every alternate ball. LS can be excused because that's probably as close as he'll get to featuring in a TV commercial.

If Arsenal were to Win the Premier League...

This is a preview to what you can expect to see, read or listen to from certain sources (not necessarily the ones I've mentioned)  in the highly unlikely (or impossible) scenario that Arsenal win the Premier League this season or actually any season for that matter.

So first lets go to a certain newspaper. Here is an extract from an article that I hear they have already prepared a rough draft of, in case Arsenal do win.

"One of the most entertaining Premier League seasons in recent times has a winner and Arsenal have managed to end a six year wait after their fellow title contenders made it easy for them by dropping points at crucial junctures. While the Gunners celebrate, it is also important to put this victory in perspective. Arsenal must consider themselves lucky that they have the crown. Fellow contenders not playing to potential and inconsistent refereeing definitely helped Arsenal's cause and in general it is also fair to say that the overall standard of football this past season has been below par. It is therefore not a time to celebrate the victory of sublime attacking football, but a time to reflect on the decline of the sport in this country. How can a team win the League with three different, substandard goalkeepers and a defense that leaked goals?

Graeme Smith Reveals Retirement Plans

Graeme Smith, at a press conference after the first day of the deciding Test match between India and South Africa, has announced that he will be retiring. There was a twist though in store for everyone. As we all know some players have in the past retired from one form of the game or other as they wanted to devote more time and effort to their preferred format be it ODIs, Test matches or more recently T20 cricket. Smith though went one step ahead when he announced, "Well ya, I have decided to quit from all matches which will feature Zaheer Khan in the opposing team. Ya, this will help me focus on bowlers who I am more comfortable against" after having being dismissed by Zaheer for the 11th time in his career.

Saurav Ganguly when told about this development gave his customary look of disbelief by batting his eyelids at the rate of three times per second. "If I had retired from matches played in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies, my average would have been much higher. This is not right. Soon you might have people retiring from short pitched bowling" he said, suggesting that he might have considered various kinds of retirement plans to suit his batting average.

"Salman Butt caused Old Trafford defeat" - Wenger

In a shocking revelation almost a week after Arsenal’s loss to Manchester United, Arsene Wenger has finally admitted that the actual reason for his team’s loss was not the Old Trafford pitch. After being criticized for blaming the pitch in sections of the media and by a lot of Arsenal fans (me included), Wenger obviously had to come up with a better excuse. 

At a press conference today, Arsene was put under the microscope again regarding the loss by the media and with an uncharacteristic slip of the tongue said, "I believe that Salman Butt.. err... Cesc Fabregas could have played better". Cesc Fabregas was thought by us all to have come on to substitute Tomas Rosicky in the 64th minute of the game. As it turns out it was actually Pakistan cricketer Salman Butt!  Wenger then owned up to the fact and then in his usual factual way said, “I firmly believed it was just that Csec lacked a little strength, technique, togetherness (and 5 more of his keywords) on the day. Then I discovered it was not Cesc when he disappeared after the game." Butt had escaped to a posh hotel in London. Wenger continued - "If it was actually Cesc we would have won 3 or 4 nil”. He was obviously forgetting that United had scored a goal in the first half itself.  When a journalist in the room pointed that out, his reply was, "From where I was sitting I could not see it. I will have to look at the replay and see if it was a goal." Another journalist in the room who also happened to be an Arsenal fan was about to fling a microphone at him in disgust before he was reined in by his colleagues. In those few seconds Wenger showed that he is as good as his players when it comes to being silky and slid out of the room. 

Apparently, it all started when Wenger was boarding the flight to Manchester, saw Butt, and thinking he was Fabregas asked him why he came even though he was injured. Butt replied, “I just have to play this one game for my team.” Wenger, obviously happy with his ‘captain’s’ commitment took him on board. Little did he know that Butt was talking about a totally different 'game' and 'team'.

Undercover reporters from The Guardian newspaper, desperate to publish some news that criticizes Arsenal, have since released a video from a hidden camera which was placed in Butt's hotel room, in which he is seen receiving a bundle of cash for what his 'team' called a "match-winning" effort. When asked about the game Butt responded with the same lack of confidence that you see in his footwork when he’s batting. Biting his nails he said, “I am completely innocent. I just wanted to win the game for Arsenal and I think that I have performed to the best of my ability.” On further investigation, it was found that Salman Butt had made plans to go to Old Trafford about a week before the match. His 'team' then asked Butt to run on to the pitch during the game assuring him that a bet on the incident will have high stakes. Butt was to receive his share of the payoff if he managed to stay on the pitch longer than one minute. Butt couldn't believe his luck to be on the actual team and wanted to use the opportunity to get some much needed match practice which is impossible when playing for the Pakistan cricket team. "Once I'm on the field, I concentrate on getting settled and staying there for the 'team'. The pitch was turning a lot (now we know why Arsene said "bad pitch") but I fought hard to stay there", he said. He was nervous but of course aware that he could escape by getting back home to share his earnings with who else but the PCB, so that they could in turn blindly claim that England had fixed their football World Cup match against Germany to divert attention.

The real Cesc Fabregas wasn't available for comment as he was busy on Skype. Yes, his friends in the Barca team are reportedly using the new group video chat option to lure him to the Nou Camp in January itself. Sam Allardyce who wasn't even asked to comment came forward to say, "Well, these are not valid excuses. I can do much better than that" hinting that he might be interested in the Arsenal top job that he will never get, after his sacking by the new Blackburn owners who think the best way to start "great things" at the club is by removing a manager who was not doing too badly midway through a tough EPL season.

Disclaimer: As you have definitely figured out by now, the post is entirely false. Just a rant from a frustrated Gooner who cannot take more lame excuses for Arsenal not winning the BIG games. For the record, I still am and will always be an Arsenal fan and I still think Arsene Wenger is one of the best managers in the world. I also have Cesc's squad number on my Arsenal shirt, so there's no question about the great admiration I have for his game.

Credits: Thanks to @vikasgowda20 of Buffering Brain fame for sharing this link which inspired the post. So its not me who originally thought Butt and Fabregas look alike. I obviously do see it now though. Do you?